2013 Worlds Without End Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge discussion

Kage Baker is mainly known as the author of the series, The Company. You can find the books from the series listed here: http://www.goodreads.com/series/41665...

She has also written a fantasy novel, The Anvil of the World.

I read The Bird of the River for the challenge, which is a perfectly decent book, but turned out to be YA, and I'm not really into YA. Do her other books feel more mature?

(I wish there was a more reliable way of finding out what's actually YA before reading it. There's a certain percentage of readers out there that seem to shelve everything as YA, from clearly adult books to books for 6-year-olds--so I saw some people had shelved Bird as that, but there weren't too many of them and so I didn't pay it much mind.

Actually, I think Bird is supposed to be a "crossover" book--at least, it's probably not marketed as YA, since it's in the adult section of my library--but what exactly that means, I don't know. I mean, I know it's supposed to mean "stuff both teens and adults can enjoy," but there are plenty of adults who seem to enjoy any YA, as well as enormous numbers of adult books that can be enjoyed by teens, so....?

OK, it's late. Maybe I will start a thread about YA tomorrow....)

I really disliked In the Garden of Iden. I gave it two rather than one star, though, because I felt like maybe it was my fault for expecting a pure science fiction book. Maybe, if people were looking for YA romance, they would like this book.

This sounds very much like Emma's experience with The Bird of the River. None of the main genres on the page for In the Garden of Iden indicated that it was a YA book; I feel tricked.

It's a shame--I'm going to have to put Baker on my list of authors to not try again unless someone can give me a solid recommendation for something that's not YA romance.

I really really liked The Anvil of the World and The House of the Stag.
I don't think they're YA-ish, but there's an element of (sometimes rather black) comedy to them.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32...
My review: http://alytha.livejournal.com/26636.html

Hmm...those do look quite a bit less YA romance-y. I may need to check them out. Thanks for the recommendations, Alytha!