Why I No Longer Love Young Adult Fantasy // 2020

hey guys welcome back if you're new here my name is becca and today i'm going to be talking about why i no longer love young girl fantasy [Music] now this is not going to be a video where i say young girl fantasy is terrible now it's awful it was great five years ago now it's all trash this is just going to be me talking about my personal experience with young adult fantasy over the last couple of years i had an epiphany the other day and really discovered the reason why i haven't been living younger fantasy as much recently and it is nothing to do with the books with the quality of the books in this video i'm going to be talking about my thought process like the things that i thought it was originally like the reasons maybe why i wasn't loving young adult fantasy and then the reason that i stumbled on a couple of weeks ago about what it is about young adult fantasy now that is just making me not as invested as i used to be so before we get into this i would like to quickly mention 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that you take me up on this offer if you are looking to learn something new so on to today's subject i haven't written any notes for this video i'm kind of just free wheeling it like i do with most of the videos on my channel actually i am going to start off talking about the first things that i thought when i realized i wasn't enjoying young adult as much the first one obviously was am i just growing out of it because i am in my late 20s now young adult is not my target demographic and that has been evident in my reading because i have been reading increasingly more adult books specifically adult fantasy but adult fiction in general over the last couple of years i'm kind of transitioning between the two that being said i have always enjoyed young adult fantasy i like the plots the books sound really interesting to me i do enjoy a lot of the characters something that i do really love that young girl fantasy always provides to me is a level of angst because i have always said that some of my favorite elements of books are the overly dramatic relationships between characters so relationship dynamics that would not need to happen if the characters communicated properly to each other or if they thought a little bit more about the whole picture as opposed to what is directly in front of them at the moment and even though i am in my late 20s there are things about adult fiction that i just generally don't relate to i i can't relate to being married for 10 years i can't relate to having children and being a mother and that being the main focus of my life and while those things aren't present in every adult novel they are recurring things because they are common themes that adults deal with however they are not relatable to my life now there is a ongoing discussion that i think we will never have a resolution to about how there needs to be a strong new adult demographic for people who are in similar situations to myself where we're kind of in the bridge between young adult and adult where our lives are and in between of these two things we're obviously too old to completely relate to young adult but we are not at the stages of your typical adult novel i'm not going to address that in this video but it is something that kind of plays into this when i'm saying like am i too old for young adult so this is one of the things i've thrown out i've decided that i'm not too old for young adult because i do still read middle grade and i've been out of that demographic for a really long time but there are things in middle grade novels that do appeal to me and appeal to me at this stage in my life and i do think that you can enjoy fiction from any demographic at any stage in your life but that was just kind of the first immediate obvious thought when i realized i wasn't enjoying young girl as much as i had previously like oh well you're obviously just getting a little bit too old for it now you're not in the same stage of your life as you were so these things no longer apply to you the second theory i had is the one that i was convinced for the longest time was the reason why i don't love young adult as much anymore and that is that young adult has become and is still becoming increasingly more commercialized and marketable there is no denying that young adult sells well especially in the online book community because pretty much as long as the young good old book community has existed the people who have been in that community have been predominantly people who are in the age ranges that read young adults so this is all conjecture this is not based on any facts at all but as publishers have been utilizing the online book community to market books as people in the community have become influencers as opposed to just a community of readers who talk about books for fun young adult has sold more and young adult has become more profitable and more marketable and what we start to see generally in any industry when something like this happens is that if consumers are continually buying one type of thing if they continually want to consume one type of thing then the people at the top will start to pump out more of that type of thing because people want it and they can make money like that so what this results in sometimes not all the time is a product of lesser quality being introduced onto the market because they are going for quantity over quality but my thought process with this is that maybe young adult is not at the standard that it used to be because now it is increasingly easier for authors to sell young adult novels because publishers want them agents want them i do think that this happens to some extent but i do not think that this is always the case the thing with art is that it is always subjective people have personal preferences and that definitely comes into play when you are critiquing any form of art but what always happens is that there is a market for that there are people who will see something in that book that is that absolute favorite thing so it's not something that can really be quantified