Review: Shiver by Maggie Steifvater

genre: paranormal romance
age: YA
recommend to: those who liked Twilight
rating: 3/8 tentacles

Don't let this book fool you. It will try. It will pretend to have a plot, just to draw you in. It will dance pretty descriptions before your eyes and hide nonsense behind pretty words, hoping that you won’t notice. Steifvater writes, “As the hours crept by, the afternoon sunlight bleached all the books on the shelves to pale, gilded versions of themselves and warmed the paper and ink inside the covers so that the smell of unread words hung in the air.” Isn’t that lovely? It fooled me too.

As soon as girl meets boy (in his human form), all pretense at plot is abandoned in favor of what I like to call Gooey Teen Romance. You’ve seen it. Two teens meet each other for the first time and it’s like a spell has been cast. They think constantly about that person. Every other aspect of their life fades into the background. Everything becomes irrelevant except for this other person. They need to see this person, need to speak to this person. But most of all, they need to touch this person. They yearn for them. Gooey Teen Romance primarily consists of yearning. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to read page after page of descriptions of yearning. I like to read stories. About things happening. With plots that unfold, instead of gathering dust in the corner.

This is the plot, before it was discarded and then vaguely picked up again towards the end of the book like oh yeah, wasn’t I talking about something? The book begins with Grace enduring a wolf attack. She lies there in the snow, motionless, doing nothing to protect herself. This seems like an interesting sub-mystery—why doesn’t she fight to live? But don’t get your hopes up. This is never addressed. So as she calmly submits to death-by-mauling she looks up into the yellow eyes of one of the wolves. And the wolf seems to gaze back before calling the other wolves off. Grace survives.

After this moment, Grace feels a special connection to what she comes to think of as her wolf. He appears in her backyard every winter. She looks forward to Christmas because she knows her wolf will be waiting at the edges of the woods. Watching her. Guarding her, it seems.

Then a boy, Jack Culpepper, is killed by wolves. The town is in an uproar and the boy’s family insists the wolves be eradicated. Jack’ body is stolen from the morgue and Grace could have sworn she heard his voice in the forest. And there’s a new wolf lurking in its shadows. A mercurial wolf with very familiar eyes. She’s determined to save her wolves and also worried about what has become of Jack and what this new, dangerous wolf will do.

Sounds good, right? I thought so. But then human Sam, aka golden eyed wolf, appears and the plot is forsaken. The angry wolf hunters are never mentioned again. The yearning and drivelly romance begins. Grace actually tells us, several times, that she feels like the rest of her life (school, her friends, her parents) doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters now is being with Sam. I had some horrifying Twilight flashbacks. Their relationship is revealed as being even more unhealthy when Grace admits that she fell in love with Sam before she knew he was a human. She fell in love with a dog. Fell. In love. With a dog. He is touched, instead of being properly repulsed by her bestial tendencies.

Steifvater alternates between Sam’s and Grace’s perspectives although the only way to tell the difference between speakers is context. I often skipped reading the chapter heading and mistook who was narrating. Steifvater probably wanted to get both points of view in, but focused on trying to sound writerly instead of creating distinct voices for her characters. See As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner as an example of successful alternating perspectives. One of Sam’s chapters begins, “I was a leaking womb.” First of all, what boy would ever liken himself to a womb? Second of all, leaking? Was it his time of the month? Was he leaking baby juices? Whatever female reproductive organ he feels like, there is no need for metaphorical leakage. It’s just disgusting. Regardless of whether or not this is a successful and illuminating metaphor (it’s not. what does it even mean?), this is not something that ANY boy would say. She really wrote this. Its on page sixty-three.

Further nonsensical imagery include, but are not limited to:
-paper falling "like listless birds" (page 49). Grace drops some loose leaf. Imagine listless (languid, dispirited, indifferent) birds falling to the ground. Now imagine sheets of paper falling to the ground. Do they look similar? Does describing these indifferent birds help you envision the paper? I rest my case.

-The full leaking womb bit goes like this: “I was not a wolf, but I wasn’t Sam yet, either. I was a leaking womb bulging with the promise of conscious thoughts…” Okay, so I think what Steifvater is trying to tell us is that Sam is in between forms and he can almost feel the conscious thoughts coming, like a baby being born? But… I don’t know. If he didn’t already have conscious thoughts he wouldn’t have been able to tell us this, so that doesn’t work either. And I have never heard and can't imagine ever hearing a boy use the word "womb."

-“Sam and I had spent last night talking about the strange room of stuffed animals at the Culpeppers’ and wondering, with the constant irritation of a scratchy sweater, where Jack was going to make his next appearance” (Page 120). This metaphor makes sense but it’s really crammed in there. Awkwardly. This sentence is as awkward as a leaking womb.

I only wrote three examples down. But there are plenty more. I attribute them to Steifvater paying more attention to what her words sounded like than what they meant. A lot of this novel reads like overwrought pseudo poetry. For example: Sam’s song lyrics. One of Sam’s hobbies is to make up song lyrics in his head and then force us to read them (One of his songs is about truffles). I skipped over them. They seem completely out of nowhere and disconnected to his character.

So who is Sam? In the winter he’s a wolf with yellow eyes that saves girls from being mauled. In the summer he is a boy who makes up songs in his head, feels like a uterus with something oozing out of it, and reads Rilke. Which Steifvater forces us to read too.

When I picked up Shiver, I wanted a story about the silent bond between a girl and a yellow-eyed wolf. I imagined them exploring a lush forest carpeted in pine needles. I imagined the wolf following the girl, the amazement that such a majestic and wild animal had chosen her as its companion. I imagined the adventures they would have together, and her shock and delight when the wolf became a boy. When he could respond to her with words of her own language. Then, the bond they built as girl and wolf might evolve into something else. I was hoping he would still be wild and wolflike as a boy.

But Sam is just ordinary. And this isn’t the story I got.

I’m primarily focusing on the negatives here, and I feel a little bad about that. There is a lot more of the beautiful description I quoted in my first paragraph. But I didn’t like this book. Partly because it didn’t meet my expectations, partly because this kind of story just isn’t my cup of tea, and partly because a lot of things in it didn’t make sense.

