The Sword and Laser discussion

I found this book initially felt very YA-ish, but then as it went on, not only did it feel darker and more adult in themes, it also defied some of the YA tropes it set up early on.
Eg, the love triangle. A lot of YA books have one, but here (view spoiler)[ it never materialises. Kitay stays just a friend of Rin, while Nezha ends up dead. Rin meanwhile is so uninterested in a traditional family life that she has herself sterilised. (hide spoiler)]
I enjoyed this defiance of some of the normal elements of YA.

Did you feel the same way, or think it was just a fairly normal YA book with some extreme violence tacked on?

Edit: I realise this thread title and initial post implies that the book is/should be categorised as YA. I should make clear that:
-it’s not categorised as YA
-Rebecca Kuang has personally expressed annoyance with people trying to pigeonhole it as YA
- I don’t personally think this is a YA book, I think it’s a grownup book which uses (and defies) some YA tropes

It's interesting...I know the character fits the YA age guideline, and the school setting says YA as well...but I didn't feel like it was YA. Too much at stake and yes, too much violence. The stakes are real.

It totally starts off like a YA novel, but it is most definitely not one. And I am so glad that (view spoiler)[there is no obvious romance between Kitay or Nezha, because it's such an easy trope to follow. Platonic relationships happen in real life, why not in novels? (hide spoiler)]

Does not wanting (view spoiler)[a family reduce the chance of love triangle, though? I think both are different. And I thought the pretty boy was not dead. But if he was then it's much better. (hide spoiler)]

There was at least one funny scene when (view spoiler)[they both suddenly become so in sync with other when fighting. I just had to laugh on the corniness. (hide spoiler)]

Ruth wrote: "I found this book initially felt very YA-ish, but then as it went on, not only did it feel darker and more adult in themes, it also defied some of the YA tropes it set up early on.
Eg, the love tri..."

Interesting. I thought this mashed the YA button repeatedly. It’s basically Harry Potter in the Chinese Hunger Games, so the darker and more violent aspects aren’t without precedent.

It’s not as if adult themes are avoided in literature aimed at teens. I think most of us had to read Lord of the Flies and the like while in school, and that is a very adult book despite the age of the characters.

I fully agree that it breaks the tropes and for me it made the book interesting.

Silvana wrote: "Does not wanting [spoilers removed]

There was at least one funny scene when [spoilers removed]"

Re: your spoiler points (view spoiler)[ I thought Nezha was dead, on reflection I think his fate was left deliberately ambiguous (hide spoiler)]

You’re right that (view spoiler)[ sterilisation doesn’t mean there can’t be a love triangle, although it does rule out the married-with-babies type of epilogue we see in Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, so that’s definitely a defied trope. (hide spoiler)]

It's not classed as YA here or on Amazon and the list of awards it's been up for are all regular ones, not YA specific...

Going back a ways, the first SF book I ever read, at the tender age of eight, featured a 13 year old girl. Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin. Won the Nebula, nominated for a Hugo in the late 1960s. Starship Troopers was also intended as juvenile and won the Hugo in 1960. Juvenile characters and situations does not force a categorization of YA. And FWIW I haven't thought of this book as YA.

Yeah, a lot of the early "this is YA" smacks a bit of pigeonholing Rebecca Kuang as a YA author somehow because of her gender/age. And even if not, no one really calls Name of the Wind YA just because it has a young character and spends most of his time in school.

Rebecca herself has a tweet on this: https://twitter.com/kuangrf/status/99... (she has a 3-tweet thread on the topic)

David wrote: "Yeah, a lot of the early "this is YA" smacks a bit of pigeonholing Rebecca Kuang as a YA author somehow because of her gender/age. And even if not, no one really calls Name of the Wind YA just beca..."

Apologies for the way I phrased the opening post, I didn’t mean to say that this is a YA book, just that it uses (and defies) some YA tropes.
I have added a clarifying edit to the post.

Just because it has kids in it doesn’t mean it’s YA. That’s a mistake a lot of people make. (See: Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye.)

But by the same token this book uses a lot of tropes throughout that are associated with current YA SFF books. The orphan getting into a special school and becoming the chosen one, etc.

