Today we’re discussing novel trends. Things that seem to happen when one book/series becomes famous and other books/series seem to follow in their footsteps. Fifty Shades of Grey appeared to spark a trend of bondage/erotica but I suspect many of those authors were already writing and these books just jumped into everyone’s field of view.

Having said that I’m sure there weren’t that many vampire books around when Twilight started the trend. Some are better written than others and I’m still to read Twilight, a task my DDs tell me not to bother with.

Discussing this topic with them last night we came up with some books which could be called a trend. I’m going to call this Children of Lord of the Flies as they all seem to have that in common. The premise is that the children have all been abandoned for whatever reason, some dissolve into anarchy while others try to impose civilisation. There are five books/series we came up with (I’ve included a link to buy after each book endeavouring to get the cheapest at a particular location for you):

Tomorrow When the War Began by John Marsden 1993 (Buy this here.)

Shades Children by Garth Nix 1997 (Buy this here.)

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins 2008 (Buy this here.)

Gone by Michael Grant 2008 (Buy this here.)

The Enemy by Charlie Higson 2009 (Buy this here.)

I understand that the rule doesn’t quite ring true in each case as there are some adults in the Tomorrow Series and also in The Hunger Games but in each one the children have more power and more leverage than the adults. The other three fit the rule much better in that there are no real adults (Shades Children has one adult but he’s not a real adult as he is actually an uploaded consciousness of a real scientist).

I’ve only read four of them and some of them not completely but so far they are all excellent authors and great reads although somewhat dark and generally qualify for The Abs Award which I give to books which cause me much emotional angst.

The question I want to ask is this. Is this a trend? Is this the beginning of a trend? Did The Hunger Games (the more famous of this list) start a trend? Don’t tell me that’s more than one question, maths and me are not good friends.

If you have other books which might fit in this trend please link them below as I’d love to read them and see what they’re like.

This post is joining the Book Bloggers Australia Blog Hop as hosted by Deb. To check out all the other blogs in this hop go to Deb, if you have a blog you want to add just follow the details on Deb’s page.