All posts tagged science fiction

Fever Book Review

Rhine and Gabriel have escaped the mansion, but they’re still in danger. Outside, they find a world even more disquieting than the one they left behind.

-Amazon Book Description

Fever by Lauren DeStefano

If you recall, a long time ago I wrote a review of a book called Wither. I enjoyed it and was really excited to see where the series was going. The sequel picked up right where Wither left of; Rhine and Gabe have just escaped from the mansion. So what do they do next? Life on the run isn’t easy and somehow Rhine and Gabe find themselves in a prostitution camp where they are a two-person cabaret act (an elegant one, we are told) to entertain wealthier guests. The camp is glitzy but Rhine and Gabe aren’t fooled. There are drugs, extortion; their chances of escaping are slim. Yet after spending hardly anytime there, they manage to do just that.

Right around here is where I got disappointed in the book.

First, I realized the writing was actually terribly average. For some reason, I had placed the book down. When I picked it up, I thought, “Wow. I could’ve picked up any old book; there is nothing unique about this one.” Which may be harsh, but it’s true.

The plot was the allure last time; it was secretive and drew you in. But here? The secret’s out. There was nothing to hold you. Rhine and Gabe argued all the time and they both quickly lost their charm. Rhine— she kept thinking about Linden. Didn’t she run away from him because she didn’t like what being his wife entailed? And she has Gabe! The last book was not  love triangle, so I couldn’t understand why this one was trying to be one.

Rhine and Gabe traverse Rhine’s old home after escaping the camp. They don’t accomplish much. In fact, none of my questions were answered. Rhine becomes obsessed with finding her brother and that’s where the book ends. With her on the hunt. Honestly, I feel like it was totally unnecessary, this whole book. I have zero interest in finishing this series and if one of you eventually does, let me know how it ended.

Ri’s Rating:

Q.5/QQQQQ
1.5/5


0. Couldn’t get past chapter one for fear of wanting to kill myself. Book induced suicide…

1: Yuck. Ew. Below Average. Probably didn’t even read the middle and skipped to the end.

2. Ok. Would’ve been better if I’d written the ending and everything else.

3. Not bad at all. Very enjoyable. Quite nice. Recommendable.

4. My kind of book. Near ideal, but something was a little off (annoying names, bad ending, that sort of thing).

5. WOW. Makes me wonder why people watch T.V when this is out there. Really liked it. Don’t expect to see this often.

6 and above. What I want my book to be.

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by Ri on May 15, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Ri on May 15, 2012

http://thespottedmushroom.com/2012/05/15/fever-book-review/

Divergent Book Review

One choice can transform you

-Book Description

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Hey. So. It’s been a while. But in that while I have read so many books that I will more than make up for my absence, starting with this bad boy right here.

I’ve heard rumors that this film has already been optioned for a movie, and I can see why. The plot is simple, but engaging: it’s futuristic world. In this city, people live with in factions; each faction values something different (courage, wisdom, etc). When you are sixteen, you get sorted into a faction. Then each faction has you go through an initiation process. If you fail the process, you are factionless and akin to an untouchable.

Our main character comes from Abnegation, which are selfless people. She finds her life enjoyable, but a little dull. So when she discovers that she belongs to no faction (she isn’t sorted) she chooses Dauntless as she admires their daredevil behaviour and bravery. But the initiation process for Dauntless is brutal, and she comes out of it realizing that the factions have ripped society apart, and that maybe people shouldn’t be just one thing. Why can’t I be Dauntless and Abnegation, she questions.

I wondered the same thing too. I could understand the benefits of this society (selfless leaders, super intelligent doctors) but it didn’t seem plausible. I mean, what would have brought this on? A strong dystopia has a good back story, but this one was lacking.

However, it’s got tons of action. So much. I don’t even know how to deal with it. I mean, if you thought Hunger Games had a lot going on, you were wrong. Because mostly, Katniss sits in a cave. Here, Tris is all over the place, all the time. Something is always happening, and even when things slow down, her mind is jittery enough that you don’t feel it.

