Stealth YA!

I was delighted to find that a new Kelly Link collection was coming out, and so I ordered it from the Bookery. As she was typing it into the computer, Rhian paused. "Oh wait--this is a young adult book." I told her I didn't think so. She said sure it was, it's listed as YA. We looked into it--there didn't seem to be anything in the descriptions online that suggested the book was YA. Maybe it had been misfiled, I figured. I ordered it.

The book came in the other day and I sat down to read it. Nothing on the jacket, flaps, endpapers, or title page suggested it was YA. Then I read about halfway through the first story.

It's YA. I love Kelly link, but wow, this has really got me steamed. Yesterday my friend and collaborator Lou Beach wrote me with this link to an article on Link and this new book; go read it, it's good, and bully for her for writing a YA collection: it's always a pleasure to see something for teenagers that isn't a horrific piece of shit.

But a big middle finger to Viking for disguising this work as something other than kids' lit. I'm happy to have shelled out to further Link's career, but I'm a grownup, dammit, and I've been deceived. As that article suggests, they're hoping that Harry Potter fans will dig it, and I'm aware that there are people over the age of 17 who were able to endure Harry Potter, so I suppose this sleight-of-hand is for them, and they won't mind a bit. But in my view, there is a big difference between YA and adult literature, and I want the strong stuff.