In all seriousness, this is what happens when you write novels without doing any world-building and just put down whatever seems “fun”. The are sooooo many things in that series that make no sense once they are superceded by later plot devices. Rowling didn’t think any of it through ahead of time and gave almost no thought to internal consistency with previous content when she wrote new things.
It’s honestly a terrible series in most regards and it’s kind of disappointing how popular it became.
Also she a trans-hating bigot. Fuck J.K. Rowling. Can’t forget that part whenever discussing her or her work.
The issue I have with this line of reasoning is that there are equally whimsical, better written series that just didn’t have good fortune to pop off the way HP did.
It’s marketing. And cover art. And simple timing of fads. It sucks. And it funded a horrible person through pure happenstance
If we’re talking ‘young adult’ (which I think is a silly book classification group), the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede always gets my top pick—shorter, sassy, fun, with well-written female protagonists. (All her books are pretty good, really.)
Another of my top choices in the Fantasy YA category are the Tiffany Aching books by Sir Terry Pratchett. Great fun and Sir Terry’s wonderful brand of biting wisdom.
If you like the ‘kids go to boarding school, have magical adventures, save the world’ formula, Mercedes Lackey did a pretty good series called the Shadow Grail. Although the kids are older (and more sensible) than the Harry Potter protagonists.
The Castle Books by John DeChancie are another fun romp of a series. Younger me loved the idea of a castle filled with 144,000 portals to adventure. Although the technology in it is a bit dated—at this point in time, rather humorously so.
Gail Carriger’s book series are all a good read; my favorite she’s done so far is the Finishing Series. Not as much magic as other books on this list, but still a well-thought-out system. Her books are really more steampunk-fantasy with a sprinkling of magic on top.
China Mievelle doesn’t really write series, per se, but all his books are fun and well-written, with interesting twists and ideas. I’d say they are the very definition of whimsical.
If your requirements are ‘good books by authors as awful as JK Rowling’, well, that’s tougher, but fortunately David and Leigh Eddings decided to throw their hats in the ring! Horrible child abusers, but their writings are genuinely good, way better than what Rowling writes.
There are some great recommendations in other replies already!
IMO the best YA content right now is actually coming out of Japan (where they’re called Light Novels)
Some series worth checking out:
Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World from Zero
Spice & Wolf
Ascendance of a Bookworm
World End - What Will You Do at the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us?
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?
Don’t let the titles fool you (especially that last one). A silly title will often lead to a deep and complex story only loosely related to the title.
The first three I named are some of my absolute favorites.
And this is just the fantasy stuff. If you’re looking for sci-fi or rom-com, or something a bit heavier/darker, there are plenty more recommendations I can provide :)
Not books, but the Misfits and Magic TTRPG show from Dimension 20 is everything that HP isn’t. It’s fun and whimsical and the characters are lovable and the writing is great and the world building is astounding and it never misses a chance to take the piss at the many problematic aspects of HP it’s satirically lampooning. I think the first episode is free on YouTube.
IMO there isn’t a whole lot in the kids/young adult space but The Magicians by Lev Grossman is good (and one of the few cases where the TV show is better than the book)
Don’t need to meet a person to know they’re a horrible person. I know Orban is a horrible person. I know Chris Brown is a horrible person. I know Trump is a horrible person. And I know that anyone who defends them is a horrible person, for ignoring their horrible views and actions.
It seems best to disregard them entirely, since from a quick skim of their profile it looks like they really enjoy this kind of “I’m so aloof that means I’m clever” trolling.
What happens when your kids want to buy merchandise from a store? When they get older and decide to spend their own money on DVDs? What about the racism and misogyny these books teach to children?
If the worst you have to worry about your kids’ interests is whether they spend their allowance on things that somehow benefit an asshole person you are really very lucky.
Personally, I only prevent the one single worst thing that I can think of happening to my kids. As long as they don’t become Hitler, I’m happy. My son murdered and raped a family of 4 last week and is in prison, but I don’t think I need to worry about that because he’s not Hitler.
When they are old enough to make their own decisions they can. I’m able to seperate the art from the artist, without introducing them to hateful commentary that they aren’t able to properly process yet.
Not showing them Harry Potter does not mean they won’t be exposed to the media or the merchandise through friends and shops.
Hitler, again, was an even more awful person. That doesn’t make the autobahns that his government started a bad idea. However, we as a world society decided that the data from the nazi experimentation on twins, on people with disabilities and others would be destroyed.
Hitler was an artist, but not a great one from my understanding. It’s trivia, rather than who he was. He was a monster that killed millions. It’s very different.
JK is an author. It’s what she’s known for. Her work has not changed based on her views which were not known then. In fact, I think some fans were upset when she retconned some characters to be more woke, prior to becoming transphobia personified.
Her work may not have “changed”, but many elements in retrospect have obvious bigoted undertones, whether she intended them or not. We simply weren’t looking for them as children, and didn’t notice or understand.
Neil Gaiman is an alleged rapist. Does that mean the sexual scenes in his books are not valid?
Horrible people is part of the human condition. Erasing them means we don’t learn from it.
We can now better recognise the problematic parts of her work to gently help kids to appreciate it. Kids won’t get the metaphors with slavery, racism, sexism that all exist with the potterverse. However, showing them these problems even in a fantastical world can help them better understand them in the real world.
Her work doesn’t become pointless just by virtue of her being horrible. For some artists, that can even be the point. Look at Joss Whedon, who was lauded for writing powerful female characters. It’s now clear he was abusive to the young women in his vicinity. Does that make Buffy less of a heroine or more?
Why not skip the books then? The movies were made by hundreds of awesome people while the books were written by just her. The movies cut out a lot of the controversial stuff too.
Because reading the books is a good educational experience for kids. I don’t allow them watch the movies until the books are read. Movies can miss nuance and have less information and world building. There is racism and bigotry and horrible things happening in life. I explain it to my kids at appropriate times.
When I first discussed the holocaust(very broadly), for example, they didn’t understand why someone would hate others for religion only, as religion is not important to us. Nor was it a good reason to not like someone from their understanding. They understand simpler concepts like absolute good and absolute evil. Goodies and baddies. More complex topics like themes in Harry Potter books being problematic is beyond their understanding completely.
Other books with good themes but problematic authors or themes include Enders Game, starship troopers, religious texts. Authors include Neil Gaiman, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Dr Seuss, Enid blyton, Shakespeare, Stephanie Meyer, etc etc
That doesn’t make the books useless. Rhoal Dahl has problematic parts. Rhoal Dahl was also racist. That doesn’t mean we skip Charlie and the chocolate factory.
Yeah, I enjoyed the movies I saw as a kid, but it’s so painfully mediocre watching it now. And that is before factoring in the garbage human who wrote the books.
All true, though i still found it fun to read when the books came out. At that age my critical thinking skills were not as developed yet, and since that age group is the intended target audience the popularity is not that surprising.
Yeah. There’s a fan-fic I read recently (also the only HP fan fic I’ve read) called “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality,” which is set in an alternate universe in which Harry is raised by perfectly pleasant folks with an understanding of the scientific method, and arrives in the wizarding world and immediately starts deconstructing all the bizarre nonsense going on there. It’s very well done, but it’s really hard to recommend precisely because it does refer back to a ton of the stuff that’s developed in the books, so I had to keep looking up stuff I didn’t recall, and I don’t really want to devote brain space to that stuff. (Some of the “rationality” stuff has aged a little bit poorly through the replication crisis, too, though I’m a bit more forgiving of that since it talks so much about updating your beliefs.)
But for anyone who did read the books back when and was frustrated at times by the characters behaving so irrationally, it’s kinda cathartic in that way. For those who are interested: https://github.com/rrthomas/hpmor
Oh, I didn’t know about that, but it isn’t hugely surprising.
I guess I should have mentioned this, but there’s a lot of stuff in the book that kinda seems like coded libertarian stuff, and it even flirts with pro-authoritarian stuff. It’s not a book I would recommend to kids or deeply uncritical people. That’s part of why this thread seemed like a safer place to mention it.