i want to say it is just a matter of opinion but this was my leading theory young adult has just become more marketable and because of that there is a much wider range of young adult fiction than there used to be and naturally with so many things some of them are going to be better than others once again in quotation marks because everything is subjective so the two things i've just mentioned one that i may be growing out of young adult and to the young adult has become more marketable i do believe that both of these things are still true even though i do not think that they are the leading reason for me not enjoying young adult fantasy as much so i did want to mention them in this video because they do definitely play a part like you can't deny that i'm in my late 20s and i'm a little bit too old for the typical young adult now and you cannot deny that young adult has become more marketable more commercialized there's a lot of books out there not all of them are going to be as good and also as enjoyed widely as maybe they used to be however what i have now landed upon the epiphany that i had a couple of weeks ago is that just personal preference wise with me as a reader and the things that i enjoy in books does not line up with the typical structure of a young adult novel so what i have been finding over the last couple of years i'm much more in the online book community than i used to be which means that i'm much more aware of new releases and with the marketing push behind these things with arcs going out all the time with me seeing reviews and hype being built i'm picking up books that are released in that year and that is something that i never used to do i used to be much more of a backless reader because back in the early days of my book collection i had the space to have as many books as i want i didn't have the money to buy them so i would buy the majority of my books from charity shop meaning that everything that i was reading was pretty much out of circulation for at least a couple of years it was rare that i would find something even relatively new as a reader i have discovered that i am character driven the things that stick with me after i finished a book is the characters i lose details in my mind about the plots but characters i always remember i love well-developed characters and i love books that focus on characters like if i care about the characters if i'm scared for the characters if i have come to think of the characters as people that i care about the books are more likely to leave a lasting impression on me as opposed to the plot now my favorite books have this grand epic scaled plot that is very intricate very complex it has things being pulled in that you read like if it's a series things that you read at the beginning of the theory as being relevant to the end of the series and characters that you've followed for a long time that you've really grown with that you've really come to love now younger all fantasy as a demographic is not inherently more plot driven however with me personally reading books as they are released what i am finding is that the typical structure and this does not apply to every young adult book but the typical structure i have noticed in my own personal experience it isn't like a rule or anything but with the books that i've been reading i have noticed that you will have a plot arc in the first book in a young adult fantasy series so i don't i feel like i should use something as an example do i have anything around me i can use as an example okay so we're gonna go with a real classic example here we are going to go with the grisha trilogy by leigh bardugo so shadow and bone alina is a normal girl in ravka she's been drafted to the army however right at the beginning of this book she discovers that she has powers because of these powers she is taken to the grisha academy where she is trained to use her powers where she meets the darklin the leader of the grisha army who is very seductive very alluring and very powerful the main conflict in this world is that we have something called the shadowfold and that is full of these dark writhing beasts which means that the country is disconnected from one half to the other because crossing the shadow fold is difficult that is the conflict that is introduced in here the shadowfold is a big issue that they have to deal with but as soon as lena joins the grisha academy she starts to realize some of the intricate politics of the world things about the different factions things about the darkling and the rovkan royalty what i have noticed in young adult that is illustrated with this series in particular in the way that the trilogy is structured is that we are introduced in book one to a plot arc this is understandably an introduction to the characters and the magic system politics of the world and the world building what happens typically in my experience is that the initial plot arc that we are introduced with like the initial problem is resolved throughout the first book and the first book focuses on this plot and you are learning more about the magic the politics and the world as we go but by the end of the first book generally the minor plot arc is resolved resulting in a problem arising right at the end of the book which is an introduction to the greater plot of the series that is only going to be explored in books two and three so the actual plot of the first book is not normally a reflection of the series that usually comes at the end of the first book then what you have with the second book is a much slower story and the second book in a young adult series in my experience yet again is designed to bring you closer to the characters further develop all of the things that were introduced in book one so magic politics and world normally expands the world a little bit the setting of this one is very isolated in comparison to this one and introduces you to what the end game of the series is going to be so the actual plot of the series normally only comes into play in book two and three but this is the book that is generally a lot slower and brings you a lot closer to the