YA/NA are unique among the genres in that they are created by marketing departments rather than arising from readers and then co-opted by corporations to peddle product. (Another mistake people frequently make, believing that genres are entirely created by companies.) But that makes YA particularly difficult to pin down, as it was a category that was imposed upon existing works instead of coalescing naturally as authors pushed the boundaries of existing works.

The YA vibes I got were:

* MC lives with horrible non-biological parents
* MC goes to an elite academy that almost no one gets into
* At the Academy there are areas of study that one can focus on

So, they're not really strong vibes, and I think the reason it starts out like Harry Potter is that it parallels the real world and historical events, and Harry Potter also parallels the real world.

Trike wrote: "YA/NA are unique among the genres in that they are created by marketing departments rather than arising from readers and then co-opted by corporations to peddle product."

I think you have it backwards. Most of the major modern SF&F subgenres arise because of a handful of influential publishers and editors, e.g. Gernsback and Campbell in the Golden Age, Michael Moorcock during the New Wave, L. Sprague De Camp and Lin Carter for post-war heroic fantasy, Lester and Judy-Lynn del Rey for modern epic fantasy, etc. SF&F were tiny genres back then, and they were the gatekeepers.

YA meanwhile arises because S.E. Hinton wrote The Outsiders in high school because she didn't find any books that spoke to her authentic adolescent experience, teachers and librarians championed the book to their students, and it made publishers realize a distinct adolescent fiction market existed. The more recent YA/SFF phenomenon just rides Harry Potter's progression from the well-established children's SFF genre into the YA market, along with a literary foundation already established by older and contemporary "young people dealing with supernatural problems at the same time as regular young people problems" works like Spider-Man, X-Men, 80s horror films, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Joe Informatico wrote: "Trike wrote: "YA/NA are unique among the genres in that they are created by marketing departments rather than arising from readers and then co-opted by corporations to peddle product."

I think you..."

Genre studies was my PhD thesis and I’ve continued researching it in the 3 decades since. So I’m fairly confident on this subject.

Trike wrote: "Genre studies was my PhD thesis and I’ve continued researching it in the 3 decades since. So I’m fairly confident on this subject. "

Touche! :)

For me, it felt very YA but was still extremely enjoyable despite that. The only major criticism I had was the dialogue felt very modern if that makes sense? Like some of the things the characters said were things that sounded nothing like a character from that older time period would say.

Adam wrote: "For me, it felt very YA but was still extremely enjoyable despite that. The only major criticism I had was the dialogue felt very modern if that makes sense? Like some of the things the characters ..."

I liked that in a way. This is after watching the awesome series Warrior on Cinemax where all the characters speak contemporary English, but it's actually Chinese, just translated for viewership. And yes, Cantonese use a lot of curses.

Adam wrote: "For me, it felt very YA but was still extremely enjoyable despite that. The only major criticism I had was the dialogue felt very modern if that makes sense? Like some of the things the characters ..."

I felt the same way about the dialogue. It sounded way too modern and culturally specific. I would have preferred if the author had invented curses or something like that. It stopped bothering me by the half way mark though, because, you know, sometimes, you just got to get over it...

Robert wrote: "Adam wrote: "For me, it felt very YA but was still extremely enjoyable despite that. The only major criticism I had was the dialogue felt very modern if that makes sense? Like some of the things th..."

Yes, while I didn't feel it was a dealbreaker or anything, it was just something that was jarring for the first 200 pages or so. I am currently reading the sequel and it is not bothering me at all.

SarahP wrote: "Adam wrote: "For me, it felt very YA but was still extremely enjoyable despite that. The only major criticism I had was the dialogue felt very modern if that makes sense? Like some of the things th..."


I was the exact same way. I am into the sequel now and it is fine but I agree with you, it would have made more sense to invent curses and such. Like lines such as "F*** this s***" just seemed so out of left field to me.

Oh...you didn't like "Tiger's tits"? I rolled my eyes at that one every. damn. TIME!

Adam wrote: "The only major criticism I had was the dialogue felt very modern if that makes sense?"

I don't really like this when it occurs either. I assume that this now qualifies me as a grumpy old guy, but it just doesn't feel right. I remember a V.E. Schwab book where a character in alternate 18th century London says they're "a big fan" of something in the first few pages of a book. It's alternate history, so surely the characters can say whatever the author wants them to say, but to me it felt jarring.

