A friend of mine just asked me for suggestions – sci-fi/fantasy books for a very advanced fourteen year old boy.

I’m having some trouble with it. I think about what I read now, and it’s fairly adult and literary (Bujold’s fantasy, GRR Martin, CJ Cherryh, GG Kay). It’s been a while since I talked books with a teenager.

He just finished Ender’s Game and loved it.

So – sci fi geeks out there – what are some good picks? I dug back into my memory banks about what I was into when I was a teen. My first thought was, actually, Gor, because the first four books are good (no, I’m not kidding, forget what you know about Gor as a BDSM icon,) though what mom is gonna buy her 14 year old Tarnsman of Gor (well, ok, MY mom, but I don’t think she knew).

So I went with some of my faves from the era: Zelazyny’s Nine Princes in Amber, PJ Farmer’s Riverworld, John Christopher’s The White Mountains, and then added a couple of more recent picks that seem like they’d be the right speed (Tad Williams Dragonbone Chair, Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos).

But I’m missing some good picks because I can’t quite dredge out specifics; I can’t recall which books would be at the right level from people like heinlein or asimov.

Help a brutha out; what would you buy for an advanced fourteen year old boy?