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This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)[As her parent, you know your daughter best, and her levels of maturity and what she can cope with.

I would have been worried about my son reading that at ten, because the Maia POV rape scene and the infant exposure scene might be a bit much. When I was a kid sex in books went straight over my head, to the point that when I re-read them later I am amazed I didn't notice it, but I didn't. But the level of distress there -- there's nothing there ten year old me couldn't have understand and be upset by. What I'd have done with my son if he really wanted to read it would have been to talk about it first ("While a lot of it is fun, there is some upsetting stuff with rape, and infanticide...") and let him decide. I was much more likely to let him read something from the victim's POV than the villain's at that age. I personally don't think the teen sex bits would do any harm. But again, you know your daughter and I don't, and I really do think this is something that's specific to individuals and the parent's responsibility.

(It is one of the things I found very hard about being a parent. My son was given to nightmares as a kid, and I still blame myself for not pre-reading "The Face in the Frost" when somebody gave it to him when he was seven or eight. He's grown up and awesome now.)

A friend of mine (who is now sixteen) read "The Just City" when she was fourteen, and loved it. But there is no wider gap in life after learning to talk than the gap in maturity and emotional experience (and sexual awareness!) between ten and fourteen. So I think I'd say thirteen or fourteen, and be guided by your knowledge of her individual personality and maturity.

I didn't write it as YA or as a kids book. It is dealing with themes of consent and boundaries (volition and equal significance) which are adult themes. One of the reasons I started this book with Apollo and Daphne was to make it explicit on page 1 that this is what it is about.

It does have young protagonists, but I wrote it for people who used to be that age rather than people who still are. Mostly I have problems with adults deciding my books with young protagonists can't be taken seriously rather than kids picking them up gleefully and thinking they must be for them -- a problem to which I am much more sympathetic! I almost want to go through and make a ten-year-old friendly version just for her.

Wait! I could do that. I totally could. Email me: bluejo@gmail.com
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