Recent young adult fiction runs the gamut from extremely good to incredibly tedious.
Otago writer Elizabeth Pulford turns in another strong story in Broken (Walker Books). Zara, badly injured in a motorbike accident in which her brother was killed, lies in a coma. She can hear her parents, her aunt, her best friend and her boyfriend but cannot communicate with them. Unaware that he has died in the crash, Zara is trying to locate her brother, Jem. That sounds fairly standard fare but Pulford's twist is that Jem was a devoted reader of a comic strip and the characters from the comics, drawn at intervals during the book, help - or hinder - her quest. An unusual and rather different tale from this accomplished writer.
Also taking a quite common theme is Australian Morris Gleitzman. Stories about teenagers as World War 2 resistance fighters are not new but Gleitzman's After (Penguin) is firmly based in reality - the bravery of those who hid people from the Nazis and the part quite young children played in the resistance. After is the fourth story about Felix, a Jewish teenager in hiding in Poland. When Gabriek, who has hidden Felix, is forced to leave his farm, the boy goes with him to join the Polish resistance. A great strength of After is that, although reading the other books adds to one's appreciation, it can be enjoyed without having to read the others in the series.
Where Gleitzman gets it right in making After a stand-alone novel, Palmerston North writer Ken Benn falls into a common pit. His trilogy Lethal Delivery, Trapped Outside a Cage and Gutted is a story that drags across three volumes and to try reading any one of the books on its own simply doesn't work.
Benn's publisher, Penguin, has released volumes two and three, Trapped Outside a Cage and Gutted, simultaneously, which doesn't help. The potential was there for a single fast-paced story, but three books, forget it.
At the bottom of the heap is Ali Cronin's No Such Thing as Forever (Razorbill). Booze, sex and zero plot sum up this piece of boring trivia. And the really bad news?
Cronin, an English writer, has a contract to write five more of these teen nothings.
• Gillian Vine is a Dunedin writer.
