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Help a Reader Out: A Book List for Teenage Boys

Stephanie Ellis, a participant on Monster Librarian’s Facebook page, noted that right now there is a lot of great YA horror with girls as protagonists or major characters, but she’s having trouble finding any with boys as protagonists (writers, take note). I personally think it is lovely that we’re seeing more girls take on major roles in horror fiction, but in looking at this list by Kelly Jensen of YA horror fiction for the second half of 2019, 28 of the books have women as authors or editors (there is one anthology, slanted significantly toward women authors) and just three have men as authors. So many women writers getting published and lots of girls and women as protagonists or major characters is a great problem to have… unless you are looking specifically for YA horror with boys as protagonists and major characters. There are a lot of boys who are reluctant readers and an engaging YA read will grab them. Of course we shouldn’t all expect all books to be mirrors of our experiences, but there are now many more options for boys to read stories that showcase girls as protagonists and point-of-view characters, so there are more windows to look through, and doors to step through, in YA horror than ever before.  A note: I’d like to see alternatives to traditional depictions of masculinity in future YA horror. It makes for some pretty great writing when you see it!

A few things about teens who seek out horror. In a very small 2007 study, Sharon McKool discovered that there are many kids who jump straight from reading Goosebumps to reading Stephen King (this included her own son).  Based on my even earlier experience as a college student in the 1990s, I had more than one classmate who first engaged in reading when he first discovered Stephen King, and thought he was the greatest writer ever. A teenage boy was the first to hand me Anne Rice. My brother, not a reader, was gripped by In Cold Blood. YA is not a stopping point for these boys.

But many boys aren’t ready to make that jump and take the path that leads through YA fiction, and that’s awesome, because there are some great books available for them. There are even outstanding authors who first wrote for adults who have now also written YA horror, like Jonathan Maberry, Jeff Strand, and Steven Wedel (author of Murdered by Human Wolves, written for an adult audience, as well as co-author with Carrie Jones of one of the books Jensen mentioned as coming out later this year). These authors have the opportunity to introduce the adult horror genre to their young adult audiences craving more. However, since the current crop of upcoming YA horror fiction doesn’t seem to offer much in the way of boys as protagonists or major characters, here are a few older titles you can turn to. They are very different in tone, level of gore, age appropriateness, writing style, type of creature, and quality, so you can’t just hand the list over to any teenage boy and say “pick one.” But it is a starting place for making recommendations to the right kids. We’ve reviewed many, but not all, of these books. If the book was published before 2014, you’ll need to search the original MonsterLibrarian.com.com website to find it, but it should be pretty simple to find most of these reviewed elsewhere as well.

 

A Bad Day for Voodoo by Jeff Strand (2013) This Bram Stoker nominee is both funny and violent. Strand has written other books for younger readers that aren’t as violent, and comic horror for adults that can get very gory.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (2011). This outstanding book should be in every collection. It is powerful and wrenching, and gorgeously illustrated.

Anna Dressed in Blood (2 book series): Anna Dressed in Blood (2011), Girl of Nightmares (2012) by Kendare Blake. Anna Dressed in Blood is consistently recommended as a “book to read” on recommendation lists for YA horror.

Escape from Furnace (5 book series): Lockdown (2009), Solitary (2010), Death Sentence (2011), Fugitives (2012), Execution (2012)  by Alexander Gordon Smith. This action-packed dystopian series about a brutal underground prison for delinquent teenagers has some really difficult torture and body horror scenarios.

Five Nights at Freddy’s (2 book series): The Silver Eyes (2016), The Twisted Ones (2017) by Scott Cawthorn and Kira Breed-Wrisely. These are based on the popular video game Five Nights at Freddy’s. 

Gone (8 book series): Gone (2008), Hunger (2009), Lies (2010), Plague (2011), Fear (2012), Light (2013),  Monster (2017), Villain (2018) by Michael Grant

Heap House (The Iremonger Trilogy, #1) by Edward Carey (2014)

Lockwood & Co. ( 5 book series): The Screaming Staircase (2013), The Whispering Skull (2014), The Hollow Boy (2015), The Creeping Shadow (2016), The Empty Grave (2017)  by Jonathan Stroud. These will probably appeal more to younger teens and are slanted toward mystery.

Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children (6 book series): Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2011), Hollow City (2014), Library of Souls (2015), Map of Days (2018), The Conference of the Birds (upcoming)  by Ransom Riggs. The use of vintage photographs and documents really sets these apart. A movie was made of the first book in 2016.

Peeps by Scott Westerfeld (2005)

Red Eye (10 book series): Flesh and Blood, Bad Bones, Savage Island, and Whiteout all have boys as protagonists. Tony Jones has done a summary of the 10 books in this UK series here.

Rot & Ruin (4 book series) : Rot & Ruin (2010), Dust & Decay (2011), Flesh & Bone (2012), Fire & Ash (2013). by Jonathan Maberry. This Stoker Award-winning series is essential. Bits & Pieces (2015) collects shorter pieces that take place in the same fictional world, and Broken Lands (2018) is the first book in a follow-up series.