characters popular opinion on the second book in a series is that the majority of readers actually find that the second book in a series is their least favorite because it is so much slower however personally i find this is a perfect example actually especially in the grisha series stage and storm is my favorite of the three because as a reader i am more drawn to characters and i enjoy the character building that typically happens in book two of a series then when you move on to book three you have the resolution of the greater plot that was vaguely introduced in book one developed in book two and comes to its epic conclusion in book three so that is what i've noticed is a typical young adult series structure so what is happening with me as a reader when i'm reading books as they are released is that i'm reading book one which is mainly plot driven and follows a minor plot arc that is not reflective of the series as a whole and i'm leaving book one feeling unsatisfied because i'm not enjoying it because the typical young adult first book in a series structure themes everything going on here is not my personal taste as a reader but because i'm reading the first book in the series the year that it is released what i'm finding that is difficult to how i used to read is that i now have to wait a year until book two in that series so what i would normally do like if i read the grisha series for the first time now i would read book one i would think this has some elements that i like i didn't love it because of whatever reasons it didn't really hit the spot for me but i would still continue with the series then i would pick up book two think actually i do really enjoy this series book two contain all of the elements that i really like in a book and now i really need to see how it ends and i would pick up book three but if i'm reading this the year that it's released i have a year to wait until i can read this and by the time that year has passed i'm not as interested in this as i would have been if i was able to pick it up as soon as i'd finished this one and that is pretty much why i am unsatisfied with all of the young adult that i'm reading it is because i'm reading them as soon as they're released and i'm not enjoying them enough because of the typical formula of a first book in a young adult series and by the time a year has passed my attention has waned and i'm less likely to pick up the sequel so it is not young adult fantasy it is what i like to read in books and how i'm reading them like the time frame that i'm reading them on so i don't really know what i'm gonna do about that i don't know whether i should stop reading these books in the year that they're released and wait until at least the second book is released because i feel like if i read the first two books almost back to back i won't mind waiting a year for the third book and when the third book is released assuming it's a trilogy of course this structure i'm talking about is more typical with trilogies but i won't mind the wait for the third book as much because i've read enough of the series to be actually hooked and make it so that i am excited for the release of the third book and that i will actually pick it up when it's released but yeah i don't know how to do that because part of my job part of what i do here is that i read arcs now i don't get that many arcs especially not physical arcs i have been requesting more on netgalley recently but as a reviewer as a booktuber part of my job is to read these books before they're released and let you guys know whether they're worth your time now i have never really put much thought into being an influencer as opposed to somebody who just talks about my love of books it's just something that kind of happens over time so it is quite possible for me to go back to only reading books that have been released like only reading backlist as long as i don't get swept up in the hype of wanting new books wanting to read new books based on the reviews of other people so that brings us pretty much to the end of this video that is the reason why i think at this midnight i think i haven't been enjoying young girl fantasy as much please let me know down in the comments whether you have been feeling like this whether this video maybe helped you to work through why you haven't been loving young adult fantasy as much i mean the first two reasons that i touched upon in this video like growing out of young girl and also young adult maybe becoming more commercialized are also valid reasons to not read as much young adult anymore or think that you're not loving young adult as much anymore but for me i definitely do think that it is the standard young girl formula because while i haven't been loving old young adults there are some that i've read in the last couple of years i do really enjoy and as i mentioned earlier not every single young adult book does fall into this formula it is just a popular structure so i do think that is about it for this video once again thank you to skillshare for sponsoring this one if you would like to hit me up on my offer of a free trial skillshare premium the link will be at the top of my description box aside from that please don't forget to like this video if you liked it and subscribe if you wanna if you enter my description box you'll find a link to my goodreads instagram twitter if you'd like to follow me on any of those as well as a link to my bookish bodybutter and candle website the instagram for that and 10 off discount code but that's it from me today guys bye oh you bite your friend like chocolate you say you will go where nobody knows with guns in another petty hoes we're never gonna quit and no one ever gonna quit no

Channel: Becca and The Books

Views: 8,201

Rating: 4.9365077 out of 5

Keywords: books, booktube, reading, young adult, why I don't like young adult, young adult fantasy, ya fiction, ya fantasy, overhyped young adult fantasy, young adult books, ya books, Becca and the books, uk booktuber, adult vs young adult fantasy

Id: I3CgSaTz38w

Length: 18min 33sec (1113 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 08 2020