Review: Hereafter by Tara Hudson

genre: paranormal
age: YA
rating: 1/8 tentacles

I could not finish this. I think I got to Chapter Five or Six and was still wondering where the story was. Maybe some people will say that I didn’t give it a fair chance, but I read enough to get a feel for the writing, to decide it was not good writing, and to realize that I couldn’t muster up any feelings except apathy for the main character (or any other characters for that matter). Amelia is too wishy washy. She goes on about how she doesn’t remember her last name or when she lived but she kind of hangs out in her cemetery and she doesn’t even care enough about herself to turn around and read the tombstone. If she doesn’t care, why should I?
Here is how the story starts. Amelia sees a boy drowning. She desperately wants to save him from sharing her terrible fate but can do nothing to help because she is a ghost. Yup, yup, I’m still with you. She can hear his heart slowing. She wills him to wake up, to swim to the surface. His heart stops. …And then starts again? You lost me. I’m no medical expert, but I’m pretty sure that if someone is drowning and their heart stops, it’s not going to randomly start again. Maybe it’s possible in some one in a million type scenario, but we’ve only just got this story going and already I’m in doubt. My suspended disbelief is sputtering and losing altitude.

After his magic revival, the boy swims to shore where a crowd of people who know him and are shouting his name have miraculously appeared. We are shown the gaping hole in the guardrails on the bridge or overpass where his car ripped through and plummeted into the river below. So if he was in the car by himself, where did all those people come from? According to the internet, it only takes about two or three minutes to drown. So how did all those people AND an ambulance get down to the river in two or three minutes? Were they driving in a caravan formation? Is there a convenient stairway down to the river? There may be some reason for all of this, but it is unusual and so must be explained.

When Call-Me-Joshua comes back to find Amelia, their interaction is stiff and boring. He says “O-kay” a bunch of times and Amelia looks at her dress. Despite the car crash and the rescue (which were both played down), there seems to be very little action in this story. There’s next to no tension, and thus little to propel the story forward. The first twenty pages consist mostly of introspection, which might have been interesting if it led us somewhere. Also, who requests to be called by their full name when all of their friends/family/whoever clearly call them by a nickname?

I really wanted to enjoy Hereafter because I’m a huge fan of ghost stories, but it was extremely disappointing. If you were planning to read this, I recommend putting it down and going to read A Certain Slant of Light instead—it’s a better version of the same type of story. If you really want to be spooked, More Than You Know is amazing. It’s one of my favorites.

**A little of my negative response can be attributed to an exhaustion with these plot-less teen romances. Maybe you like them, but I haven't the stomach for these types of books.

Review: Across the Universe by Beth Revis

genre: sci-fi, dystopia, Giver-copycat
age: YA
recommend to: people who like to read the same dystopian setup over and over
rating: 4/8 tentacles



It took me a really long time to pick this book up because the cover and title led me to believe it was somehow connected to Julie Taymor’s Beatles musical, so I avoided it. Love the movie, didn’t feel like reading about it. Finally, I realized Across the Universe was a Sci-Fi novel set on a spaceship. I’m not sure the Beatles reference does Revis any favors. It’s very literal and also mildly misleading.

If I had to pick one word to describe Across the Universe, I would choose “slow.” The action lagged often (on page 35 the plot stalls for pages of exposition: boring!) and the characters were a bit slow in the head. I figured out what was going on hundreds of pages before they even had an inkling. Perhaps this book is another sufferer of Series Syndrome, in which authors put the brakes on their plots and/or write incomplete stories in order to leave material for their unnecessary sequels. Apart from that, this book presents an interesting sci-fi scenario.

Across the Universe is divided between the perspectives of Amy, who has been frozen and loaded onto a spaceship with her parents for a 300 year journey, and Elder, who is being trained by the crotchety and distrusting current leader—Eldest—to be leader of the ship’s next generation. Red-headed Amy in space? All I could think of was Amy Pond.

There’s quite a bit of suspense on Elder’s side of things as he begins to realize that Eldest has been lying to him. The downside is, a lot of the answers to his questions are so obvious that instead of becoming eagerly invested in Elder’s search for the truth, I became overwhelmed by a desire to repeatedly slam his head into the spaceship walls and shout, “ARE YOU BLIND? HOW DO YOU NOT SEE WHAT’S GOING ON?” There was one exciting twist at the end that I did not see coming.

Amy’s point of view covers some of the time she spent frozen and mostly dead asleep which seems like it would be extremely boring, but the descriptions of her thoughts and fears have a pleasant poetry to them and I enjoyed reading these segments.

The two threads of the story—Amy’s and Elder’s—are completely separate until someone mysteriously unplugs Amy’s icebox and she wakes up. When she did, I was disconcerted by her description of Elder who we find out is much older that he sounds in his own narration. He is a ten year old living in a sixteen year-old’s body. It’s weird.

Ultimately, this book is another YA dystopia following in the now formulaic footsteps of The Giver. It features a community living blissfully unaware of history and its horrors… all except for two individuals who have been selected to lead. Sound familiar yet? Revis’s space community even has a secret method of “releasing” old people. But this is in outer space so it’s different. It’s not terrible, but it’s nothing original or exciting either.


Sequel, A Million Suns, available January 2012.

Review: As Simple As Snow by Gregory Galloway

genre: mystery
age: YA
rating: 4/8 tentacles

Good, but not nearly as good as I’d hoped it would be, and with an extremely dissatisfying conclusion. I heard this was John Green’s inspiration for Paper Towns, which is why I picked it up. IMO, Paper Towns is significantly better.

I started out being really interested in Anna and how her oddness and ravenous curiosity would affect our nameless narrator. I enjoyed her mysteriousness, her codes, her postcards. But after finishing the book, I kind of hate her.

There was a moment in the narrator’s first conversation with Anna that made me angry and although I just brushed it aside at the time, I now see this moment as a glimpse of Anna’s true personality. They meet in the school library. She makes some snooty recommendations to the narrator, finds the couple of books she was looking for, and then stands around while he checks his books out. As they walk toward the door he asks isn’t she going to check hers out too? No. She’ll put them back when she’s done. Entitled little brat.

Maybe this got on my nerves because I work in a library and I know how frustrating it is when books aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Does she think she’s the only one that uses the library? The only reader who matters? Does she think that because she’s read avidly that she’s more intelligent and has more right to the books than other students? Does she think the rules don’t apply to her? It annoyed me even more that her behavior seemed to be presented as this admirable rebelliousness when she’s really just being selfish and inconsiderate.

Warning: the mystery is never solved. Is that cryptic enough to imply that this novel provides a dissatisfying resolution without giving anything away? There isn’t really anything to give away. I think if someone had warned me of this, I might not have read the book.

I’ve always liked mysteries. I like the way they let readers in on a secret. They ask a question, and the plot twists and turns as if it were a pathway through a labyrinth, leading readers along, and then finally we stumble into the center of the maze and there is the answer. I love knowing that however complicated the question is, no matter how tangled and confusing it gets, I will always—by the end of the story—understand.

Unless a writer cops out on me and doesn’t bother to really finish the story. Maybe sometimes ambiguous endings work. Maybe sometimes they are satisfying (I can’t think of any examples) but they do not work in mysteries. Setting up a mystery is almost like signing a contract with the reader, promising, “This seems awfully puzzling now, but just wait until you get to the end! Then everything will make sense and you will be kicking yourself for not figuring it out sooner.” When I don’t get answers at the end of a mystery I feel lied to; I feel tricked.

I read this book quickly, but I was never hooked on it, as I was Paper Towns. It’s just okay. If you are thinking of picking this up, I recommend just getting Paper Towns instead.

Review: The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith

genre: horror, fantasy, zombie (sort of)
age: YA
rating: 5/8 tentacles

After traveling to London, Jack receives a pair of purple eyeglasses from a stranger that, when gazed through, transport the wearer to a parallel world called Marbury. Marbury seems to be in a post-apocalyptic state, crawling with zombie-like people reduced by disease to an animalistic existence. When transported to Marbury, Jack finds himself in the company of two young boys who already know him and are depending on him to lead them somewhere safe from the disease-ridden creatures.

Smith’s writing is gritty, vividly descriptive, and at times poetic. Scenes in Marbury come across with particular clarity, although I would have preferred the world to be more fully developed as a whole. The plot progresses quickly (frequently interrupted by vomit) and I didn’t like Jack much, but was interested enough in what happened to him to keep reading. Ben and especially Griffin were my favorites.

It intrigued me to notice that Jack’s responses to crises differed depending on whether he was in the real world or in Marbury. Real world Jack seems weak and spineless. He avoids any emotional connections beyond his best friend Connor and tends to brood. Marbury Jack is a man of action. He calmly assesses situations, makes decisions, and does whatever it takes to protect the two boys in his care. Maybe Real World Jack needed this responsibility to push him to reach his potential.

Marbury Lens gives me the impression of being composed of two distinct, albeit related, stories that happen to be stuck together. I feel like I need to review them separately. Maybe even three stories, if you count Seth’s: a ghost story within a story. I enjoy Seth’s tragic tale, but not the random way Jack would announce, “Now… I will tell a story!” As if two teenage girls he just met and his best friend wanted to hear about the life of a boy who lived a hundred years ago. Sure, it’s an interesting story and I wanted to hear it, but the way Jack abruptly inserts it into conversation feels like a contrived way to share Seth’s life with readers.

This storytelling business is only one of the issues I have with dialogue on Real World Jack’s side of things. A lot of it seems out of character, especially after Nickie enters the picture. Jack seems like a closed off person. He avoids a relationship with the grandparents who raised him. He refuses to cry. He is plagued by fear and guilt. But when a pretty British girl he’s known for a day or two displays an interest in him, he starts to open up. He tells her he likes her. He tells he’s scared and that there’s something wrong with him that he can’t talk about. Repeatedly. After a few more days they are saying “I love you.” It all seems fast and weird and unlikely. Would a distrusting, closed off person suddenly start sharing his feelings like this? Wouldn’t it take more time? More effort? Wouldn’t she have to earn his trust and vice versa? I don’t buy it.

The glasses themselves are portrayed as a kind of drug. Jack’s returns from Marbury always leave him pale, sweating, sick, and desperate to go back. In some ways, transitions between Marbury and the real world remind me of an extreme metaphor for getting lost in a good book: thinking constantly about the characters you’ve left behind, wondering what they will do next, missing the intensity of the action that contrasts so starkly with the triviality of everyday life. In some ways, The Marbury Lens is such a book.

I recommend The Marbury Lens to readers who enjoyed Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. Both address alternate fantasy worlds with a degree of grittiness. Fans of zombie books will also like The Marbury Lens.

Review: Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier

genre: sci-fi
age:YA
rating: 6/8 tentacles

I’m beginning to notice that I’m often drawn to time travel as a subject matter. I came across Ruby Red on tor.com where I read an excerpt (the first chapter I think) and became hooked. The premise for the story comes from that irresistible “what if” line of imagination that tickles fancy and and sparks curiosity. What if people could inherit a time travel gene? What if you’ve grown up in the shadow of your snooty cousin, who has spent her life preparing to be a time traveler by learning fencing, dance, etiquette, and history? What if you discover that a mistake as been made and you are the time traveler, suddenly thrown into an unknown past where people stare at you strangely, nothing is familiar, and you have no idea what to do and no one to help you? This is what happens to protagonist Gwyneth Shepard, a likable British school girl who can see and talk to ghosts. When the truth is revealed, Gwyneth is brought into a mysterious underground society and all sorts of secrets begin to surface. Everyone seems to have their own agenda and Gwyneth doesn’t know who to trust, only that the order has a mission which others are working hard to oppose and she’ll have to pick a side sooner or later.

The writing is strong—I already knew I liked Anthea Bell’s work, having read the Inkheart series she translated for Cornelia Funke. Sometimes I can feel a writer manipulating a story, feel their intent behind every word choice, see their fingerprints on every plot turn. These stories are thin, flimsy, insubstantial things. They remain mere words. But when a story is written right, the author disappears, even the words grow dim, and I see only the lives of the characters unfolding before me. This ability to transport is one of the most important qualities of a good book, in my opinion, and this one certainly has it. Also, the cover is gorgeous.

I really like Gwyneth. She’s quirky and she’s got spunk. I always admire spunk. What cousin and previously supposed time traveler Charlotte has in poise and training, Gwyneth makes up for in boldness and backbone. Although she’s just been thrown into this new and complicated situation and she’s a little lost and afraid (as anyone would be) she seems like someone who won’t get pushed around, someone who trusts her own judgment.

My only complaint is one that I often have with series. I don’t feel that this novel had a plot arc all its own, rather that the story has been paused and now I have to wait until next May, when Sapphire Blue is released, to continue it. I really enjoyed the plot, but I don’t think Ruby Red sees it all the way through. Typically plots consist of a kind of set up, an obstacle, efforts to overcome the obstacle, a climax, and a resolution, right? I don’t see any climax or resolution in this book. This trilogy looks like it’s going to be one big story that spans three books instead of being made of three individuals arcs, per each novel, that all contribute to the trilogy’s main arc. This kind of annoys me… I like to have something resolved when I finish a book and I don’t feel like I got any answers, only questions. The story has a good pace. It never dawdles, but makes consistent progress. I just wish it progressed to a resolution of some sort.

I recommend this novel to fans of Linda Buckley-Archer’s Time Traveler’s Trilogy, which begins with Gideon the Cutpurse. Or, if you enjoyed Ruby Red, try out Buckley-Archer’s novels.

Review: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

genre: realistic fiction
age: YA
rating: 8/8 tentacles

synopsis
To her friends and family, Frankie-Landau Banks is just a little girl who can’t take care of herself, but she’s fed up with being patronized. When she heads off to her sophomore year at the same elite boarding school her father and older sister attended, Frankie becomes a part of her new boyfriend’s group of friends—confident, carefree boys who get up to all sorts of hijinks—and Frankie is having the time of her life until she realizes that none of them see her as an individual, but as an accessory of Matthew’s. Then Matthew begins ditching her for his best friend, always giving a vague excuse and avoiding her questions and Frankie decides she won’t put up with it. She follows him one night, and discovers that he and his friends are a part of the Order of the Basset Hounds, a secret society her father often cryptically reminisced about with his “Old Boy” school chums. Now she knows why she has been kept on the outside of things. Even though she is just as intelligent and as bold as them, perhaps even more so, she is girl, and the Bassets are a boy’s club. Frankie takes this as a personal insult. They think she’s just a pretty little girl who needs to be rescued and protected? Not good enough for their club? They think she’s content being arm candy? Well then she’ll prove them wrong. Frankie comes up with the perfect plan.

feminism
Frankie is a very strong female protagonist. She’s sharp, intelligent, clever, and a ruthless strategist. I kind of want to be her. Lockhart’s portrayal of Frankie’s values, her anger, and her urge to prove herself makes it easy to relate to her. As I watched all of the adults in her life (even her boyfriend and sister) essentially respond to Frankie’s frustrations at the school’s patriarchal mindset with: “There, there. Find something more pleasant to occupy your time, little Bunny Rabbit. Go sew a frilly apron or nibble on a carrot,” I shared her rage. I wanted to forcefully shove all of them off their high horses.

Even today, though women can vote and are ostensibly considered an equal gender, it’s difficult to get rid of centuries of perceived masculine superiority. People who claim to view the sexes without prejudice often have some inherited misconceptions lurking in the crevices of their subconscious. Sometimes they call this prejudice “tradition.” This is the case at Alabaster Prep. Frankie points out that the administration is primarily masculine. The “boys only” Basset Order provides further evidence of the school’s patriarchal mindset. She notices with irritation the way her boyfriend speaks to her as if she really were the weaker sex. When they first meet, Frankie has just fallen off her bicycle and Matthew runs over to help. He offers to show her around, even after she has told him she’s attended the school for a year, as if she were completely useless and the only way he knows to interact with her is to adopt the role of savior, of escort, and hence: of superiority.

It is this unacknowledged prejudice that Frankie rails against throughout the course of the school year—a fight roughly equivalent to repeatedly slamming one’s head against a closed door. It’s like arguing with idiots: you can’t use reason as a weapon against irrationality, so what hope is there of winning? Whenever Frankie confronts any of the boys about their behavior they claim loyalty, tradition, brotherhood. “But what if I was a boy?” Frankie would say. “Then you wouldn’t treat me like this.” And they agree, without realizing that by doing so, they are admitting to prejudice. It sees like a losing battle, and the outrageous double standard at the conclusion of the novel only solidifies its depressingly apparent futility.

sociology and the panopticon
The novel also looks at feminism through a sociological lens, particularly by illuminating the way that unwritten rules or societal expectations (like sexism: different expectations for males and females) can govern the behavior of a society even though there are no real repercussions for breaking these rules. In class, Frankie learns about a theory that can explain this type of behavior based on a prison design called the Panopticon, in which an impression of constant surveillance is cultivated in order to motivate inmates to adhere to rules out of a fear that they are always being watched, which allows wardens to get by with a limited amount of actual surveillance. I think Orwell was responding to the same phenomenon when he invented Big Brother and Thought Police, playing on a general fear of being watched. When Frankie writes a paper on a number of societies and cults that intentionally break these unwritten rules as political statements or to gain a sense of freedom, she gets all sorts of ideas. Why let ourselves be governed by the traditions of our society and its unspoken expectations? Why be afraid of refusing to succumb to an accepted path or an outdated tradition? Why not break free?

word play
Lockhart tells Frankie’s story with an obvious delight in word play. Frankie comes up with something she calls “the neglected positive,” “false neglected positive,” and the “imaginary neglected positive,” where she removes negative prefixes and uses the uncommon or technically incorrect base words in every day conversation. She often tells her friends that she is “gruntled” (from disgruntled) and after getting ready for a party with her friend Trish, declares them “sheveled” (from disheveled), to which Trish replies, “You’re sheveled. I’m a normal person.” Matthew corrects Frankie’s grammatical fun and explains the error of her inventiveness, a response that is very telling about his outlook on the fixedness of other aspects of life. Frankie’s playfulness and curiosity in what happens when you take things apart and put them together in new ways appears in her fun with words and in all of the politically symbolic pranks she plans. In many ways, this book is about pulling apart accepted ideas, being open and innovative, of thinking outside the box, of being able to shift our perceptions. I am reminded of Ender Wiggin’s assertion that “The enemy’s gate is down!”

One last thing, and it’s a spoiler so don’t read any further if you haven’t read the book yet:

the battle
When all is revealed at the conclusion of the novel, Frankie’s role in the series of pranks that occurred receives a primarily negative reaction. Her family seems taken aback by her involvement and begins to regard her with suspicion, but they stop bugging her about being helpless. Good. They finally see her as an individual of consequence. However, all of her “friends” involved with the Bassets coldly reject her. When Alpha took credit for her actions to save face, her pranks were considered genius. But when Alpha gets caught—ALPHA, not Frankie—and she confesses to Matthew, he immediately turns against her, or perhaps you can’t turn on someone to whom you were never loyal. He runs off to the headmaster to tell on her like a little five year old, because as a new offender, her punishment will be less harsh than Alpha’s. He doesn’t give her a chance to turn herself in, which I think is another instance of underestimation on Matthew’s part. I really hate him.

When her identity as the authority behind the pranks becomes known, she gets called a liar and a psychopath. She tells Matthew that he lied to her too, but he rejects this accusation. He was being loyal to a brotherhood! NOPE. Bullshit. His reason for lying may have been loyalty. But he still lied. And Frankie had reasons for her lies as well. Who is he to decide that his lies were more justified than hers? Did he forget that the order was BETTER when Frankie was secretly governing it? What I can’t stand is the way the perception of the pranks flip flops depending on whose name is attached to them. Alpha planned it? Oh, wonderful. He’s so clever, what fun. Wait, it was Frankie? LIAR! PSYCHOPATH! MANIPULATOR! I think this name calling stems from a feeling of being outsmarted, of being proven wrong. The Bassets are so stuck in their belief that they are strong, invincible, wonderful, clever men, that when Frankie proves herself to be more capable than the best of them, instead of accepting this new idea and applauding her ingenuity, they pout like children and call her names. I am in awe of Frankie. I am proud of her for not tolerating belittlement, for seeing a way to prove herself and accepting the challenge, for not giving in. The fact that no one sees this—not her peers, not her teachers, not her parents—surprises and depresses me. A psychopath? Preposterous. She is genius.