Rotters by Daniel Kraus (2011)

Skeleton Creek (5 book series):  Skeleton Creek (2009), Ghost in the Machine (2009), The Crossbones (2010), The Raven (2011), The Phantom Room (2014) by Patrick Carman. Skeleton Creek is an interactive series that directs readers to YouTube videos and websites intended to give the story a feeling of realism.

Slasher Girls & Monster Boys edited by April Genevieve Tucholke (2015). This is on HWA’s “Summer Scares” list for 2019.

The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein (2 book series): This Dark Endeavor and Such Wicked Intent by Kenneth Oppel (reprinted 2012) I fangirl these ones! Kenneth Oppel is a very talented writer.

The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group by Catherine Jinks (2019)

The Devil’s Engine (3 book series): Hellraisers (2015), Hellfighters (2016), Hellwalkers (2017)  by Alexander Gordon Smith

The Enemy (7 book series): The Enemy (2010), The Dead (2011), The Fear (2012),  The Sacrifice (2013), The Fallen (2014), The Hunted (2015), The End (2017) by Charlie Higson. This post-apocalyptic series begins after nearly all the adults have been turned into cannabilistic zombies, and the children and teens are banding together in gangs, in hopes of surviving.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (2009). This Newbery Award-winning book is outstanding and covers a boy’s life from young child to young man. The artwork by Dave McKean is startling and effective.

The Graveyard Book (graphic novel) by Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell (2018)

The Illuminae Files: Illuminae (2015), Gemina (2016), and Obsidio (2018) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. These look more intimidating than they actually are. The stories are set up as a series of chat logs, emails, video transcriptions, photos, sketches, maps, and impressive double page illustrations, so even though the books are substantial they don’t need to be intimidating. They have a futuristic science-fiction setting.

The Monstrumologist (4 book series): The Monstrumologist, The Curse of the Wendigo, The Isle of Blood, The Final Descent by Rick Yancey. Will is the 12 year old apprentice to a “monstrumologist,” both scientist and monster-slayer, writing of his experiences. Set in the Victorian era, the language can be difficult and flowery.  Although The Monstrumologist is a Printz Honor book, it is not for everyone. It will appeal most to readers with advanced vocabulary and a very strong stomach for gore and body horror.

The Thief of Always by Clive Barker (1992,  reissued 2014). Clive Barker takes a different tone in this story of a house where it’s always a holiday. Many, many horror fans and writers have mentioned this as a gateway title to adult horror.

The Thief of Always (graphic novel) by Clive Barker, adapted by Kris Obrisko, art by Gabriel Hernandez (2010)

Thirsty by M.T. Anderson (1997, reissued 2010) Published in the days when YA horror was a rare treat, nobody had heard of that Harry Potter guy, and Amelia Atwater-Rhodes was a big deal, Thirsty remains memorable to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Review: Broken Lands by Jonathan Maberry

Broken Lands by Jonathan Maberry

Simon and Schuster, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-1534406377

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

I will be honest, I am not a fan of zombie fiction.  As a reviewer, I am putting my feelings about the genre as a whole to the side to review Broken Lands because it is on the final ballot for the 2018 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel. I know Jonathan Maberry is a talented author whose work in both the adult and young adult categories has been judged as outstanding, not just in the community of people who write horror fiction or love zombie fiction but by other reviewers, including librarians (and librarians are not an easy audience to impress).

Broken Lands is the first book in a follow-up series to Maberry’s YA series Rot and Ruin. That series introduced backstory on how and why the apocalypse happened and introduced the teenage Benny Imura as a main character. Previous to writing the Rot and Ruin books, Maberry wrote adult zombie fiction starring a special ops soldier, Joe Ledger. I have not read either the Rot and Ruin books or the Joe Ledger books, so Broken Lands is my introduction to Benny and his friends and to Joe. Benny and Joe each have their own, narratives, which alternate with a third narrative involving Gutsy Gomez, a teenage girl who is uncovering a disturbing secret about her town and its involvement with a secret military base nearby (For purposes of representation, Gutsy is essentially uninterested in sex or romance, although she is described as bi, and she has a kiss with Alice, a lesbian).

The book starts out strong, with an abrupt hook that introduces and characterizes Gutsy and the world she’s living in with just a few words, enough to make even a reluctant reader curious enough to turn the page. Her story mainly takes place in and around New Alamo, a town of indeterminate size in New Mexico that was formerly an internment camp for undocumented immigrants. Maberry takes no time to ratchet up the suspense and action. Short sentences and plenty of white space push the reader on through not just Gutsy’s actions but her thought processes as she observes the cemetery. I wasn’t wild about Maberry’s characterization of grief as something that you work your way through and eventually come out of healed, but his portrayal of Gutsy’s grieving, and how horrific it is to have the person you are grieving come back from the dead to attack you, I thought was spot on. She’s a girl who thinks and acts and doesn’t slow down. Her friends, Alethea and Spider, are loyal and supportive, and secondary characters are developed enough for the reader to care about them, at least a little.