A question with anachronisms is are they intentional? Quite often I suspect that it is just a lazy execution and readers know more about a subject than writers...

John (Taloni) wrote: "Oh...you didn't like "Tiger's tits"? I rolled my eyes at that one every. damn. TIME!"

Yea, it is never enjoyable but I eventually ignore it and power through and hey, if that is the only criticism with the book, then it is a pretty good book by my standards. I will say the second book seems pretty good so far.

I seem to remember an author (of historical fiction?) one time saying he/she was very careful to check if a word was in use during the time period being depicted in the book... And how surprising it was sometimes to find that a modern seeming word was actually quite old.

I always think about that when something seems anachronistic in fantasy books... It doesn't always help.

I've searched online but can't find it in any of the podcasts I regularly listen to... Wasn't this on S&L? Does anyone else remember it? I seem to recall that 3 or 4 authors were all being asked the same questions about their writing process and how much they try to stick to real history and how much they deviate.

Joelle wrote: "I seem to remember an author (of historical fiction?) one time saying he/she was very careful to check if a word was in use during the time period being depicted in the book... And how surprising i..."

I feel like this was Mary Robinette Kowal in an S&L video interview. I might be wrong though.

Probably; MRK has definitely said that in various places.

There's what's called "the Tiffany problem" in historical romance. Tiffany is actually a very old name, but it sounds modern, so historical romance writers can't use it.

^I'm reading Fall right now (Neal Stephenson) and he has a character called Elmo. It's about creating a cyberspace world. And every time I see his name I think of the Sesame Street character singing the theme song from his show: "La la la la, la la la la, Elmo's World..." I don't think it's even parody, I think Stephenson didn't know.

Louise wrote: "Joelle wrote: "I seem to remember an author (of historical fiction?) one time saying he/she was very careful to check if a word was in use during the time period being depicted in the book... And h...

I feel like this was Mary Robinette Kowal in an S&L video interview. I might be wrong though."

Yes, she has said this on numerous occasions on the Writing Excuses podcast. She’s even went to the extra effort of making a list of words most commonly used in Jane Austen’s works to keep the language in her Shades of Milk & Honey era-specific.

It is interesting (and sometimes jarring) to come across a modern-seeming word in an old book. I once encountered a character calling police officers “pigs” in a book from 1910.

John (Taloni) wrote: "^I'm reading Fall right now (Neal Stephenson) and he has a character called Elmo. It's about creating a cyberspace world. And every time I see his name I think of the Sesame Street character singin..."

I remember a tv show having a character they named "Bob the Floater" because he was called Bob and was hired to fill in wherever needed. I snickered at it every time, since to me, Bob is another word for poop, and a floater is poop you can't flush.

Similarly, I was always amused that Buffy Summers' middle name was Anne, since Anne Summers is a British lingerie and sex shop.

Readers are always going to bring their own interpretation so I don't think the fault lies with the author in most cases. If something is jarring to us, but not to everyone else, it is probably our problem and not an issue with the book.

Regarding the speech in this book seeming out of place, it wasn't something I noticed but since it the characters would not have been speaking English, it doesn't matter to me how modern they sound.

Oooh, that thought leads me to wonder, if you were translating an old, lets say 14th century, text from a foreign language into English would you use modern English or something more matching the times? I'd go modern to make it more accessible.

Ruth (tilltab) Ashworth wrote: "Regarding the speech in this book seeming out of place, it wasn't something I noticed but since it the characters would not have been speaking English, it doesn't matter to me how modern they sound.

Oooh, that thought leads me to wonder, if you were translating an old, lets say 14th century, text from a foreign language into English would you use modern English or something more matching the times? I'd go modern to make it more accessible."

Depends. I would try to avoid specific technical terms.

Brandon Sanderson has his characters use the word “subconscious” all the time, and it constantly throws me out of the story. The implication of that word is that in his Secondary World Epic Fantasies there was an equivalent to Sigmund Freud who popularized such concepts which were widespread enough that even uneducated farmer folk in the hinterlands know the word “subconscious.”

Another one I saw in a sword fight set in a medieval Fantasy world was “microsecond.” That’s a word coined during the exploration of nuclear physics in the early 20th century, *and* it implies advanced technology waaay beyond that of the Middle Ages which didn’t even have accurate clocks.

Those sorts of things break my willing suspension of disbelief.