Review: The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

genre: sci-fi, mystery
age: YA
rating: 4/8 tentacles

This novel starts out with great promise. Jenna wakes up from a coma with no memories of her life or family. A strange woman who introduces herself as “mother” claims that Jenna’s memory loss is the result of an accident, but no one bothers to elaborate any further. Jenna begins to notice other things that don’t add up and when she questions them, her mother answers vaguely and quickly changes the subject.

At this point, I am super excited. What is going on!? Are these people her real family? Was she really in a coma? Why has she been hidden away in a neighborhood where no one knows her? Where are the rest of the people that were surely in her life before the “accident”? I love a good mystery, especially when it smacks of conspiracy.

Sadly, the story goes downhill from here. All my crazy conspiracy expectations get dashed to the ground. The real answers are pretty interesting, but the author doesn’t do nearly as much as she could with them. To top it off, the book doesn’t even have a legitimate climax, which significantly contributed to my “that’s it?” feeling. Also, the incessant quoting of Walden annoyed me. If I wanted to read Walden, I would have bought Walden.

I did like Jenna as a character. She comes off as almost robotically unfeeling in the beginning. The people around her have known and loved her for her whole life, and she is just meeting them now. It is understandable for her emotionlessness to stand out in contrast. As the story moves forward, we see Jenna learn and grow, become curious and independent, and develop new emotional connections. I just wish that Pearson delved a little deeper into the novel’s world and took Jenna (and us) much further.

Review: Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King

genre: mystery
age: YA
rating: 7/8 tentacles

Vera Dietz has lost her best friend Charlie twice: first when he betrayed her, and again when he died under mysterious and unsavory circumstances. Vera knows something that might clear Charlie’s name, but isn’t sure she’s ready to share. Please Ignore Vera Dietz is about the courage it takes to break through the safe facade of normalcy—in whose shadows the twisting, choking roots of lies and hidden evils flourish.

King’s writing is strong and illuminating, her world and characters solid. Vera, the primary narrator, is sarcastic, intelligent, independent, and a little weird. I like her. It is easy to sympathize with her bitter regret of Charlie’s death—easy to feel the pain of Vera’s loss because halfway through the book I missed Charlie too. King’s alternating perspectives create nuance and depth. We get to hear from Vera’s dad and accounts from the deceased Charlie and the Pagoda (a town landmark) lend a dark quirkiness to the novel. Its most striking success is the clarity with which I can see through the prose of the story, how the characters and their lives become more real than the printed words before my eyes.

Vera’s tale is dark, funny, mysterious, and heartbreaking. It is honest: there is a sad, ringing truth to the tangle of emotions Vera struggles with after Charlie’s death and this honesty plays a large role in my response to the novel. I look forward to reading King’s other work.

Review: Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

genre: adventure/satire
age: YA
rating: 4/8 tentacles

A plane carrying contestants in the Miss Teen Dream Beauty Pageant crash lands on an island where the girls realize that everything society has conditioned them to value (meeting societal beauty standards, owning the right things, winning titles, etc) no longer matter. All that matters on the island is survival.

Here is my review in the form of bullet points:

-At times, a little cartoonish. I often felt like I was reading a comic, which for me means that the choppiness made my brain start to hurt after a while and begged me for a nice, deep flowing river of prose it could sink into. At other times, the writing was lovely. I read lines I liked out to whoever was sitting nearby as I came across them:

Night crouched around them, a hungry patient animal. (Page 26)

-Beauty Queens obviously has a message, which I interpret as: ignore societal standards of beauty, don’t get taken in by the consumerist agenda, and be true to your Self. I think Bray fell somewhere in between telling and showing in her communication of this message. Maybe the line between these two things is a fence and she is climbing over, balance on the edge, tipping precariously into the yard of Mr. Telling: the annoying neighbor. I say this because the argument lurking very close to the surface of the story feels one-sided. I don’t disagree with it, but I would have appreciated shades of gray.

-I like MaryLou’s story the best. It is well told, although the point Bray is trying to make with it seems a bit backwards. Perhaps dated. She implies that girls are pressured to be pure and chaste and that it’s okay to succumb to your wild side, to give in to passion. This message might be better addressed to girls in poodle skirts. Nowadays, the pressure is in the opposite direction. Girls try to look mature and sexy. They put on short skirts and lip gloss and go dancing in clubs. I think maybe they need to hear that it’s okay to wear sweatpants and a purity ring. Or… That both options are fine and and they should do whatever makes them comfortable, to ignore pressure in either direction. Hello, shades of gray.

-I. Did. Not. Like. Those. Pirate. Boys. Their description brought to mind bulky, long-haired Fabio’s with British accents and fake tans. Just gross. Not attractive. At all. Which made the fact that I was TOLD they WERE attractive more annoying. Maybe I was told the beauty queen girls thought they were attractive. But Eew. Their rippling muscles and perfect hair seemed out of place in a story promoting feminism and inner beauty. The girl’s interaction with them seemed to imply that if you are accept yourself, all the beefed up hunks will want you. It provided a superficial prize for a very un-superficial endeavor. Why couldn’t the girl’s reward for learning to transcend the expectations of society and to find confidence in their flaws be happiness and self respect? Why did it have to be man meat? Ugh. Must leave disgusting pirate bros and move to next bullet point.

-I liked Taylor after… things happened.

-Although I’ve heard some complaints about the commercial parodies, I really enjoyed them. Their pointed satire amused me. The footnotes, however, got tedious after a while, except for the boy band spoofs. I got a kick out of those. Hot Vampire Boyz? Let Me Shave Your Legs Tonight, Girl? I think that might be Justin Bieber’s new single, har har har. I never really got into the whole boy band thing but I did like a smattering of N*SYNC songs, so I appreciated the throw back.

-The plot was too rushed and disjointed to completely absorb me. I feel mean making complaints about Beauty Queens because I really like Libba Bray and I love The Gemma Doyle Trilogy, but I really think this book could have been better if some of the tongue-in-cheek was balanced out with more depth, or more gravity, or more realism. This book needed a stronger anchor. Also, I just prefer the type of writing Bray does in Gemma’s books and I keep waiting for more of that. I believe she is currently working on another occult trilogy called The Diviners, for which I am very excited. Maybe that will satisfy my need for more Gemma.


P.S. Doctor Who reference = automatic win: “How she wished she had a sonic screwdriver…”

Review: Entwined by Heather Dixon

genre: fantasy
age: children's/YA
rating: 4/8 tentacles

After their mother’s death, twelve princesses are forced into a strict mourning period by their distant father, the King. Dancing is their only solace in this dark time, but their father catches them and berates them for insulting the memory of their mother with what appears to be celebration. When the girls discover a magical secret passage that leads them to a hidden room of enchantment deep inside their old castle, they thrill at this solution to their boredom and grief: here they can dance to their heart’s content without the knowledge of the king. Keeper, the mysterious guardian of the princesses’ new found ballroom, sparks the girls’ suspicion as he grows colder and more controlling with every visit and the princesses wonder if they might have been better off never discovering the room at all.
Entwined is based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, and still contains many fairy tale like elements: repetition, a Good protagonist versus a force of evil, poverty, royalty, magic and enchantments, etc. Heather Dixon’s writing is light and whimsical and I found the novel mildly enjoyable, though I did feel it was a bit young. Entwined seems mis-categorized as a young adult novel. It would be much more accurately represented as a book for children. In fact, as I read, I kept trying to picture it as a Disney movie.

The portrayal of dance in Entwined—or rather, the portrayal of the sisters’ relationship to dance—struck me as off-putting. Every time protagonist Azalea felt the slightest bit stressed she said to herself, “I know! I’ll just do a complicated curtsy or a fancy dance move and then I’ll feel all better!” And then Dixon would proceed to explain Azalea’s precise motions in great detail using dance terminology. This level of detail seems self-indulgent. Knowing the specifics of all of Azalea’s movements did nothing to further the story and I still couldn’t tell exactly what she was doing. I must conclude that the author put the information in only to display her own great knowledge of curtsies and dance. Dancing was mentioned by the sisters with almost religious reverence and this exaggeration made their interest seem overwrought to the point of ridiculousness. This is why I kept trying to imagine the story as a Disney movie: to see if things would seem so ridiculous if they were in a musical cartoon format. They did. I wish Dixon had used more of a fairy ring type representation of dance: the feverish frenzied spell of it. I wanted the wild ecstasy of Yeats’s fae.

I liked some of the characters, mostly Bramble (for her spunk) and Clover (for her shyness). Azalea was all right, a bit wishy-washy. Bradford was bland and I got sick of hearing about his rumpled hair. I liked Fairweller. Less so when I found out he had a mustache and I couldn’t get the image of those creepy pre-pubescent lip caterpillars out of my head. I enjoyed the magic segments, though I wish Dixon could have delved a little deeper into the cold, twisting, darkness of enchantment (a la Lev Grossman). The Keeper was sufficiently smooth and eerie and I couldn’t shake the impression that he would make a wonderful Sailor Moon villain.

I recommend this to anyone looking for some light, youthful whimsy with a splash of Disney-esque fairy magic.

Review: Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

genre: realistic fiction
age: YA
rating: 7/8 tentacles

Clay Jensen walks around the town listening to audio cassette tapes that Hannah Baker recorded before she committed suicide. On the first tape, Hannah announces that thirteen people have played a role in her suicide and that the tapes should be sent to each one of them. When Clay receives the tapes, he knows he must be on them and frantically tries to remember what he might have done to earn a mention. As he listens, he dreads the moment he’ll hear Hannah say his name.

I read this book in one sitting.

The narration via tape/listener format is a bit unconventional and is a clever way of adding a bit of mystery and suspense to the story, since we already know how it ends. Wanting to know what the thirteen people did to Hannah and why Clay, who was only ever a friendly acquaintance to her, is on the tapes at all kept me intrigued. Allowing the dead girl to narrate creates an interesting dynamic. Hannah gets the chance to explain herself to everyone she believes played a roll in her decision to die and she gives the people who knew her a chance to understand—something many people who have lost loved ones never get. Readers listen to Hannah with Clay and his reactions to what she says on her tapes add new perspective.

The story was sad, but not in a cheap, melodramatic, touchy-feely kind of way. I grew to like Hannah as I read and found myself hoping for some kind of twist in the end where we’d find out she only let her classmates believe she’d killed herself so that she could hide away while her tapes were passed around and then come back at the end and all the bad people would be exposed and punished and everyone would be nicer to Hannah and she and Clay could be friends. I know it’s ridiculous, and I didn’t actually expect it to happen, but I didn’t want Hannah to be dead. Knowing that she is dead through all that we learn about her lends a certain hopelessness to the story. As Clay grows to understand what Hannah went through, he gets to know her in a way he never did while she lived and now—now that she finally has confided in people through her tapes—he sees all the ways he could have helped her. But what good is this knowledge and understanding when she’s already gone?

Jay Asher admits his intention to convey a message with this book, but he does so very tactfully, without sacrificing the story to it. We feel the message as Clay feels it because it is expressed on an emotional level rather than put directly into words. It’s the kind of message, and story, that will stay with you.

Review: Wither by Lauren DeStefano

genre: sci-fi/futuristic
age: YA
rating: 7/8 tentacles

Scientists have finally cured disease, significantly extending the life expectancy of an entire generation. As everyone happily grows into healthy old age, they are horrified to discover that the genetic manipulation that made their cure possible manifests itself as illness and genetic anomaly in their children, all of whom unfailingly develop a fatal virus at a specific age: girls dying at twenty and boys at twenty-five. This significantly truncated life expectancy creates a whole world of problems. Children orphaned by young parents crowd the streets. Some freeze, some starve, and desperation to avoid this fate drives others to become guinea pigs in the search for a new cure. Life is particularly dangerous for girls, who are captured in hoards and sold as prostitutes or as prospective wives for wealthy young men. Protagonist Rhine Ellery is kidnapped, forced into marriage, and imprisoned in a luxurious mansion where she is given everything she could possibly want—except her freedom.

When I began reading Wither, I was immediately struck by the skillfulness of Lauren DeStefano’s prose. Her descriptions are sharp, poetic, and illuminating:

After so much time spent riding in the darkness of the truck, we have all fused together. We are one nameless thing sharing this strange hell.

I can almost see straight through her words, or rather feel myself pulled through them as one is pulled through sleep into a dream (or a nightmare), and I emerge into a dark world of secrecy and stifling imprisonment. This degree of clarity allows me to forget that I’m reading and imagine instead that I stand in an extravagantly decorated room of Vaughn’s mansion, watching Rhine, Jenna, Cecily, Linden, and Gabriel live their lives around me. These characters are well-developed and multi-dimensional. They are flawed like real people and more likable because of it. Also like real people, they change and grow and reveal new layers as we get closer to them. Cecily is a prime example of this.

