Are you a parent tired of watching your teen stare in to the abyss of their Apple product range?

Are you an adult bored by reality, in need of some fantasy adventure?

I have two great series of novels to recommend to you this week. Both are primarily marketed at young adults, but to be honest, such are their layers of complex ideology at points, particularly His Dark Materials, they should not be overlooked by adult readers looking for new inspiration and paperback peril.

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“That’s the duty of the old,’ said the Librarian, ‘to be anxious on the behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.’ They sat for a while longer, and then parted, for it was late, and they were old and anxious.”

His Dark Materials is an epic trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman, consisting of Northern Lights (adapted into the film The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass.

It follows the coming of age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a series of parallel universes.

There are many fantasy elements involved in the books, akin in some ways to The Lord of the Rings, but the trilogy also alludes to ideas from physics, philosophy and theology.

The trilogy functions in part as a retelling and inversion of John Milton’s epic ‘Paradise Lost’ with Philip Pullman commending humanity for what Milton saw as its most tragic failing – original sin.

Ethan Wate used to think of Gatlin, the small Southern town he had always called home, as a place where nothing ever changed.

Then he met mysterious newcomer Lena Duchannes, who revealed a secret world where a curse has marked Lena’s family of powerful Supernaturals for generations.

Mysterious, suspenseful, and romantic, Beautiful Creatures, Beautiful Darkness, Beautiful Chaos, and Beautiful Redemption, introduce a secret world hidden in plain sight. A world where impossible, magical, life-altering events happen.

This bestselling Southern gothic romance series is also known as the Caster Chronicles series, and was written by authors Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.

I found these books actually vaguely reminiscent of a computer game – particularly Beautiful Redemption.

It wasn’t a surprise when I read that Margaret Stohl, one of the authors, also works in the video game industry. If you love your console more than any paperback, this series might be a good starting point to change that.