There was short story about Harry Potter in a Disney Adventures magazine one month and I think that was supposed to be all there was as far as the story. The popularity of it may have had JKR rushing to build a more in depth story and throwing anything in it that seemed whimsical and fun to a kid, regardless if it made sense.
My theory, the first three/four books were written well enough, but the movies carried the rest of the series. She came really close to game of thronesing it too, but apparently average fans didnt mind the dieing baby voldemort in an all white train station ending.
Books 5-7 were awful in my opinion. I hated Harry through the entire last book, which I can’t imagine is intentional.
Book four was great. It was downhill from there as she couldn’t maintain the level. She also couldn’t keep it consistent. However, people were co paring it to literature. It’s kids books.
This is what I tend to say to people about Harry Potter as a series. It was the first series like it to become popular, and that’s its only merit. Overall it’s very tame and bland, but it got lucky and became popular. I didn’t like it because it was too same-y. After book 3 or so, I don’t care about Harry Potter anymore. Explore someone else that’s more ordinary. It makes a much better setting for derivative works, which to me as someone who writes textbooks of lore for RPGs is more important than just making a series sell well.
In all seriousness, this is what happens when you write novels without doing any world-building and just put down whatever seems “fun”. The are sooooo many things in that series that make no sense once they are superceded by later plot devices. Rowling didn’t think any of it through ahead of time and gave almost no thought to internal consistency with previous content when she wrote new things.
It’s honestly a terrible series in most regards and it’s kind of disappointing how popular it became.
Also she a trans-hating bigot. Fuck J.K. Rowling. Can’t forget that part whenever discussing her or her work.
Rule of cool supersedes making sense. Yeah there’s a ton of nonsense, but you called it yourself, it’s fun. That’s all that matters.
The issue I have with this line of reasoning is that there are equally whimsical, better written series that just didn’t have good fortune to pop off the way HP did.
It’s marketing. And cover art. And simple timing of fads. It sucks. And it funded a horrible person through pure happenstance
Which ones can you recommend? I mean, my reading list is already too long but…
If we’re talking ‘young adult’ (which I think is a silly book classification group), the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede always gets my top pick—shorter, sassy, fun, with well-written female protagonists. (All her books are pretty good, really.)
Another of my top choices in the Fantasy YA category are the Tiffany Aching books by Sir Terry Pratchett. Great fun and Sir Terry’s wonderful brand of biting wisdom.
If you like the ‘kids go to boarding school, have magical adventures, save the world’ formula, Mercedes Lackey did a pretty good series called the Shadow Grail. Although the kids are older (and more sensible) than the Harry Potter protagonists.
The Castle Books by John DeChancie are another fun romp of a series. Younger me loved the idea of a castle filled with 144,000 portals to adventure. Although the technology in it is a bit dated—at this point in time, rather humorously so.
Gail Carriger’s book series are all a good read; my favorite she’s done so far is the Finishing Series. Not as much magic as other books on this list, but still a well-thought-out system. Her books are really more steampunk-fantasy with a sprinkling of magic on top.
China Mievelle doesn’t really write series, per se, but all his books are fun and well-written, with interesting twists and ideas. I’d say they are the very definition of whimsical.
If your requirements are ‘good books by authors as awful as JK Rowling’, well, that’s tougher, but fortunately David and Leigh Eddings decided to throw their hats in the ring! Horrible child abusers, but their writings are genuinely good, way better than what Rowling writes.
Discworld
There are some great recommendations in other replies already!
IMO the best YA content right now is actually coming out of Japan (where they’re called Light Novels)
Some series worth checking out:
Don’t let the titles fool you (especially that last one). A silly title will often lead to a deep and complex story only loosely related to the title.
The first three I named are some of my absolute favorites.
And this is just the fantasy stuff. If you’re looking for sci-fi or rom-com, or something a bit heavier/darker, there are plenty more recommendations I can provide :)
Not books, but the Misfits and Magic TTRPG show from Dimension 20 is everything that HP isn’t. It’s fun and whimsical and the characters are lovable and the writing is great and the world building is astounding and it never misses a chance to take the piss at the many problematic aspects of HP it’s satirically lampooning. I think the first episode is free on YouTube.
IMO there isn’t a whole lot in the kids/young adult space but The Magicians by Lev Grossman is good (and one of the few cases where the TV show is better than the book)
Horrible person?
I never met her actually. What’s she like in person?
Don’t need to meet a person to know they’re a horrible person. I know Orban is a horrible person. I know Chris Brown is a horrible person. I know Trump is a horrible person. And I know that anyone who defends them is a horrible person, for ignoring their horrible views and actions.
deleted by creator
Funny, I need to meet them first. Maybe you just like doing it more.
I see. So anything you have not personally experienced is to be disregarded entirely?
It seems best to disregard them entirely, since from a quick skim of their profile it looks like they really enjoy this kind of “I’m so aloof that means I’m clever” trolling.
It’s to be taken lightly.
So you’re saying you don’t believe Hitler was a Nazi anti-semite, because you never met him?
No matter the veracity of the information?
None of us have met you, and yet…
And yet you see a golden opportunity to indulge. Grasp it!
Hush.
Fun and atmospheric. Kids love it and that’s ok.
More than fun. It’s whimsical.
She’s a terrible person. I read the books to my kids but they are puarated so she doesn’t get a penny. Same for the movies.
What happens when your kids want to buy merchandise from a store? When they get older and decide to spend their own money on DVDs? What about the racism and misogyny these books teach to children?
If the worst you have to worry about your kids’ interests is whether they spend their allowance on things that somehow benefit an asshole person you are really very lucky.
Personally, I only prevent the one single worst thing that I can think of happening to my kids. As long as they don’t become Hitler, I’m happy. My son murdered and raped a family of 4 last week and is in prison, but I don’t think I need to worry about that because he’s not Hitler.
Sad you were down voted, because you perfectly summarised the awful place “it could be worse” inevitably leads
When they are old enough to make their own decisions they can. I’m able to seperate the art from the artist, without introducing them to hateful commentary that they aren’t able to properly process yet.
Not showing them Harry Potter does not mean they won’t be exposed to the media or the merchandise through friends and shops.
It would take a saint’s patience to stop the book at every racist moment and explain why it’s wrong.
I’m also able to separate the art from the artist, which is why my house is filled with original Hitlers. I find his perspective interesting.
Hitler, again, was an even more awful person. That doesn’t make the autobahns that his government started a bad idea. However, we as a world society decided that the data from the nazi experimentation on twins, on people with disabilities and others would be destroyed.
Hitler was an artist, but not a great one from my understanding. It’s trivia, rather than who he was. He was a monster that killed millions. It’s very different.
JK is an author. It’s what she’s known for. Her work has not changed based on her views which were not known then. In fact, I think some fans were upset when she retconned some characters to be more woke, prior to becoming transphobia personified.
Her work may not have “changed”, but many elements in retrospect have obvious bigoted undertones, whether she intended them or not. We simply weren’t looking for them as children, and didn’t notice or understand.
If you’re interested in what some of these things are, Youtuber Shaun has an excellent video going over some of them.
Also, the Hitler point was merely a reductio ad absurdum to demonstrate that “separating the art from the artist” is pure luxury.
Neil Gaiman is an alleged rapist. Does that mean the sexual scenes in his books are not valid?
Horrible people is part of the human condition. Erasing them means we don’t learn from it.
We can now better recognise the problematic parts of her work to gently help kids to appreciate it. Kids won’t get the metaphors with slavery, racism, sexism that all exist with the potterverse. However, showing them these problems even in a fantastical world can help them better understand them in the real world.
Her work doesn’t become pointless just by virtue of her being horrible. For some artists, that can even be the point. Look at Joss Whedon, who was lauded for writing powerful female characters. It’s now clear he was abusive to the young women in his vicinity. Does that make Buffy less of a heroine or more?
Why not skip the books then? The movies were made by hundreds of awesome people while the books were written by just her. The movies cut out a lot of the controversial stuff too.