Then we switch to Benny and his friends, in Reclamation, California, a town of about 16,000 people that they helped to defend and rebuild. Reclamation has managed to connect with eight other towns in California and the new American government being established in Asheville, North Carolina, but Asheville has suddenly gone silent, and Joe Ledger, who was on his way from Reclamation to Asheville by helicopter, has disappeared. Benny and his friends decide to steal six “quads” (small four-wheeled vehicles), from the town, tie up the guards on watch duty, and go off to search for Ledger and then on to Asheville. Experienced, tough, and with varying levels of skill in combat, Benny and five friends take off across unknown country. Teenagers do a lot of unwise things, but this choice, for me, went beyond normal levels of maladaptive judgment. I am not a young adult, though: maybe actual teenagers would find this plausible.

My guess is that Maberry wanted us to see what the wasteland beyond California looked like and to get a preview of the zombie hordes that is stomach-dropping dreadful. There is a lot of zombie fighting, including a battle with a zombie silverback gorilla and an absolutely horrific experience in a state prison where the locked-up prisoners, all zombies, are in starvation mode. There’s also observation of their bizarre surroundings, including mutations from chemical spills, bioweapons, and radioactivity, and growing dread as they witness intelligent zombies directing endless hordes of shambling horrors. While Asheville is in the South, Benny and his friends find themselves driven further and further south, towards the Mexican border, because the radioactivity, mutations, and zombies all have to be avoided. And because there are six teenagers in various states of romantic involvement, there’s also teenage drama. It could be that the character development of the teenage characters all occured in the previous series, but aside from Benny (the point of view character) and Chong (who is holding off zombification with medication only available in Asheville) the characters sort of blended together for me.

Finally, we have a storyline where a hunter tracks down Joe Ledger, whose helicopter has crashed, and they turn out to be former comrades. They decide to go to New Alamo to hunt for a weapons cache and then head to Asheville together. I enjoyed the Joe Ledger storyline. I could tell that Maberry was comfortable writing Ledger and it was interesting to watch the relationship between Ledger and his new partner.

All three sets of characters collide as a horde of  hundreds of zombies overtake and burn down the secret military base where scientists have been running experiments on the citizens of New Alamo (because apparently it’s okay to conduct racist, fatal scientific experiments on undocumented immigrants) and head for the walls of the town. Benny and three of his friends sneak in through a tunnel infested with zombies, killing everyone in their path until they reach the interior. Gutsy and her friends and neighbors (about ten of them are named) defend the walls. Ledger wades straight into the middle of the horde and starts cutting zombies down. The hunter, who turns out to be Benny’s older half-brother Sam, uses a sniper rifle to take down zombies one at a time. This small group of people who have not coordinated in any way defeat and kill all the zombies, including any bitten or killed townspeople. Gutsy then discovers the director of the hospital and the leader of the scientists from the military base attempting to escape with the records of their experiments, and stops them. The book ends with a shocking reveal which I can’t give away, but which will definitely send readers after the next book.

My overall impression is that Maberry does a great job creating suspense and action with a very economical use of words, and uses vivid language to describe the mutating, destroyed land that the characters must cross. The grave-robbing and scientific experimentation in New Alamo contributed to a rather heavy-handed critique on immigration policy, but the introduction of Gutsy Gomez, whose experience of these was intensely personal, led it to be a very strong storyline. Here was a girl who put her grief on hold to deal with life-and-death issues and did what had to be done, even at great personal expense. Maberry certainly manages to instill a feeling of dread and horror with the zombie hordes and one-on-one battles, even those that are only implied (the final time Gutsy and her friends have to kill her already dead mother is not depicted, but it doesn’t have to be to get the emotional impact) and the human horror, of what military scientists were willing to do to innocent people, is appalling. It’s not for nothing that Maberry has a reputation as a gifted horror writer.

However, I felt that he depended far too much on his readers’ knowledge of backstory for characters from previous books. As someone who hasn’t read any of Maberry’s zombie books, I felt lost among the characters that carried over from his previous books. The transition between narratives was often clunky, with Maberry spending a long time in one narrative, then cutting out to a different one that I had lost track of, and switching time periods back and forth. I would have liked to see more of a focus on Gutsy’s story (and maybe Ledger’s). Based on the sudden ending, I assume that there is going to be a second book, and perhaps a better choice would have been to focus on Gutsy in this book and Benny in the next (Rick Riordan did this successfully in his Heroes of Olympus books, in which the first book focuses on a newly introduced character and the second switches to a character from the previous series). There is good action and suspense, some pretty raw horror and violence, and some compelling writing and description. Readers of Maberry’s previous books will probably like this one, but it’s not the one to start with, and I suspect it’s not nearly his best work.  Recommended for public libraries, high school library media centers, readers of zombie fiction, readers who enjoyed the Rot and Ruin books, and for Jonathan Maberry fans.

 

Editor’s note: Broken Lands is on the final ballot for the 2018 Bram Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel.