Very interested in this. The dark times, especially the period immediately after Order 66 is my favorite, so let's hope for a quality story.
From what I have seen so far Young Adult novels usually have larger fonts than adult novels and tend to be easier to read.
I think basically, the difference is publisher. Del Rey published Tarkin and co, while this is being published by Disney Lucasfilm Press. They're behind Lost Stars, Before the Awakening, and the three JTTFA Big 3 books. I think they're aimed at a teen market, but can still be enjoyed by adults. Look at Lost Stars. It was loved by the forum, and now the author is technically writing an adult novel with Bloodline. Maybe Disney Lucasfilm Press is a testing ground for new authors.
I guess that could be perceived in any number of ways. The Harry Potter series certainly falls into that category. If I'm not mistaken, those were just as popular among younger people as they have been with adults.
Here is some info about the author and some of the previous books she has written. http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7418796.E_K_Johnston
I think Young Adult novels are distinct from regular novels in a number of ways. First, the book is usually a little shorter. Now, it won't look shorter, because the page length will be larger, but the spacing and font will be larger. Second, the content isn't handled as maturely. Lost Stars actually goes into more adult themes than many of the regular Star Wars novels, but these themes aren't handled with a whole lot of subtlety or depth. This isn't a slight against the book, it's just how I see it; the concepts and themes are shown at the forefront and the characters actively think about them and debate their stances (things like that). Finally, the prose and vocabulary in the books isn't as complicated. This is the line that gets a little blurry with Star Wars, because the adult novels are pulpy and not always written with the eloquence that James Luceno brings to his ones. That said, I think the adult novels still tend to use some lower-percentile words and longer sentences.
By the sounds of it this may end up having a similar structure to Lost stars. I can sort of seeing it starting off near the end of TCW going through the early days of Ahsoka's exile into the days when she was fulcrum and how she came into contact with the ghost crew then finally ending with an epilogue that states she's still alive on Malachor. It's going to be nice to see Ahsoka being given story treatment by somebody OTHER than Filoni
Please note that the adult/YA/MG distinction is a publishing one based on audience, age of the subject characters, and format. It says nothing about quality. The new canon's one YA book (Lost Stars) as the bevy of middle-grade (SotE, BTA, JtTFA character books, etc) have been consistently great. Missa ab iPhona mea est.
I'm totally on board with this. Give me more Ahsoka! Give me more Organas! Give me another brilliantly penned YA novel!
What Jello said, pretty much. A book is YA if it is marketed to teenagers. That's the only requirement. They usually have teen protagonists. What that means is that you have a book about teenagers, often acting like teenagers and thinking like teenagers. Which is where the perceived lack of subtlety comes from, I think. Teenagers aren't known for being subtle creatures. YA authors will write with teen readers in mind: what connects with them? What do they want to read about? What are they interested in? But that's really all you can say about YA as a group. Word count is far more sensitive to genre than to audience age. I would guess that YA books tend to be slightly shorter on the whole, because that's what agents think they can sell, but when I mean slightly, I mean, like, 5k words on average. That's 1-3 chapters depending on how the writer likes to chop things up. As for content maturity and prose, that really is independent of audience age. Someone who writes YA will write the same if they write a book aimed at folks 18+. Quality of prose, depth of thought... those are entirely dependent on the author. If someone thinks Lost Stars doesn't handle its subject matter with depth and subtlety, they're probably not going to find Bloodlines that much different. I mean, it'll be a little different--Leia's going to have a much different inner life and thought process than Thane and Ciena--but I'll eat my hat if Claudia Gray wrote Lost Stars and actively made it less subtle for a teen audience.
Dave revealed how Ahsoka and Maul recognised each other. Maybe we'll get her recounting this in the novel? Who knows. http://makingstarwars.net/2016/03/d...on-the-final-arc-of-star-wars-the-clone-wars/
I hope this Ahsoka novel is a sign that we're moving out of the dogmatic narrow Disney era of OT and ST books only
Don't promise to eat your hat, Aphra. I did that once and had to follow through. And I have really big hats. Missa ab iPhona mea est.
If its after ROTS....it's really not. LFL has really been pushing the stories set between ROTS and ANH in the last few years....probably because it allows characters from the PT to pop up in an environment people are more friendly to with the expansion of the empire....but then chracters from OT can pop up too. It's really the era that ties everything together, and it has the most story potential until the next two films in the ST allow the gap between ROTJ and TFA to be truly fleshed out. I think we'll eventually see some more PT friendly stories pop up eventually, especially once we have a more solid Saga at the story groups disposal once more.
YA novels have teen protagonists and that is pretty much their only real designation. They are told from a teenager's POV and not in flashbacks. Since this novel is Ahsoka beginning at age 16 or 17, it would be considered YA just based on that. The target audience has to do with the assumption that teenagers want to read books with teen protagonists. Despite not being a big fan of the character since season 2 of TCW, I am interested in knowing what happened to her and how she got involved in the rebellion. I'll be picking this one up.
Yep, this is now officially the book I am the most excited for. I cant wait until October for this!! It's crazy how much I used to hate Ahsoka, especially after seeing The Clone Wars movie for the first time. Now she is by far one of my favorite Star Wars characters.
I somehow can’t get myself to care, even with the great Rebels Season 2 Finale, she was the one part that still felt just pointlessly forced into it. Hell they even used Spoiler Maul incredible well but she was just not needed for the show.
Ahsoka doesn't interest me at all, will probably skip this. That being said, E.K. Johnston's upcoming book "That Inevitable Victorian Thing" looks like it could be worth me keeping my eyes out for.