Trike wrote: "Brandon Sanderson has his characters use the word “subconscious” all the time, and it constantly throws me out of the story. The implication of that word is that in his Secondary World Epic Fantasies there was an equivalent to Sigmund Freud."

Or it is a 'translation' for a similar word or concept that the character understands. Afterall, people experienced the subconscious before Freud put a name to it. It would be tricky, and not really worthwhile in my opinion, to try to describe the experience to modern readers without the word. But I'm just playing devil's advocate. That example wouldn't bother me, but other things might. They can do all the research in the world, but writers can't know everything, and I don't think we can expect them to.

This reminds me of A Knight’s Tale with Heath Ledger. Great fun. Sometimes you just have to lean in..

Ruth (tilltab) Ashworth wrote: "Or it is a 'translation' for a similar word or concept that the character understands. Afterall, people experienced the subconscious before Freud put a name to it. It would be tricky, and not really worthwhile in my opinion, to try to describe the experience to modern readers without the word."

To my mind it’s more than just the word naming a thing, it goes to an entire branch of science that underlies much of our modern world. It’s very much a modern concept, and it forms the basis of all of contemporary psychology and psychiatry. Not just that, but you don’t get to things like efficiency experts, the assembly line, modern schooling and so on without that underpinning of psychology, regardless of what one thinks of it.

So when you take one piece but not the rest, it doesn’t make sense in context. And without modern publishing and mass communication, such concepts can’t penetrate to the common folk, who are illiterate because they have no access to information beyond their small villages.

Trike wrote: "To my mind it’s more than just the word naming a thing..."

We are all going to have our own triggers, and while I have some awareness about where the concept of subconscious comes from, as a word it doesn't trigger me to think of that origin every time I see it.

One word that did trigger me in this book was schooner - a word for a very specifically-rigged type of sailing vessel that didn't show up until 500 years after (and on on the opposite side of the world from where) this book is apparently set. It ripped me from the analog Song dynasty to a different period altogether.

Seth wrote: "One word that did trigger me in this book was schooner - a word for a very specifically-rigged type of sailing vessel that didn't show up until 500 years..."

Yes, that's a great example of what I was talking about! To me and likely a bunch of other people, schooner is just another word for boat or ship or whatever (my nautical knowledge is nil) but for you, it's a trigger, because you know differently. Could the author have used a better word? Sure, but I don't think she can be too harshly criticised for a small gap in her knowledge. It's the same story for a number of words.

Unless the point of the novel is to carefully and accurately recreate a specific time in history, I don't think a fine tooth-comb approach is necessary. Some people are going to find some triggers but as long as the majority of people don't have an issue it's probably fine.

But the book setting pulls from more eras then just the Song dynasty. There's the Song dynasty, the Opium wars (mid 19th century), WWII (20th century). So I don't think having a schooner in the book is all that weird. I mean, if it pulls you out then it pulls you out, but I'm gonna side-eye that one just a little.

Melani wrote: "the Opium wars (mid 19th century),"

There are glimpses of the opium wars but they are quite minor IMHO, with much more parallels to Sino-Japanese conflicts.

Wait what? The whole plot is a weird combination of the Opium Wars and WWII. The setting is mainly Song dynasty, but the plot doesn't work unless you're pulling in England and the Opium Wars.

Melani wrote: "Wait what? The whole plot is a weird combination of the Opium Wars and WWII. The setting is mainly Song dynasty, but the plot doesn't work unless you're pulling in England and the Opium Wars."

Right, I'm on the same page as the gent at the WorldCon podcast and couldn't quite place the story in time - it really hindered my ability to visualize the world of the book. In the podcast he said he asked, and the author answered that it is a Song dynasty time-period, but with political events borrowed from many eras. Even with political details from a later time, and even in an alternate world, a western vessel from the future just struck me as weird.

Melani wrote: "Wait what? The whole plot is a weird combination of the Opium Wars and WWII. The setting is mainly Song dynasty, but the plot doesn't work unless you're pulling in England and the Opium Wars."

I meant
- no mention of open port policy (the reason for opium wars)
- no expedition of British-French expeditionary force (with the summer palace burning)
- no seeding of Amur to Russia equivalent (no HongKong either)
- no Taiping Rebellion between wars... the list can be continued.



- no