Genre

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

Between that last post on marriage, and combing through other people's blogs referencing the books, I've come to realize there's an almost violent debate going on about classifying books according to age.  I was shocked when I first heard about people who disliked The Queen of Attolia simply because it was a darker book than its predecessor--it "exceeded" the "bounds" of YA fiction, which immediately brings up the question of "what is YA fiction anyway?"

That, along with some other comments, has prompted me to ask a few questions:

1)  Do you call the MWT books fantasy books?
    1a)  How do you define a "fantasy" novel?
    1b)  Someone--I couldn't find the comment, tell me if you know who it was--used the term "theological fantasy" for the books, which I found interesting.  Anyone else got different terms for them?

2)  What's the difference between "adult" fantasy versus YA fantasy versus children's fantasy?
    2a)  I include "children's" fantasy in there, because Fire and Hemlock is in the children's section of my library back home, and while I haven't read it (yet), my impression of it is that it would be better suited to YA.

3)  Corollary/larger picture of 2:  What makes a book YA versus adult?