Which is why I say that this book was made to be a movie. The writing was blunt, as is the style today, and though basic, I thought it suited the sparse Dauntless lifestyle. It flows just like a movie, like Harry Potter, or Transformers. You’re quickly introduced to the characters, their enemies, their friends, their lifestyle. The brunt of it is spent exploring the new world, and building a mystery. The end is a climax, with action, a villain, and a hint of a sequel.

I’m not going to lie: I enjoyed this book.

I wouldn’t call it the pinnacle of character development, the most original tale, or anything. It was simple, in a good way. Sure it followed a lot of the natural dystopian tropes, but it did have me questioning what I would do in Tris’ shoes. I’m not sure I could have handled Dauntless initiation. It’s a little to brutal for me. At the same time though, I’m not sure I would want to be in any other faction.

I am loath to say this, but there is a romance here. It’s nice, definitely useful in terms of plot, sometimes a little predictable. But I didn’t really want to mention it because besides that, this book is pretty gender neutral and I would like for men to give it a chance. Be brave, boys.

So, kids. If you’re looking for a fun dystopian read and feel like investing a series that I think is definitely going somewhere, here it is: Divergent. The sequel should be out soon, so don’t worry too much if you end up liking it like, a lot. I suspect quite a few people will.

Ri’s Rating:

QQQ/QQQQQ
3/5


0. Couldn’t get past chapter one for fear of wanting to kill myself. Book induced suicide…

1: Yuck. Ew. Below Average. Probably didn’t even read the middle and skipped to the end.

2. Ok. Would’ve been better if I’d written the ending and everything else.

3. Not bad at all. Very enjoyable. Quite nice. Recommendable.

4. My kind of book. Near ideal, but something was a little off (annoying names, bad ending, that sort of thing).

5. WOW. Makes me wonder why people watch T.V when this is out there. Really liked it. Don’t expect to see this often.

6 and above. What I want my book to be.

4 Comments
by Ri on May 1, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Ri on May 1, 2012

http://thespottedmushroom.com/2012/05/01/divergent-book-review/

A Million Suns Book Review

“Eldest lied to you,” Marae says calmly, “because we lied to him.”

-pg 6

Book 1

A Million Suns by Beth Revis

This book was good. Let me tell you how good it was.

So last we saw Elder and Amy, they had just discovered that Godspeed, bound for a new earth deep in space, was not moving. They had also just killed the Eldest (the leader at the time), making Elder (who was next in line) in charge. The story picks up just a few months after the last one, with everyone desperate to find answers to their questions. How can we get off this ship? Can we get it moving? How long can we last out here? What will happen to us?

Moving along with perfect pacing, the story addresses issues of government, leadership, society, and also the laws of physics. That last one especially– if the revelations at the end of the last book had you questioning the author’s intelligence, don’t worry: it was duly addressed!

As for the other problems, well, I think they are what make this book so strong. Not many dystopias actually have the characters– and you– questioning the effectiveness of different forms of government. Is keeping your people content bread and games worth the loss of individual freedoms? To what extent does democracy work? And most importantly, what makes a good leader?

For each concept, we see both Amy and Elder’s reactions to their often different opinions on the subject. And I loved the way Revis wrote their actions. Because Elder is just a kid. He’s like 16 or 17. Amy is about the same. They are young, but leadership and impossible decisions are thrust upon them. They rise to the challenge with startling realism. They make mistakes. They don’t always figure everything out in time. Everything Elder and Amy did was so perfectly real and the emotions they conveyed poked at my heart. I feel like I really know them.

I was at times angry and frustrated with them, but in a loving kind of way. I am way too emotionally invested in this story. It matters a lot to me whether or not these characters live or die.

One thing I especially like about Amy and Elder is that neither is a particular stereotype. They are kind of regular people, whose opinions are derived logically from their positions and experiences in life. I like that they don’t always agree and I really loved the dynamic between them. Some romances were meant to be– but what really stood out to me was Amy’s questioning of whether or not she liked Elder because sheliked Elderor because he was the only other teenager on the ship. It was interesting to watch her evolve.