Because reading the books is a good educational experience for kids. I don’t allow them watch the movies until the books are read. Movies can miss nuance and have less information and world building. There is racism and bigotry and horrible things happening in life. I explain it to my kids at appropriate times.
When I first discussed the holocaust(very broadly), for example, they didn’t understand why someone would hate others for religion only, as religion is not important to us. Nor was it a good reason to not like someone from their understanding. They understand simpler concepts like absolute good and absolute evil. Goodies and baddies. More complex topics like themes in Harry Potter books being problematic is beyond their understanding completely.
Other books with good themes but problematic authors or themes include Enders Game, starship troopers, religious texts. Authors include Neil Gaiman, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Dr Seuss, Enid blyton, Shakespeare, Stephanie Meyer, etc etc
That doesn’t make the books useless. Rhoal Dahl has problematic parts. Rhoal Dahl was also racist. That doesn’t mean we skip Charlie and the chocolate factory.
Yeah, I enjoyed the movies I saw as a kid, but it’s so painfully mediocre watching it now. And that is before factoring in the garbage human who wrote the books.
All true, though i still found it fun to read when the books came out. At that age my critical thinking skills were not as developed yet, and since that age group is the intended target audience the popularity is not that surprising.
Yes, I liked it too but I’m not under the false impression that’s it’s a genius work. It’s a kids book that kids like and many adults enjoy too.
She’s a hateful awful person. Many people are.
I mean, I totally get it. There is just better stuff out there and it sucks that she got lucky when otherr, better authors don’t
Yeah. There’s a fan-fic I read recently (also the only HP fan fic I’ve read) called “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality,” which is set in an alternate universe in which Harry is raised by perfectly pleasant folks with an understanding of the scientific method, and arrives in the wizarding world and immediately starts deconstructing all the bizarre nonsense going on there. It’s very well done, but it’s really hard to recommend precisely because it does refer back to a ton of the stuff that’s developed in the books, so I had to keep looking up stuff I didn’t recall, and I don’t really want to devote brain space to that stuff. (Some of the “rationality” stuff has aged a little bit poorly through the replication crisis, too, though I’m a bit more forgiving of that since it talks so much about updating your beliefs.)
But for anyone who did read the books back when and was frustrated at times by the characters behaving so irrationally, it’s kinda cathartic in that way. For those who are interested: https://github.com/rrthomas/hpmor
By an author who is also crazy and problematic, though in a very different way than Rowling.
Oh, I didn’t know about that, but it isn’t hugely surprising.
I guess I should have mentioned this, but there’s a lot of stuff in the book that kinda seems like coded libertarian stuff, and it even flirts with pro-authoritarian stuff. It’s not a book I would recommend to kids or deeply uncritical people. That’s part of why this thread seemed like a safer place to mention it.
True, but at least his version of the universe tries to be coherent.
Way back, years ago, and if memory serves…
There was short story about Harry Potter in a Disney Adventures magazine one month and I think that was supposed to be all there was as far as the story. The popularity of it may have had JKR rushing to build a more in depth story and throwing anything in it that seemed whimsical and fun to a kid, regardless if it made sense.
My theory, the first three/four books were written well enough, but the movies carried the rest of the series. She came really close to game of thronesing it too, but apparently average fans didnt mind the dieing baby voldemort in an all white train station ending.
Books 5-7 were awful in my opinion. I hated Harry through the entire last book, which I can’t imagine is intentional.
Book four was great. It was downhill from there as she couldn’t maintain the level. She also couldn’t keep it consistent. However, people were co paring it to literature. It’s kids books.
This is what I tend to say to people about Harry Potter as a series. It was the first series like it to become popular, and that’s its only merit. Overall it’s very tame and bland, but it got lucky and became popular. I didn’t like it because it was too same-y. After book 3 or so, I don’t care about Harry Potter anymore. Explore someone else that’s more ordinary. It makes a much better setting for derivative works, which to me as someone who writes textbooks of lore for RPGs is more important than just making a series sell well.