sir-sanctum

[sir-sanctum]

So, did anyone else happen to have just that ONE kinda niche Young Adult book series that irrefutably shaped your perspectives and tastes in regards to fiction?

I'm not talking about like, "I've loved Dystopian fiction since I read the Hunger Games series," or, "Twilight really got me into monster romance," not that those aren't valid experiences but I'm thinking about book series like (if you've read them) the Keys to the Kingdom, where if you namedrop them you'll mostly just be met with blank stares, with maybe one person vaguely remembering reading like one book, often less, when it was raining or they had to pick out something to read during class.

My ones are the Skulduggery Pleasant series, which I know is fairly popular, especially where I'm from, but it's not usually a book series you'll find people being super-fans of, and, more fittingly in my opinion, the CHERUB series by Robert Muchamore, which if you don't know, is about a bunch of pre-teen to full on teenager spies for the British Government, who go through a trauma rollercoaster befitting your average grimdark protagonist. Think like, James Bond, if he joined M15 at age 12 instead of M16 when he was a legal adult, and also his parents died in front of him.

Both of these books gave me a distinct appreciation for detailed fight scenes and the kind of character dynamics where you realise halfway through that, "holy shit this dialogue could fuel a therapy session," and then go, "holy shit, these relationships are these characters' definition of therapy."

Not sure if I've explained this well, it's pretty late, but I really needed to get this off my chest.