THE STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MALE LEAD IN YA DARK FICTION

When I recently read both Jacqueline West’s excellent YA novel Last Things and Frances Hardinge’s dark fantasy Deeplight I sighed with relief as both featured something which is seemingly becoming an endangered species in teen horror and dark fiction… male leading characters. Ginger Nuts of Horror probably reviews more YA dark fiction novels than anywhere else on the internet and when we look back at the books featured the bias towards lead female characters in the last couple of years is startling. This article, in a very general manner, bounces around some observations based upon over 200 books we have featured since 2015.

Is the main character?                                FEMALE                  MALE                       BOTH/MIX
Books reviewed 2015/16                               35                              38                              37
Books reviewed 2017/18/19                        72                              15                              18

 
When Ginger Nuts seriously started covering YA novels back in 2015, many of our early posts included the equivalent of ‘best of’ lists based upon books I read over many previous years, as time progressed this has evolved to predominately feature new fiction. The books reviewed in 2017 and beyond are almost exclusively new titles and are a very good reflection of what is readily available on the market. I work as a School Librarian and actively select/seek out books which are aimed at both boys and girls and have recently been struggling to resource books with leading male characters. Indeed, recently a respected and well-informed American horror blogger contacted me and asked for good suggestions which featured leading YA male protagonists. I struggled to come up with a list and that initial enquiry partly inspired this article.
 
So, where have all the boys gone? There is no single answer, but lots of contributing factors, many of which are connected to YA in general, not singularly horror. Here’s some food for thought, feel free to disagree….
 
Are there any ‘best-selling’ YA horror authors in the UK?
 
Sadly, YA horror is not a huge market and at the moment, perhaps the UK in particular, is struggling for a horror poster boy (or girl) author. Who are the biggest names in the market? The answer is disappointing: there are none. Many of the top dogs of yesteryear have either dimmed in popularity or moved onto other things. Some examples; Darren Shan, who has sold millions of books, now writes adult titles as Darren Dash, William Hussey hasn’t written a YA novel since 2015, Cliff McNish hasn’t written a YA horror novel since 2011 and Jon Mayhew hasn’t written a horror novel since 2011. Others dark fiction writers I enjoy include who seem to have disappeared include Tom Becker, Charlie Higson, Sam Enthoven, Andrew Hammond, Dean Vincent Carter, Rick Yancey and FE Higgins. Note, however, I still heartily recommend all these authors.
 
Other authors have obviously found it more profitable to move onto other areas of fiction. To drive home this point I recently bumped into Sarah Naughton who was once nominated for the Children’s Costa Book Award for a horror novel but hasn’t written a YA book since The Blood List in 2014. Why is that?  Sarah also writes as Sarah J Naughton and since 2017 has written four successful adult mainstream thrillers. We all have to pay the bills and if you write YA horror don’t give up the day job.
 
However, a few do continue to proudly fly the horror flag. Marcus Sedgwick expertly flits between genres and still writes horror, Jonathan Stroud entertained with his Lockwood and Co series and Chris Priestley is always reliable for slightly younger readers and once in a while Neil Gaiman writes a novel, such as The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which YA audiences can tap into. All three also feature male characters.
 
Is Red Eye the only truly genuine YA horror brand in the UK?
 
We think so. Those of us who are old enough feel nostalgic when articles appear about Point Horror and Goosebumps, these books were equally popular with both male and female readers and the main protagonists were also split between the sexes. Their golden age was the 1990s, but they have seen smaller revivals here and there. These books were written to follow a certain formula and the marketing appealed equally to both sexes.  Interestingly, in 2019 there is only one genuine equivalent to Point Horror and that is the popular series Red Eye which is the first point of reference for school librarians recommending horror to their kids. It is worth noting that their covers are very gender neutral and from the blurbs it is often difficult to tell whether the main characters are male or female and often contain both.
 
This ‘brand’ has a wide range of authors writing for it, in the same way Point Horror did and when a kid asks me; “are there any new Red Eye book?” I’m always delighted! Funnily enough the most successful of the ten titles published thus far is Frozen Charlotte which you could argue is the most ‘girl-friendly’ and was picked up in a major marketing WH Smith campaign by Youtube personality Zoella. At the moment they seen to be releasing two books a year and have a wide range of talented authors writing for them. They should consider upping their publishing output.
 
It is worth noting that Badger Learning, who specialise in special needs such as Dyslexia, also regularly publish excellent horror aimed at older kids with lower reading ages. These are usually series which have around six books and include Tales of Horror, Horror Hotel, Paper Cuts and Dark Reads, many have the content for fourteen-year-old teens, but the reading age of much younger kids. Many of the stories also feature boys and are excellent for diversity.   
 
Few boys were interested in the bestselling subgenre Paranormal Romance
 
When Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight arrived in 2005 it kicked-off the sub-genre of paranormal romance, which was to dominate the horror teen charts for the next decade. Few boys bothered with Twilight and the YA publishing world quickly realised there was a massive industry here and the shelves heaved with everything from PC Cast’s never-ending House of Night series to Rachel Caine’s Morganville Vampires.  Before long paranormal romance expanded beyond vampires into angels (fallen or otherwise), werewolves, banshees and fairies. Once again, few boys ever read the works of the most popular authors which included Lauren Kate, Melissa Marr and Becca Fitzpatrick and the ‘non-romantic’ side of horror was underrepresented during the long reign of popularity these books had and has struggled to recover in the years since.
 
Does the publishing industry prefer girl empowering narratives?
 
If it nets them more sales then definitely. There is also plenty of statistical evidence to show girls spend more of their disposable income on books than boys. Twenty years ago, it was normal to presume books with blue covers were for boys and those which were pink were for girls. This is no longer the case, and quite right too, but you cannot get away from the fact that the likes of Paranormal Romance were predominately aimed at a female audience.  Since then, the literary and publishing industry has continued to favour girl empowerment narratives.  In the endless cycle of publishing perhaps more fiction aimed at girls has ultimately created more writers writing fiction aimed at girls. Budding authors will find it easier to sell their manuscripts if they have strong female narratives as they are more likely to get publishers biting.
 
Are boys more likely to jump to the ‘real stuff’ and skip YA horror altogether?
 
Has the publishing market pinpointed the fact that boys are more likely to read fiction that isn't categorised as YA or are more likely to skip straight to the ‘real’ stuff, particularly in horror? Possibly, but girls are just as likely to be mature readers. Recently there has been some discussion in the media that YA is too concerned with 'teen interests' and this is less likely to appeal to male adolescent readers, everything from refugees to people trafficking.  I frequently chat with plenty of young teenagers (boys and girls) skipping straight onto the likes of Stephen King who find the idea of reading ‘watered down’ YA horror a waste of time when they can tap into the real thing and who can blame when? The advertisement campaign of the film IT Part 2 is bound to suck a proportion of the film watchers to the original King masterpiece.
 
Also, the reality is many school librarians will not lend kids 11 and 12 years old (Years 7-8 in England) the likes of Stephen King for fear that parents may complain. This is the reality of the nanny-state we now live in. Whether you read IT or The Fog is as a 12-year-old twenty years ago is not the point most librarians would not give it to a kid in 2019 and so we really do need a wider selection of YA horror to attract these younger readers, both boys and girls.
 
Boys seriously dug Katniss Everdeen
 
Whilst lots of kids were sucked into both the Twilight books and films a new heroine was soon to appear on the horizon, Katniss Everdeen. The Hunger Games trilogy was equally popular with boys as it was with girls and heralded in a new wave of dystopian YA fiction, much of which tackled contemporary political, social and gender issues in dark, almost horror, settings. The Hunger Games may have been the leader of the pack, but there were other terrific examples which included male protagonists, such as The Maze Runner.
 
So, if paranormal romance was attempting to tap into the teenage girl audience, the dystopian fad was equally popular with boys. It has also been said that politically motivated series, which featured powerful messages about race and equality, such as Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses series has contributed to the politically motivated age-group which are now in their twenties but read these books as teenagers. The popularity of dystopian fiction may have peaked, but the likes of Teri Terri, Neal Shusterman and Virginia Bergin remain very popular with both boys and girls. Check out Shusterman’s outstanding Arc of the Scythe dystopian series with a superb split boy/girl narrative.

This more realistic horror pushed the horror of demons and monsters into the background and in a sense horror, in a wider sense, got more serious taking in politics and the environment.
 
The internet has dimmed the power of horror non-fiction
 
Halloween sees the rerelease of the 1977 cult classic World of the Unknown: Ghosts a non-fiction pictorial book published by Usborne which I vividly remember reading as a kid. In the pre-internet days kids lapped these types of books, could it be for pre-teenagers or those slightly older these types of books are now just seen as a little bit old hat when there is much freakier stuff available on Youtube?
 
As a teen I recall being amazed seeing pictures of poltergeists or spontaneous human combustion in books like this, but again these days the internet has replaced these images for sheer shock value. It is often said that boys read more non-fiction than girls, but when it comes to horror both boys and girls borrowing books on vampires, werewolves or aliens is a fraction of what it once was. It will be interesting to see whether there will be any interest in Ghosts, I have a feeling the children of today will view it as a time-capsule from another era, which it undoubtedly is.
 
Do girls really read more widely than boys?
 
There has long since been an assumption that girls read more widely than boys and there is statistical evidence to back it up. There is a certain amount of truth in this: as a rule boys did not read or borrow from my library paranormal romance and moving away from horror boys simply do not read books with a pink cover or, for example, the mainstream novels of the likes of Jacqueline Wilson or Cathy Cassidy (this type of fiction was once called ‘pink lit’). However, girls are not put off by gory covers and happily borrow adventure thrillers by the likes of Anthony Horowitz or Robert Muchamore, which you think might be more aimed at boys. Ultimately girls do seem to be more open to experimentation when it comes to books and are more likely to participate in reading challenges which might include books which seem to be geared towards a particular sex.
 
One of my top recommendations of the last couple of years is Amy Lukavics who has written four outstanding YA novels on the bounce, the first two of which were picked up by UK publishers and even though girls are the main characters in all the books, the covers are fairly neutral. Have I managed to get many boys to read these books? Not a chance and that’s a real shame.  
 
I was recently at a school librarian meeting about a book award and we discussed Justina Ireland’s stunning American Civil War novel Dread Nation and a couple of the librarians present who work in boys’ schools were very disappointed to see a girl predominately displayed on the cover. The main character is a teenage girl, but anyone would love it, but the reality is most boys will not see beyond the cover. The publisher should have known better, the book is about zombies, and there was scope to do something much more imaginative with the cover.
 
The new wave of female horror authors is setting the bar very high
 
The current wave of successful female horror writers and some of the very best YA dark fiction titles have been written by women an although they occasionally write with a male voice, most stick to their own gender. Are many of these books aimed at the female audience? Yes and no. I just mentioned one of my all-time favourites, Amy Lukavics; her leading characters are always girls and gender usually plays a key role in her stories. I interviewed Amy a while ago and danced around this subject:
 
“GNoH: There are a distinct lack of men/boys/boyfriends in all three of your novels, why do you write such female driven fiction? This is not a criticism! Only an observation…
Amy: It's not necessarily something I've done on purpose, but at the same time I've always written the books that I would want to read myself. And it just so happens that most of my favourite stories, horror or not, are centred around women. I especially love a good female villain!”

I could talk forever about the range of superb female writers, many of whom are American. The deep pool of talent include: Courtney Alameda, Rin Chupeco, Kami Garcia, Danielle Vega, Maggie Stiefvater, Holly Black, Adriana Mather, Lauren Myracle, Cat Winters, Madeleine Roux, Jeyn Roberts, Kimberley Derting, Dawn Kurtagich, Victoria Dalpe, Amanda Hocking and many more.
 
Interestingly there are also many more men writing with female voices, but very few women writing with a male perspective, Theresa Braun’s excellent Fountain Dead is one of the few I have come across recently. Male writing as female characters as common as mud, from Scott Sigler’s Alive Trilogy to Matt Whyman’s cannibal romp The Savages and Dave Jeffrey’s splendid Beatrice Beecham series. 
 
On the other hand, I have noticed that more experienced authors, tend to have both boys and girls as voices, especially in series, Jonanthan Maberry being a good example. This obviously spreads the net wider and is more likely to be what the publisher is after.
 
Do boys spend more time playing computer games than girls?
 
Do boys spend more time playing computer games than girls? Almost certainly. Are computer games more addictive than in previous decades? Younger versions of myself would say no. The ten-year-old version of me found Pacman very addictive and the twenty-year-old version of myself found Resident Evil equally intensive. Potential male teen readers have always been lost to the home computer since the days of the Atari 2600 and then the Spectrum 48.
 
Of course, there are female computer gamers and girls who play off-shoots like Dungeons and Dragons, but this is primarily a male market and is geared at teenage boys. Perhaps publishers have clicked that girls are their primary YA fiction consumer as they have realised male readers have moved onto other things including comics and graphic novels or interconnected fiction like Warhammer. Having said that, my library deleted a significant collection of Warhammer novels a few years ago as nobody borrowed them at all. Ultimately their niche has moved away from the traditional book and at a certain age the videogame dominates and the YA book market, not just horror, has shrunk accordingly.
 
The lack of American YA horror being picked up by UK publishers is worrying
 
At the moment very few American YA horror novels are being picked up by UK publishers and being distributed with a British ISBN. This means they are unlikely to be available in UK bookshops and are not available through most traditional book suppliers which public and school libraries might use. A significant number of the new books we review on Ginger Nuts are not readily available in the UK unless you use Amazon, an option which will be unavailable to many schools and public libraries. It is a shame to see YA horror so under-represented in our last remaining bookshops, Waterstones and WH Smith, which concentrate on the tony selection of mainstream titles and the bigger selling 9-12 age group.
 
The disappearance on the garish/trashy horror YA novel
 
The massive success of Darren Shan in the early noughties led to a whole host of trashy, but very fun, horror cycles, which might not have been as big as Shan, but were still popular and often featured boys as leading characters. I hail David Gatward for his Dead Trilogy and the standalone Doom Rider, who is yet another author to abandon YA horror. I also lament the disappearance of the wonderful EE Richardson who set the horror world alight between 2005-07 with three wonderful horror novels, all of which had male lead characters; The Devil’s Footsteps, The Summoning, and The Intruders, although she has written other novels none of them touch these first three offerings. Around that period, it was fairly normal to see trashy kid versions of Guy N Smith novels filling the shelves, but this is no longer the case and they seem to have been a major casualty in the cutbacks in publishing.
 
It would nice to see a return of old-fashioned gore, guts and the gates of hell being ripped open for a new generation of young teens. If you’re nostalgic for this kind of stuff here’s a few suggestions from recent yesteryear: Stephen Cole’s The Wereling Trilogy, Steve Feasey’s The Changeling Series, Seb Rook’s Vampire Plague Series, Nick Gifford’s Flesh and Blood, Justin Somper’s Vampirates Series, and Simon Holt’s The Devouring Trilogy.
 
Conclusions
 
It would be terrific to see more boys represented in new and upcoming YA horror releases. However, our next Ginger Nuts YA round-up features more of the same, of the ten books reviewed nine include girls as the main character and one book has both male and female. Dark fiction titles aimed at the 9-12 age group, as they are often bracketed in the bookshops, usually have a more equal spread of boys and girls and it is disappointing that the teenage boy is sorely unrepresented in the older section. Boys get identification from ‘boy stuff’ and heroes fighting monsters which they can relate to and for many boy’s novels starring thoughtful teenage girls are just not what they want to read. The borrowing trends in my school certainly back this up.
 
Which YA horror novel am I reading at the moment? Only Ashes Remain by Rebecca Schaeffer, starring, you guessed it, another feisty teenage girl.
 
If you’re a reader of YA do let us know if there are any books featuring male characters we might have overlooked published in the last couple of years. 
 
Tony Jones