Karen Healey was born in Whangarei, New Zealand, and has lived in lots of places since, including Oamaru, Christchurch, Tokyo, Fuchu, and Melbourne. She is the author of the award-winning young adult urban fantasy, “Guardian of the Dead”, “The Shattering”, and the forthcoming “When We Wake.” She likes baking, “World of Warcraft”, and tripartite sentences. She used to want to be a dinosaur-hunting cowgirl, but being an author is sufficient compensation in its combination of excitement and terror.
I read some great YA novels last year, but also a few less than impressive ones. In my reviews, I explained my reservations about the novels I didn’t like in some detail. At one point, I started to wonder whether I was being too hard on them, because, after all, those books are aimed at a younger audience. Is it fair to set the same expectations for YA as for books aimed at mature readers? Looking back, I even mentioned in some reviews that I clearly wasn’t the target demographic for these novels and that someone who is closer to the YA age range would probably enjoy them more.
Read More
Not entering! I actually read an SF book in November--System Collapse by Martha Wells, the latest Murderbot book. Excellent, as…
I'm continuing with the Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock. The third book in the series, "The Weird of the White…
Alan Garner's Treacle Walker was best of November for me, a short novel that was also surprisingly readable, given how…
I enjoyed a couple of good MG/YA fantasy books. The first is apparently some kind of Dutch classic--"The Cat Who…
"North Woods is a novel of terroir" love this!