speculative fiction books for teenagers

I've been telling myself that I've got to stop answering requests that have already been filled, but I love this *request and I love the answering hubs so I wanted to join in the fun.

My 15-in-just-weeks teen loves Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. My one reservation comes from my ex-husband, as it's been a very long time since I've read the series. Although he was to introduce Ender's Game to the boy, he wants him to hold off on the following books for a few years believing that the themes might be a bit too adult for our teen. It may be worth checking them out yourself before passing them on.

Madeleine L'Engle published A Wrinkle in Time ten years before I was born. Not only was the sci-fi story with a magical feel totally relatable when I was a young teen, but the first three books in the quintet remain among my favorite stories of all time. (I actually hadn't realized there were two more, but now I'm going to have to go get them!)

The classics of fantasy, Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien, are often well loved by teens. Perhaps less known by people who don't usually read the genre are The Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. While this series hasn't exactly become a literary classic as the others, I and all of my friends loved it in high school, and it's stood the test of time so well that the first book was recently turned into an animated movie starring Lucy Lawless, Kiefer Sutherland, and Michael Rosenbaum.

"Roger Zelazny's books have three things in common: a flawed hero who sometimes fails, endlessly surprising plot twists, and a blend of lyricism, literary allusions, and sly puns that makes the pages fly..." reads an Amazon editorial review of The Amber Series. I'll always be grateful to the shop owner who talked me into trying Nine Princes in Amber. There's something about these series that's great whether you start it at 14 or 40.