The latest trend in YA fiction -- Urban dystopian steampunk?

[Prefx]

You might be interested in this then,

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421177/

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Thanks for the link, Prefx. It does sound like it would make a marvelous movie.

 

[Mary Hoffman]

I was very surprised to find Stravaganza mentioned under this heading. Urban dystopian steampunk? The books are all called City of ... Something but the cities are in an alternative Italy in the sixteenth century. The sections in the 21st century are just in modern-day Islington, North London, which is no more dystopian than any other part of any other great city de nos jours.

Books like Tunnels, Skulduggery Pleasant, City of Bones, even Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines Quartet, are however another matter.

Mary

 

[Nesacat]

Urban dystopian steampunk ... I've known what that meant but never particularly applied it to the book I'd been reading until this thread. I do know that this particular type of book appeals to me a great deal and I've always liked young adult fiction.

Most of the young adult books I've been reading recently do seem to fit into this category, the latest being China Mieville's Un Lun Dun.

There's also Neil Gaiman's Mirrormask. I know that's technically not a book since it started out as a movie. But it has since been turned into a graphic novel.

I think Jeanette Winterson's Tanglewreck would fit in this category as well along with John Connolly's Book Of Lost Things and Celia Rees' Pirates. There's also Chris Wooding's Poison and Storm Thief.

And there are the ones already mentioned here. Perhaps there are more of them being written now.

But then almost all of us posting here are adults and maybe these books appeal to us and we've been picking them up.

 

[Mary Hoffman]

Now I'm even more confused ! How can Pirates be Dystopian Urban Steampunk? Not set in a city, not dystopian and God knows what Steampunk actually means.

I think Celia would be very surprised.

Mary

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I agree with Mary about Pirates. But Poison and Storm Thief definitely fit the trend, as I see it.

As for Stravaganza, I had only read the first book when I started this thread. The city struck me as dystopian, and there were elements that fell within my own (rather broad) definition of Steampunk, which can embrace the Baroque as well as the Victorian.

But the Steampunk border is fluid. My own Goblin Moon seems to float from one side of that border to the other, depending on who is defining the term, and it seems to me that Stravaganza occupies that same amorphous territory.

If others disagree, that's good, because that starts a discussion, and we get to talk about Mary's books.

 

[Mary Hoffman]

Thank you, Teresa, I think. I shall look out for your books.

My aim in the Stravaganza series was to make each city a character in its own novel.

I still don't know what Steampunk is though. Can anyone offer me a definition?

Mary

 

[Nesacat]

Have been asking Google and here is what Wikipedia has to say about Steampunk.

And yes ... Pirates does not fit at all in this category. I'm sorry.

But now Philip Pullman's Dark Materials sound like they belong in here along with Lemony Snickett's Unfortunate Events.

 

[Mary Hoffman]

Ah, thank you! Thanks much clearer. Steam as in Age of Steam. I was going in quite another direction. And they do cite Philip Pullman alongside China Mieville so that makes sense too.I'm glad to discover I wasn't writing in a genre I didn't even know!

Mary