Aerin

This is my penance for having marginally agreed with that notorious Slate article.  Not that anyone should feel ashamed for liking YA fiction - or any other genre - but that adults reading primarily YA is a bizarre phenomenon that I can't really wrap my brain around.  Perhaps just because I personally hated being a teenager and don't relish returning to that state of mind in my reading.  And because I'm not into romances, which seem to take up a pretty big chunk of the YA shelf.  (Other things I'm not into: vampires, oddly-specific dystopias, anything that happens in a high school.)

But I got called out - and rightly so - because that article WAS obnoxious and a sorry excuse for clickbait.  And besides, there have been YA books I've liked in the past.  And this one's by LeGuin, who very rarely does me wrong.  Sure, I hated A Wizard of Earthsea, which is her only other book for younger readers that I've read, but... well, maybe this one will be better.  If not, I'll gladly retreat back to my own scorned genre ghetto - science fiction.