I give the side eye to much of the tone of these book descriptions. (For example: I am struck in bookshops by racks, newly erected in the last decade, offering "teen fiction". If walk-in, walk-through bookshops survive (not a certainty), I shall expect soon to see racks spring up labelled "old guys' novels". I believe the proper response to this is "fuck you".) HOWEVER, the listicle did inform me of a novel I am currently dying to get my hands on: a romance penned by a 10 year old in 1919 called The Young Visitors. 

 

I can think of a couple other novels written by the very young. There's Eragon, of course, which was started by Paolini when he was 15, and it shows. My quip about this book: not so much standing on the shoulders of giants as having a piggy back ride. There's also Strange Evil by Jane Gaskell, written when she was 14. Strange Evil was included in a list by China Mieville of the 50 sci fi and fantasy books every socialist should read. I've read about half of Gaskell's book, and it's utterly charming and wholly bizarre.

 

Can you guys come up with others? I think I'm looking for books written by people well under the age of 20, not just teens in general. Frankenstein was written by the 19 year old Mary Shelley, for example, but I think I'd strike her from the list, as she was already married, plus the Victorians had a very different sense of the age of majority. Novelists generally don't get points for youthful precociousness -- not like musicians or poets, anyway, like Mozart or Keats -- but it's still cute when it happens. 

Take Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan, H. Rider Haggard's Lost Civilizations and John Norman's Gor and as your heroine princess raised to believe she's divine and men are extinct and you have the world of the Atlan Saga. Atlan, the second in the trilogy (or third, given Serpent is sometimes split into two works), continues the perils of Princess Cija, who falls into the clutches of Sedili, the first wife of her lover Zerd, a man-serpent general. Cija does grow on you, which given these are supposed to be her diaries is important, and this is my favorite of the books narrated by her. (Her much smarter daughter Seka takes over in Some Summer Lands.) Sometimes I'm embarrassed to admit I've read these, let alone these are favorites that have been on my bookshelves since my teens, but there you are. Addictive like crack. Or just crack pot.

Take Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan, H. Rider Haggard's Lost Civilizations and John Norman's Gor and as your heroine princess raised to believe she's divine and men are extinct and you have the world of the Atlan Saga. The City continues the perils of Princess Cija, who falls into the clutches of Sedili, the first wife of her lover Zerd, a man-serpent general. Cija does grow on you, which given these are supposed to be her diaries is important. So, this is the description of the book on Goodreads: Endless Peril...Anguished Fate! Rescued by a bold sailor, held in the confines of a lascivious brothel, Cija faces yet another life-and-death ordeal. She escapes but her respite is short-lived. Treachery and betrayal sweep her into the temple of her hated father, beyond a terrifying, sensual interlude in the Arena of Apes. With the seed of her ape-man lover growing within her she is carried to her ultimate destiny inside the monstrous walls of Atlan... Yes, really. Sometimes I'm embarrassed to admit I've read these, let alone these are favorites that have been on my bookshelves since my teens, but there you are. Addictive like crack. Or just crack pot.

Some Summer Lands is my favorite work in the Atlan Saga. Take Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan, H. Rider Haggard's Lost Civilizations and John Norman's Gor in a land "before the continents were formed" and dinosaurs and human coexist and you have Atlan. The heroine of the first three books (or four, since sometimes The Serpent is split into two) is Cija. Raised as a princess in a tower to believe she's a goddess and males are extinct, through the books she has more perils than Pauline, going from Empress to brothel slave. Cija does grow on you, important that the first books up to now purported to be her diaries so you were getting everything from her perspective. Some Summer Lands is told by Seka, her daughter by the snake-man general Zerd--and far smarter and snarkier than her mother even at her tender age. Sometimes I'm embarrassed to admit I've read these, let alone these are favorites that have been on my bookshelves since my teens, but there you are. Addictive like crack. Or just crack pot. This end to the sage makes me feel less embarrassed ;-)

This is the first book in the Atlan Saga. If your book seems to end abruptly there's a reason for that not the fault of the author. First published in 1963, in later editions it was split in half with the second half published as The Dragon. I first read this--and loved this--in my teens. I'm rather afraid to reread them and find my memory of them doesn't hold. I do remember them as even then striking me as beyond weird yet irresistible. Just from what I remember, let alone what I've been reminded of by reviews makes me rather embarrassed to have loved them. They are utterly bizarre. This is framed as a diary of a princess who lived on an Earth before there was a moon, in a land of ape men and dinosaur men. One of those scaled men, Zerd, is the "serpent" of the title. Our diarist, Cija, is the clumsiest heroine you'd ever want to meet--a precursor of Bella in that way except she does overachieve on ego. She's a princess raised in a tower and told she was hatched from an egg and men are extinct--until she's told she'll have to seduce Zerd and assassinate him. Okay! The thing is the writing and the world Gaskell creates is so lush it's addictive.