Behind the girls’ captivity lurks a sinister mystery: Vaughn endlessly experimenting in the dank basement and always smelling faintly of embalming fluids; Rhine’s hazy memory of her arrival at the mansion: a small cold room, Vaughn’s looming face, needles; half uncovered secrets; jarring incongruities. All this sparked my curiosity and drew me almost hypnotically deeper and deeper into the story.

As a protagonist (and person), I not only like Rhine, but admire her. Although she feels powerless and afraid, she remains strong and in control of herself. She possesses a kind of gracefulness in the way she accepts the calamity of her situation and smoothly refocuses on plans of escape. We are told at one point that she is only sixteen, but she seems much more mature than any sixteen year old I’ve ever known—perhaps more mature than I am at twenty-three. The tragedy of her parents’ deaths and the harsh, survivalist life she led with her brother Rowan has aged her and brought her poise and demeanor beyond her years.

I do wish that DeStefano had developed Rowan’s character a little further. From Rhine’s longing for him, we glean that he is stubborn and protective, that he cares about her. But I don’t really feel as if I know him as a person and if I did, I would empathize with Rhine’s worry and need to return to him much more forcefully. Her escape would feel more pressing. I enjoyed reading this story because I could sink so deeply into it and although observing the characters and wondering about a cure for the virus and what Vaughn was playing at was enough to make me keep reading, I think there could have been more tension—more hook.

Placing more emphasis on Rhine’s escape plan might have added this. She wants to escape and often worries about her brother, but her efforts to actually get away are very passive. We are told in summary that she has scoured her floor of the mansion for possible escape routes without success but apart from this, her plan is mainly to do nothing, although she does endeavor to earn the trust of her husband so that she might eventually take advantage of it. If her escape were more urgent, the growing feelings she has for her sister wives and even her husband will make the story all the more deliciously complicated. This, though, is my only complaint and it’s a very small one.
Wither is the first installment in The Chemical Garden Trilogy. The sequel, Fever, will be released in February 2012. I’ll be pre-ordering it. Excerpt available here.

Review: Ghostgirl by Tonya Hurley

genre: paranormal
age: YA
recommend to: fans of Tim Burton and Henry Selick
rating: 4/8 tentacles

High-schooler Charlotte Usher is essentially invisible: she has no friends and most of her classmates simply ignore her. She has spent all summer diligently making herself over into the type of person she is certain popular boy Damen Dylan will want and feels confident that all her dreams are about to come true. Sadly, just as she is setting her plan into motion, she chokes to death on a gummy bear. Now literally invisible, but still determined, Charlotte clings to her plan and desperately looks for a way to make it happen—viewing her death as merely a minor setback.

Ghostgirl is a fun, ghoulish read that fans of Tim Burton and Henry Selick will probably enjoy. (I would love to see them do a film of this.) Charlotte’s quirkiness and determined optimism save Ghostgirl from spiraling into a woe-is-me-I’m-invisible-and-alone sob story. Instead, Hurley’s novel reads like a delightfully and absurdly morbid teen quest for recognition.

I did have some issues with plot resolution, and not the kind that can be fixed by a sequel. The two major obstacles of the story are Charlotte’s pursuit of Damen and her ghosty pals’ attempts to save their drafty Victorian Manor, first from buyers and then from condemnation. In order to “pass on” they must successfully complete a task assigned to them by a mysterious higher power, which we find out at the start of the novel is “protecting” the house by keeping it uninhabited. They have a bit of trouble doing this because Charlotte, distracted by her designs on Damen, is not being very helpful and often inadvertently messes things up for the other ghosts. By the end of the book, the Damen plot thread is sufficiently resolved, but the Passing On business gets kind of glossed over.

(GETTING SPOILERY FOR A BIT)At the climax of the story, when Charlotte finally chooses responsibility over personal gain, there is a sort of Magical Hooray Moment when we find out that Charlotte’s decision means all the ghosts can pass on. I don’t buy it. It’s a bit too deus ex machina for me. I don’t understand why all of the ghosts’ fates were resting on Charlotte’s epiphany of selflessness and not the resolution of their own issues. As a result of this, the conclusion felt bungled and vague. I wish it was set up more thoughtfully and also that Hurley elaborated more on all of the ghosts’ deaths. It might have been more effective for the ghosts to help each other solve/avenge each other’s deaths in order to pass over, especially since Hurley has already told us that each ghost came to a strange and unexpected end. Instead, they have to save an old house for no good reason except that someone told them to. (END SPOILING)

Ghostgirl made me chuckle at times and mutter “ugh gross” under my breath at others. I appreciated the Young Frankenstein and Edward Gorey references. The physical book is gorgeously designed, with it’s Gothic lettering, black and pink Victorian patterned endpapers, and the pink roses adorning each page. I will read the sequel if someone finds it and puts it in front of me.

Review: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

genre: sci-fi
age: all!
rating: 8/8 tentacles

At six years old, Ender Wiggin leaves his family behind to attend Battle School in outer space where the government attempts to mold him into someone they hope will rise up and defeat a terrifying alien race called Buggers.

Years of writing workshops have trained me to read critically and now I can’t help mentally editing everything I read. The weak points of a story seem to light up before my eyes and I am constantly asking myself: How would I make this better? Every once in a while, I come across a book or an author that transcends my editing abilities. Puts me in awe. Makes me despair of ever being a great author because how could I create something as astoundingly brilliant as this? Ender’s Game is one of these books.

I like novels that push me to think, to solve puzzles, to strategize. Looking at the world through young Ender Wiggin’s eyes was an enlightening experience. He is always coolly observing, calculating consequences, manipulating his environment and the people around him like pieces in a game of chess. He consistently surprises everyone with his ingenuity and unconventional solutions to every challenge the government and the Battle School throws at him. As I read, I found myself wishing I could absorb some of his genius. And he is a genius, but beneath his lofty intellect he is also a tired, lonely, little boy who wants only to be left alone, to avoid hurting people, and to go home to the sister he loves. Readers can admire him as a hero for his skill and dogged persistence under pressure but we can also love him as a person for his sadness and compassion. And I do love Ender.

The Battle Room and Ender’s computer game are fascinating and imaginative additions to a plot containing suspense, heart, and great insight as well as an excellent twist. I was also impressed by Card’s use of dialogue. If you follow my blog, you probably noticed that I couldn’t resist copying down quotation after quotation (and sharing them all). I didn’t want to forget Card’s words.

I am currently reading Children of the Mind and though I’ve immensely enjoyed each installment of Ender’s Saga, my favorite remains Ender’s Game.

