![]() ![]() Where the laws governing the human world appear suspended, seemingly limitless possibilities abound that complicate empirical plausibility and ontological coherence. The fantastic centres on a moment of hesitation that blurs the lines between dream and reality, truth and illusion-a moment when both characters in a story and their readers must choose between alternative explanations (Todorov, 1973). This genre, due to its imaginative and ethical potential, navigates the psychological well-being of adolescents as they grapple with identity issues embroiled with ecological threats. To examine these literary representations of interspecies entanglements in an increasingly imperilled environment, this study will draw attention to young adult liminal fantasy (henceforth referred to as YA liminal fantasy). Channelling mounting anxiety about the environment into fantasy, therefore, more and more stories are not so much set in deep dark forests or vampire-infested castles as they are in a traumatised everyday routine haunted by ghostly entities, such as zoo animals, monstrous trees, and wildlife in the urban jungle. As an active and stable generic component, fantastic creatures are by-products of authors’ literary ruminations on aesthetic and moral norms, crafted to resonate with today’s young adult readers. Aimed at readers who are undergoing the physical and psychological transition from childhood to adulthood, young adult fiction exhibits the features of the “fantastic” that are frequently employed to serve an anti-anthropocentric mission, with a particular focus on promoting eco-justice in the Anthropocene, an era marked by pervasive human-caused ecosystem transformation. Since the early twenty-first century, there has been an increasingly powerful presence of young adult fiction that features teenage protagonists struggling to find their place in dystopian societies where moral standards have deteriorated. The study concludes that YA liminal fantasy has the capacity to address identity issues faced by contemporary young adults and foster ethical directionality through the productive fusion of genres and species. By conducting a Deleuzian analysis of Sonya Hartnett’s The Midnight Zoo (2011), Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls (2011), and Shaun Tan’s Tales from the Inner City ( 2018), this study reveals that the depictions of encounters between youth and outlandish creatures not only reflect environmental anxieties in the Anthropocene era, but also contribute to the enrichment of narrative explorations within the genre. The term “outlandish creatures” is introduced to denote these improbable nonhuman characters that inhabit imaginary worlds in YA liminal fantasy where they exist intrinsically in young protagonists’ daily lives, exemplifying the genre’s propensity to transcend boundaries between species, genres, and reality. This study employs Deleuze’s concept of “deterritorialisation” to examine how young adult liminal fantasy can blend genre expectations and engage in environmental enquiry for a young adult audience.
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