And while we’re on the romance, I would like to point out this book’s lack of convinient make-out scenes. They were never forced in to small places together or left alone for unreasonable amounts of time. Things happened very…naturally between them.

I’d also like to address the fact that Amy was almost raped in the last book (for those of you who haven’t read it, the scene isn’t graphic, and is handled with tact; it’s not a reason to forgo the book). She is still dealing with the aftereffects of that (because who wouldn’t?) and it does play a role in her relationship with Elder. I thought this was very important makes it makes this issue out to be, well an issue. It doesn’t trivialize it down to a plot trope. Snaps for Revis.

Another fantastic element of this book was space. Space is always cool, and I loved that Revis set her dystopia out there. It makes it so much more unique, especially because they are so isolated. A lot of times in dystopias, there is the dystopian nation and like random wilderness surrounding it. It doesn’t make sense– where did the other 5 billion people go? But here, it is carefully thought out. Almost like in experiment in human nature. And the way Revis addresses space, the fact that she makes it so beautiful and haunting, makes the setting even cooler.

Revis in general is pretty good at world-building. The scope of Godspeed is thought out nicely, with little details (like the way the people on the ship speak) that make her story believable.

If I had to choose one thing that really sealed the deal on this book for me, I’d definitely say it was the fact that a seemingly typical dystopian plot was subsidized by a stronger over arching goal– they were on a mission to colonize a new planet. This mission drives a lot of the mystery and secrets and pulls the plot along nicely.

As for the ending, lemme just say that I never saw it coming. It was brilliant. It basically reinforced my belief that this book most certainly did not suffer from the middle-book doldrums.

There was one more thing that I wanted to say about this book, but I can’t remember now because at 18 years of age I am apparently losing my mind. While I’m still lucid, I’m going to give you one last piece of advice:

Read this series.

Ri’s Rating:

QQQQ/QQQQQ
4/5


0. Couldn’t get past chapter one for fear of wanting to kill myself. Book induced suicide…

1: Yuck. Ew. Below Average. Probably didn’t even read the middle and skipped to the end.

2. Ok. Would’ve been better if I’d written the ending and everything else.

3. Not bad at all. Very enjoyable. Quite nice. Recommendable.

4. My kind of book. Near ideal, but something was a little off (annoying names, bad ending, that sort of thing).

5. WOW. Makes me wonder why people watch T.V when this is out there. Really liked it. Don’t expect to see this often.

6 and above. What I want my book to be.

10 Comments
by Ri on March 1, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Ri on March 1, 2012

http://thespottedmushroom.com/2012/03/01/a-million-suns-book-review/

Enclave Book Review

When dark finally fell, I felt weary enough to sleep without worrying about the future. But when we woke, the world had changed.

-pg 217

Enclave by Ann Aguirre

So this book had such promise. Such. Promise. It’s about a girl from a society that lives in the remnants of the NYC underground with her clan (or enclave as the title suggests). In her world, you can be one of three things: Hunter, Builder, Breeder. Don’t worry if it sounds like they’re lacking crucial jobs here. Builders, it seems, can do just about anything. They make whatever you need. Not just houses, like I assumed. I also assume that their Elders (the rulers as you would expect) are just chosen from among the groups because there isn’t an Elder category.

But I’m getting off the topic. So, the girl– her name. She has one. I don’t remember. Let me look it up. Ah yes. The girl, Deuce, wants to be a hunter. Before we go any further though, let’s take a moment to admire that name choice. Yes. Deuce. Deuce being the same Deuce that, if Urban Dictionaried, carries the definition of well, crap. I don’t know why the author chose that name. I don’t know if she’s aware of this meaning. I’m not sure how she came up with it. But that’s it. That’s her name.

So Duece. She wants to be a hunter. She gets to a be a hunter. And after that, some stuff starts happening. She’s paired up with a dude named Fade to be her hunting partner and they go off to grab the grub in the underground tunnels and they run into these creatures called Freaks. Freaks are freakish and they attack humans and they’re pretty much the enemy of the underground world.

If questioned why these people can’t go above ground, Duece, our narrator dutifully explains that it’s because the sky rains fire and it’s just a bad place to live.

That’s about the first twenty or thirty pages of this book– a lot has happened in a very short time. The font size is small and the book is petite, but still, things move quickly and they don’t really ever slow down. This far into the story, I think that you, like me, would have a pretty good image of this world. It’s a harsh survival. The Enclave is tough and without mercy, which made sense to me seeing as a lax society would fail.  There are many dangerous things and contact with other human clans is limited. It’s solitary. It’s dark. It’s certainly not a place I want to be.

And it seems like a pretty good book. So far. But don’t get fooled– the whole thing falls apart.

It starts when Deuce and Fade are on their hunting trip. Like I said, it’s fast paced book. But as I was reading I started to notice that the plot fell very strictly into categories. Like episodes of a T.V series. There was the introduction, the hunting trip, the journey to the other city, the return, the escape…it was so sectional that it actually sort of ruined the story for me. It didn’t flow, you know?

But maybe that’s just a personal thing. So let’s pretend the structure was perfect. It’s a fast paced dystopia– how much fun, right? But then this romance thing pops up between Fade and Deuce and at first I was like, ugg, but it seemed okay. It wasn’t stealing the action. Until, towards the last fifty or so pages in the book, it turns into a love triangle and is never fully resolved. What. Is. This.

Seriously, why? It was a perfectly fine story without the romance. Plus romance, I suppose it would draw a few more girl readers in. But plus love triangle thrown in for no good reason? Just. Ug.

Okay. But say that wasn’t a problem. Say I was okay with that. Say I even loved that. Then, I still would have had this monstrous disappointment in, of all things, the plot.

Yes.

Plot.

Remember how I was all, sounds cool, right?

Well, I was wrong.

Because at first, it seemed like a harsh survival story and it was intense. But then it decided to become a dystopia. And there was some kind of secret rebellion growing in Deuce’s Enclave. And then she and Fade escape to the surface. Which turns out to be pretty lame. It’s just filled with gangs and stuff. And then they run away to a nice little city where everything is all la-de-da perfect.

Okay. So why doesn’t the dystopia idea work? Because it wasn’t a dystopia. The people were doing their jobs. They were staying alive. Their government perhaps killed a person every now and then, but hell, that all made sense. I mean, they’re living underground, having to fight off Freaks to survive! Life isn’t going to be perfect.

Yet Aguirre chose to play it as an opressive government that was keeping secrets from the people. For instance, they said the sky rained fire above ground. My thoughts on reading this was, “Sick, acid rain is burning the earth! What a horrible future. I’m sure that’s what drove them underground.” But it turns out this wasn’t true and once Duece finds out that this, and a few other things the Elders have said, don’t line up with reality, well she goes 100% anti-Enclave.

Why? WHY?

So the above ground lifestyle isn’t exactly what they thought– well, maybe things have changed in the past hundred years and the sky that once rained fire fixed itself. I mean, a few incorrect statements doesn’t merit a disownment of the people that gave you life and community. It’s not like her freedom’s were being oppressed. I suppose you could say that the Enclave did kill a few people, but seriously, this underground world is harsh as balls. I think a no mercy stance makes sense.

Also, Deuce in the beginning of the book punches a window out of an old subway car. Then, in the end, she has Fade explain what windows are to her. Even though she already knew.

Aasdhjaksdhklasd.

Okay. I see that first, half of my paragraphs have started with either okay or so and I apologize for that. Also, I’ve stopped making sense. I’m rambling. In short, this book was a messy conglomoration of Hunger Games and The Inferior. It was neither shocking, nor original. The last one-hundred pages were a drag. The plot was trying too hard to latch onto the new dystopian craze. The only good thing was that I found a dollar in it while I was flipping through looking for Deuce’s name. This book started out with promise and if it had stuck to it’s grit, ditched the romance and dystopian aspects, and been a gripping story of survival against all odds and perhaps a Freak invasion I probably would have liked it a lot more.

Unfortunately it wasn’t. However, I am a kind and generous person and if you would like to buy this book from me, I will sell it to you for $10 (including shipping– what a steal!). I have no idea why you would want a book that I just called awful, but hey, I don’t judge.

Ri’s Rating:

Q.5/QQQQQ
1.5/5


0. Couldn’t get past chapter one for fear of wanting to kill myself. Book induced suicide…

1: Yuck. Ew. Below Average. Probably didn’t even read the middle and skipped to the end.

2. Ok. Would’ve been better if I’d written the ending and everything else.

3. Not bad at all. Very enjoyable. Quite nice. Recommendable.

4. My kind of book. Near ideal, but something was a little off (annoying names, bad ending, that sort of thing).

5. WOW. Makes me wonder why people watch T.V when this is out there. Really liked it. Don’t expect to see this often.

6 and above. What I want my book to be.

5 Comments
by Ri on May 30, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in book review
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Posted by Ri on May 30, 2011

http://thespottedmushroom.com/2011/05/30/enclave-book-review/

The Adoration of Jenna Fox Book Review

How far would you go to save someone you love?

– Book Description

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

This review is going to be short. Partly because this book was short. Partly because I don’t have much to say.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. This story is about Jenna, a 17 year old girl that has just woken up from a year long comma. She doesn’t really know who she is and her parents try to give her memories back by making her watch home videos. Little by little she begins to remember, but the more she understands the more conflicted she becomes with the person (if she can still call herself that) that she is now and story behind how she got that way.

This was sci-fi. Kinda. As far as stories go, it was actually really quiet. Jenna is our narrator and she takes us through the ups and downs her discoveries about how she survived the horrible accident that put her in a comma. The book takes place sometime in the future and decides that it wants to bring up questions about what it means to be human, and scientific ethics. I thought about these questions, but I didn’t really care that much about them.

My mother read it before me and she said that it kept throwing you new curveballs every time you thought you had figured something out. She rather enjoyed it. It did throw curveballs, but I thought the effect was like blowing on a flame to revitalize the fire: just things tacked on to make it more interesting.

Did it make it more interesting? I suppose. But I mean, the book was so short that it can’t help but seem tightly plotted.

One thing I really didn’t like was that some characters were introduced and then just fizzled out. There was this guy— Dane was his name, I think— that started out as part of a potential love triangle, then became super mean eventually attacking Jenna, then never came up again.

And then there was the romance between Jenna and Ethan which started really quickly and I never really saw any chemistry between them. I didn’t think it was necessary for the plot. Didn’t really add much.

The ending was alright though kinda predictable. I just want to say that I definitely would not want Jenna’s life.

Okay. This is definitely one of my worst reviews, but like I said, I didn’t have much to say. Just a few comments. And now that they’re made, I guess we’re done here. This book was a whole lot of average (though the writing was nice). I read it in one afternoon. Took me about three hours, maybe less. In a few years, I probably won’t remember it. If you have some time to waste, read it. If not, then don’t. You’re not really missing out on much.

Ri’s Rating

QQ.5/QQQQQ

2.5/5

0. Couldn’t get past chapter one for fear of wanting to kill myself. Book induced suicide…

1: Yuck. Ew. Below Average. Probably didn’t even read the middle and skipped to the end.

2. Ok. Would’ve been better if I’d written the ending and everything else.

3. Not bad at all. Very enjoyable. Quite nice. Recommendable.

4. My kind of book. Near ideal, but something was a little off (annoying names, bad ending, that sort of thing).

5. WOW. Makes me wonder why people watch T.V when this is out there. Really liked it. Don’t expect to see this often.

6 and above. What I want my book to be.

Leave a Comment
by Ri on February 27, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in book review
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Posted by Ri on February 27, 2011

http://thespottedmushroom.com/2011/02/27/the-adoration-of-jenna-fox-book-review/

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