I’m getting back into reading after spending a lot of my 20s kinda, well, not reading. When I was a teen it was so easy to find books with relatable characters and I didn’t think very much of it. But now I’m realising just how much sci-fi and fantasy is written around a coming-of-age trope to with a teen/early 20s protagonist.
On the other hand when protagonists aren’t young adults, they usually seem to fit somewhere in the
“half-broken, mid-40s man who gets to learn how to live again” trope.
So here I am, looking for any sci-fi or fantasy books where I can have a hope to relate to a main character in a similar stage of life I am currently – old enough to know what they are about and not be driven only by naive impulse idealism, but young enough to not have been ground through the meat grinder of life. Ready to be whisked away on an adventure.
A setting which starts of in our actual world (or something close) helps with the character being relatable. So I guess then the fantastical element would come from some kind of revelation or discovery. But it’s not essential and I’m mostly concerned about the protagonist thing.
by Sanuuu
2 Comments
The Lady Trent series: A natural history of dragons and its sequels.
In it, Lady Trent relates to us how she became an expert on dragons in ”victorian age England”. While the first book deals with her teenage and early adult years, the sequels are very much what you ask for.
How about The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna?