Good reads for 13 year old boy

[Kristina]

My son is a big reader and has read most of the big fantasy series for his age group (Fablehaven, Olympians, Kane Chronicles, Beyonders, Hunger Games -seriously this kid owns a million books). I'd like to find some age appropriate sci-fi for him to branch into. Any suggestions?

[Kristina]

How funny I just posted this and then watched the Cherie Priest show. Adding Boneshaker to the list :D

[Jonathan]

If he hasn't read them:
Legend, possibly The Knife of Never Letting Go, definitely Mortal Engines and again definitely The White Mountains I loved those at that age!

[Thurman]

enders game, peter jackson and the Olympians, Artemis fowl, HIVE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.I.V.E...., ender series,. pendragon adventures

Those are the ones i think are good.

(sorry I was 2 lazy to find all the links)

[Susan]

I was just about to reccomend The Knife of Never Letting Go, but I see that someone already did. I will back Jonathan.

[Nathan]

I started reading Lovecraft around that age.

[Kris]

I think Foundation and maybe Enders Game would be some good choices.

[Tyler]

Ship breaker by paolo bacigalupi, maybe?

[Otto]

Ender's Game

Tom Swift novels (if you can find them)

Star Wars novels.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a classic.

The City of Ember is good.

For fantasy, everyone should read the Abhorsen trilogy.

Most of Michael Crichton's books should be safe.

Madeline L'Engle wrote some great teen novels that are somewhat sci-fi. A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, and A Swiftly Tilting Plant are all excellent.


There was a series of fun teen "Netforce" novels published under the Tom Clancy brand about 10 years ago. They should be cheep on Amazon used.

William Gibson's early books have a bit of adult language and violence, but there isn't much sex.

[AndrewP]

Andrew wrote: "There was a series of fun teen "Netforce" novels published under the Tom Clancy brand about 10 years ago. They should be cheap on Amazon used."

Make sure you get the right ones. There actually two different 'Clancy' Netforce series. One is teen YA, but the other is adult orientated.

I have 1-7 of the adult series in paperback if anyone wants to make me an offer :)

[library_jim]

The Dark Is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper was my favorite at that age.

[[deleted user]]

Maybe something like Neverwhere Neil Gaiman or the Dragonlance stories are great maybe some Weiss and Hickman.

[Otto]

@AndrewP is right. The adult books are quite a bit more... adult.

Neverwhere is a great recommendation, though it is a dangerous gateway drug into the weird and addictive world that is Neil Gaiman.

[Daniel]

Timothy Zahn's Dragon and Thief series.

I read the first book in Alan Dean Foster's Pip and Flinx series (The Tar-Aiym Krang) when I was 12 or 13. The Founding of the Commonwealth series is also suitable for a young teen.

The WWW: series by Robert Sawyer is also excellent (WWW: Wake, WWW: Watch, WWW:Wonder).

[Harold]

Jonathan wrote: "If he hasn't read them:
Legend, possibly The Knife of Never Letting Go, definitely Mortal Engines and again definitely The White Mountains I loved those at that age!"

I second the John Christopher recommendation - it was one of the first things that sprung to mind - and would also recommend the first few books Daniel Keys Moran wrote (Emerald Eyes, The Long Run, The Armageddon Blues). In general, teenage boys really enjoy the "acquiring ultimate power" stories, so there's a lot of fantasy novels to choose from - nearly all follow the LotR mold of inconsequential nobody who is destined for great things - but with science fiction you have to hunt a little bit more to find that kind of story. The "Saga of the Well World" is a good choice, as well as Chalker's other series, "Rings of the Master." Modesitt Jr's The Timegod is good, as well as Andre Norton's "Ross Murdock" stories. Dickson's "Childe Cycle" is good and approachable for a youngster, as is much military SF like Bujold's "Vorkosigan saga."

Similar to the Dragonlance suggestion from Lucy, above, you should probably push some Piers Anthony SF his way before he outgrows it. A caution there, in case you didn't go through the Anthony phase yourself as a teen: Anthony loves to titillate with some prurient passages, though actual sex is rare...as such, it is a big draw for pubescents in particular. There is still some variation within his oevre, though. For science fiction, I'd particularly recommend both the "Apprentice Adept" (light-hearted combination of Dream Park and Well World) and "Cluster" (somewhat more serious SF about a spy/police organization that travels the universe via body jumping) series, and to stay away from the Aton, Tarot, and Space Tyrant series as somewhat more mature and serious in tone.

[Kevin]

Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson.

Though not YA they're completely safe for teenagers in terms of language, sex and gore, if that's what you're worried about. The Hunger games, for instance, has a lot more of all that.

It has a young protagonist and an awesome magic system that makes for great action scenes.
My 14 year old brother loved it.

Edit: Eep, missed the part about you asking for sci-fi. Mistborn is not sci-fi. But still great!

[Celine]

Has he read Animorphs? They're a little younger than 13, maybe, but they're really great. I still have about half the series on my bookshelves.

[[deleted user]]

I second Brandon Sanderson Mistborn trilogy, very safe.

[Kristina]

Awesome! Thanks everyone. I just put a hold on like 13 books at the library-that should keep him busy a while. A couple I plan to read myself...

[Helena]

Since some of the classic's they haven't been mentioned. CS Lewis seris The Lion and the witch. Baum The wizard of oz series is great (but maby he out grown them). Lloyd Alexander's book great adventure.

[Jacy]

I don't know if he'd be into these, but my son loved the Kingdom Keepers series, it a series featuring hologram kids and their real life counterparts at various Disney Parks. Another big hit was the Magic Thief Trilogy by Sarah Prineas. Philip Reeve's Larklight series is good too.

[Harold]

If we were talking fantasy, I'd definitely second the recommendation for the Prineas books (as well as add Sage's Septimus Heap books (Magyk, etc). Like I said, fantasy for YA readers is practically ubiquitous. I have a great deal more difficulty coming up with science fiction recommendations...

Musing about this a bit more while driving yesterday, I recalled how, when I was a kid, there really wasn't much of any SF written for kids. I did really enjoy Matthew Looney's Voyage To The Earth: A Space Story and the rest of that series, but after those grade school books, I had to make the jump to books written for adults for any science fiction. Each of my recommendations, earlier in this thread, are such books, as well as most of the suggestions from everyone else (Larklight is apparently an exception, and I've added it to my "to-read" list). So it seems like little has changed since I was a kid. Why is there so little teen-oriented SF, while there's so much fantasy aimed at the same audience? It's a mystery.

Note: I did really enjoy On the Blue Comet, which is written for a YA audience, an alternate history novel which starts off subtly enough that it's not obviously SF until halfway through the book.

Interestingly, last year David Brin posted his list of his recommendations for SF books for younger readers, and almost none of them are YA books. But that's not to say that there aren't YA SF books; just not that many of them. As a contrast, take a look at this list of YA SF/F books from an author of YA books.

[Bryek]

Out of curiosity, does he want to branch into sci fi? I know when I was that age I didn't want to have anything to do with Sci fi. Refused to read them mainly because I liked my fantasy and there were more interesting things to read there (imo at the time).
But on that note,Anne McCaffrey Pern Novels would be a good place to start as they are classified as Sci Fi. They start out more fantasy but by the time he reaches The White Dragon it becomes much more Sci Fi. (actually I stopped reading McCaffrey here because I didn't like the Sci FI aspects back then).

Garth Nix has also started a sci fi series A Confusion of Princes and he's pretty good.

[Kristina]

He has read a couple, and he's definitely open to it. He's almost through Boneshaker now, and he liked Levaithan and The Roar. It just seems like Sci-Fi for this age group is scarce-or I thought it was. Thinking he's going to need his own good reads account soon...