Review: Matched by Ally Condie

genre: dystopia
age: YA
recommend to: people who only half pay attention while reading
rating: 3/8 tentacles

Cassia Reyes has grown up in a world where every detail of life is dictated by Society, right down to it whether or not individuals are suitable for marriage and whom statistics select as their ideal spouse. Cassia has complete faith in this system until she witnesses what appears to be a mistake with her results. She then begins to wonder whether the choices the Society makes for her and her peers are really the right ones and, as her doubt solidifies, she questions the entire worldview the Society has presented to her. Is it only a facade built up to mask the Society’s careful regulation of their people’s ignorance?

Matched reminds me of a Teen Romance version of Lois Lowry’s The Giver. Both are set in dystopias governed by a group (the Society and the Elders) that uses strict control as a tool to manufacture their idea of perfect life. The most successful aspect of this book is Condie’s concept. Her futuristic dystopian society’s system of choosing romantic partners based on statistics is recongnizable as a form of our increasingly more common online dating trend. Matched asks us to imagine a world where this option is the only one. It’s fun to think about.

However, Matched fails to provide a sufficient amount of tension. I can see where Condie tried to create suspense (the Official spying on Cassia, her constant nervousness at being caught out in her disobediance, the mystery behind the red pill) but there just wasn’t enough at stake to really hook me. Also, I didn’t particularly like Cassia and I’m sure this played a role in my apathy. I prefer strong, willful, intelligent characters and found Cassia’s brand of naivete a bit irritating. One could argue that she is what her environment made her but she is naive in a simpleminded, vacant way that, say, Jonas of The Giver is not. The Giver has been one of my favorites since childhood and I couldn’t help comparing the two books as I read. Matched inevitably suffered from the comparison and I suppose some of my disappointment in the novel arose from this.

The story would have been significantly improved by more fleshed out characters (I didn’t like or sympathize with any of them), a tighter focus on the plot, a swifter pace, and more layers and complexity. This book definitely could have used some quality subplots.

I wish I could offer more specific examples of why I’m dissatisifed with this novel but am already forgetting it. Matched possesses a misty, ephemeral quality. It enveloped me briefly, like a passing cloud, and is already fading from my mind. I probably won’t read the sequel.

Review: Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

genre: fantasy/steampunk
age: YA
recommend to: people who like The Mortal Instruments, steampunk, adventure, and a good yarn
rating: 7/8 tentacles


Set in 19th Century England, Clockwork Angel (Book One in The Infernal Devices Trilogy) by Cassandra Clare, follows the adventures of sixteen-year-old Tessa Gray. After the death of her aunt and guardian, Tessa’s brother sends for her to come stay with him in London. When she arrives, a mysterious stranger kidnaps her and takes her to the home of the Dark Sisters, where she is then imprisoned.

Tessa is suddenly pulled into a shadowy and mysterious world she never knew existed, populated by demons, vampires, and warrior descendants of angels called Shadowhunters. She begins to realize that her past is full of secrets that seem to inexplicably link her with this world as she struggles to solve the mystery of her strange power and to escape the clutches of the villainous Magister, who is desperate capture her.

I would first like to say that Will Herondale is a giant douchebag and I can’t stand him. Unless he’s been possessed by the demon of douchebagery, there is no excuse for his selfish, obnoxious behavior. I don’t care if his rudeness is a front cultivated to mask his mysterious inner turmoil or if he is sometimes nice. If he stood in front of me, I would gladly slap him across the face.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest…

I actually enjoyed Clockwork Angel very much. This is the first novel in what will be a trilogy set in the same world as The Mortal Instruments, but several centuries earlier. I love Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series and looked forward to getting a peek at some Shadowhunter history. I also love period pieces, expecially when they’re set in London, so when I found out about this book I thought: Mortal Instruments plus Victorian England? A sure formula for an excellent story. The Fantasy genre of Clare’s books lends an interesting dynamic to writing a historical prequel, namely the possibility that some characters present in The Mortal Instruments (vampires, warlocks, etc.) may have easily been alive in 19th Century England. Every time I came across the name of someone I knew from Mortal Instruments, I was very excited.

Expect the same adventure and mystery found in The Mortal Instruments with complexities added by the 19th Century setting: the subjugated role of women, a strict etiquette, and the master/servant relationship, among others. The novel is dark and creepy, with a hint of steampunk. The characters feel real (Jem is my favorite), the plot is intriguing and moves forward steadily with unforeseen twists, and the conclusion left me eager for the sequel.
Clockwork Angel can be enjoyed without having read The Mortal Instrunments. Readers who like this book might also enjoy Clockwork by Philip Pullman or the Sally Lockhart series by the same. Or, if you are already fans of these, pick up Clockwork Angel. I believe the next installment of the trilogy, Clockwork Prince, will be released this December. I can’t wait!

Review: The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials by James Dashner

genre: sci-fi/dystopia
age: YA
recommend to: indiscriminate lovers of dystopia
rating: 3/8 tentacles

Thomas suddenly finds himself stranded in a strange place called the Glade with no memories but his name. The Glade lies at the center of a labyrinth teeming with venomous monsters and is populated by a group of boys who rely on discipline and structure to stay alive, never losing hope that their perserverance will eventually lead them to escape their unfathomable prison. Thomas’s arrival is the first in a series of events that begins to overturn everything the Gladers thought they knew.

Initially, the premise sparked my interest. I love mysteries and immediately wanted answers to all of the questions Thomas and his friends struggle with: where did they come from, what is the Glade, who sent them there and for what purpose, what’s the deal with the labyrinth etc. As I read on, I found that I did not particularly like any of the characters or care what happened to them—partly because they weren’t quite developed enough to feel like real people and partly for subjective reasons.

Dashner’s writing often seems flat and contrived and is peppered with phrases that, at second glance, make no sense. I was also put off by the Gladers’ slang. In M. T. Anderson’s Feed, characters in a futuristic society use slang that demonstrates the gradual deterioration of language and appears to have evolved over a long period of time. Dashner’s attempt at slang seems random and unnecessary. It adds nothing to the plot and does not seem to have evolved organically. It is, rather, thrust upon the characters in what seems to be a flimsy imitation of other Sci-Fi works, in which having a distinct way of speaking has a more substantial function than decoration.

The plot through both novels felt loose and disjointed—a serial collection of obstacles instead of a flowing narrative propelled by cause and effect. I pushed myself to finish The Maze Runner and picked up the second book in hopes of receiving the answers I was denied at the conclusion of the first. I have read two thirds of the trilogy now, and still only have enough information to put together a vague picture of what’s happening.

I recommend this trilogy to those who like dystopian novels unconditionally and aren’t as picky as me when it comes to the technicalities of writing. I’m not yet sure if I’ll read the third book when it’s published—I still want to know what’s going on, but I don’t think I will enjoy the novel very much unless is an improvement on the previous two.