Reader Question Day #76 – Are THE GHOSTS books appropriate for teens?

Someone asked over Twitter  whether or not THE GHOSTS books would be appropriate for teenagers.

The answer, of course, is that it depends on the teenager.

That said, when people ask “is this book appropriate for my teenager?”, they are in fact generally asking three separate questions. 1.) Does this book have explicit sex? 2.) Does this book have explicit violence? 3.) Is this book thematically appropriate for a teenager? (That is, does the book end with a 20-page manifesto celebrating suicide as a means of solving one’s difficulties, or that sweaty men with candy and windowless vans are fonts of wisdom, or some other time bomb of a message that a parent doesn’t particularly want poured into the brain of his or her child.)

So, first, 1.) sex. There’s no explicit sex in THE GHOSTS, and to be honest, not all that much sex of any kind. In fact, if I remember correctly, there’s no sex at all in GHOST IN THE FLAMES and GHOST IN THE STONE. What is in there is not explicit, and I generally move over it with a sentence. In fact, I once had an Amazon review that dinged a star because the sexual encounters “always fade to black”, which I took as a point of pride.

Then 2.), violence. There is quite a lot of fighting in THE GHOSTS books, some of it explicit. In most of the books, the fighting is generally spies fighting with daggers, knives, and swords, though in GHOST IN THE STORM, most of the book takes place in a city that is falling to an invading army, so there are some big battles in it. So lots of medieval/ancient style fighting – think THE LORD OF THE RINGS-style PG-13 violence. Basically, if you see THE HOBBIT next month, THE GHOSTS books have about that level of violence.

Finally, 3.) themes of the books. Generally, I don’t try to write books with big Messages – like how HUNGER GAMES is obviously about reality TV and child soldiers. For the most part, I try simply to write the best adventure I can. Some themes do creep in from time to time. One reviewer pointed out that Caina seems to spend a great deal of time fighting slave traders. Alas, slavery is one of those evils that seems chronic to the human condition – nowadays we just call them human traffickers. And the magi in THE GHOSTS do owe quite a bit to the National Institute of Coordinated Experimentation in CS Lewis’s THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH – several of the villains in THE GHOSTS have quite a bit in common with Professor Weston.

But generally I try to write a fun and captivating read – any Messages are incidental.

-JM