Review: Hunger by Michael Grant

Dear Blog,
Review.  I have one.

Summary (from Goodreads): It's been three months since everyone under the age of fifteen became trapped in the bubble known as the FAYZ. Things have only gotten worse. Food is running out, and each day more kids are developing supernatural abilities. Soon tension rises between those with powers and those without, and when an unspeakable tragedy occurs, chaos erupts. It's the normals against the mutants, and the battle promises to turn bloody.
But something more dangerous lurks. A sinister creature known as the Darkness has begun to call to the survivors in the FAYZ. It needs their powers to sustain its own. When the Darkness calls, someone will answer -- with deadly results.

Review: I said in my review of Gone that everybody seems to say that if Stephen King had written Lord of the Flies, then it's Gone.  This equally applies to Hunger, with more action, more disturbing scenes, more anarchy, more villains, more gross twistedness, more characters, more enemies, more powers, more mysteries and more danger than its predecessor.  It's a non-stop adrenaline ride which doesn't stop the whole way through, set over the course of only about five days, if my poor maths skills is correct. 

I can't help but wonder if, because this is planned to be a six-book series, books 1-5 will all be pretty similar, revealing as little as possible, with a showdown at the end where everybody lives and let live, which happened in the last book as well.  I do hope it doesn't turn out like A Series of Unfortunate Events,   where the books ask more questions than they answer and every book is the same.  I hope this because the Gone novels are truly, truly awesome, and I don't want to dislike them. 

Another thing: Quinn didn't really appear until about 150 pages in before resuming his role as not-so-awesome sidekick.  I wonder what that was about.  I don't really like Quinn, perhaps just because he seems a bit of a wimp (I'm fully aware that I'm calling the kettle black, here, and if I was in the FAYZ I would count down until my 15th birthday so that I could get out of there).  Though I guess that adds realism to the story-I mean, people would be scared- I still wanted to whack him with the 600-paged hardcover edition that I got from the library.  Albert, too, was an obnoxious brat, but I think he was meant to be so that was OK.

Caine and Drake are wonderfully evil. Well, Drake certainly is.  I have my suspicions that Caine will eventually join Sam, Astrid etc, because Drake will try and take over anyway.  And Diana-Diana is awesome.  If I was a villain I would like to be like Diana.  Why so?  She's just cool, and makes for a much better sidekick than Quinn.  She's clever and manipulative and, though she is eternally loyal to Caine, I think she's the one running the show.  The relationship between Caine and Diana is tense, slightly twisted but very compelling. 
Sam.  Sam, Sam, Sam.  He sort of loses it a couple of times, which he didn't really do in Gone.  The responsibility really seemed to get to him, but I guess it would get to me, too.  I really would not like to be Sam.  Nor Astrid, Dekka, Brianna, Albert or anybody else in the FAYZ.

There was so much going on in Hunger, so many problems; the Zekes, starvation, the Gaiaphage, the freak/human war, the mysterious child that is Little Pete, etc., etc, it could have so easily been very confusing, but all these plot threads are so exciting, and it's so well written, jumping from scene to scene quickly.  Also, almost each scene ends on a cliffhanger, so it's kind of impossible to forget where you left off.  At one point I did actually skip forward to find the next scene with Brianna in it before going back to read the other scenes *guilty laugh*.  You know something is truly exciting when you do that.  Also, Hunger makes you think a lot about what you would do in that situation.  I like to think I would run to the supermarket to stock up on food, torches and batteries (and plenty of books of course) and then hoard it all at home for myself.

Summary: Truly, truly fantastic.  Scary, disturbing, slightly disgusting at some points, but it wouldn't be any fun if it wasn't.  You would have to be cut off from the world in a FAYZ-like manner to  not have heard of or read Hunger and Gone.  Rating: 5/5. 

Foreign Language Friday: Tell Me What You See

Dear Blog,
Foreign Language Friday returns with Tell Me What You See by Zoran Drvenkar.

First published in: Germany

Original title: Sag Mir, Was du Siehst
Translated by: Chantal Wright

Summary (from the blurb): Berlin. The dead of night. Sixteen-year-old Alissa and her best friend Evelin make their secret Christmas pilgrimage to Alissa's father's grave. In the graveyard, Alissa falls through thick snow into an underground crypt. Searching for a way out, she discovers something else: out of the lid of a small coffin coils a strange black plant. Drawn closer, Alissa sees its roots embedded in a young child's heart. This chance encounter sets off a chain of nightmarish events that throw her life into turmoil. Haunted by angels, stalked by her ex-boyfriend, only with Evelin's help can Alissa reclaim her sanity and discover the truth about her frightening new gift.

Review: I rarely read such creepy books.  Apart from dystopic novels where civilisation collapses, I don't tend to read creepy books.  Well, the apocalypse isn't  creepy in the same way that this is.  I've never read any Darren Shan or anything like that.  I read the chapter of The Green Mile where Edward Delacroix gets fried when I was 11.  I may have mentioned this before.  I was intrigued by the dark world of horror fiction and that sort of put me off.  Anyway.  Though I guess Tell Me What You See isn't a horror novel, it is,  a somewhat gothic chiller. I think it ought to begin with, "it was a dark and stormy night....*cue thunder bolt* BWAHAHAHA!" And it certainly begins with the sort of situation you would expect to find in a B-movie: two girls alone at night in the dark, creeping around in a graveyard.  But Zoran Drvenkar writes it so well, you don't even stop to laugh at the slight cliche.  It's genuinely creepy!  That's just the beginning.

The story alternates points of view between several of the characters-Alissa, the main character, Evelin, her best friend, Simon, Alissa's ex-boyfriend, Robert, Alissa's stepfather, the angels, and Nina, Evelin's lover.  In general I like books that do this, but alas alack more often than not they didn't sound incredibly individual.  The only real difference in the writing from Simon's point of view and Robert's point of view, for example,  is that Simon swears much more.  Oh well.  It's not that the writing wasn't gripping-it was-and it wasn't that the characters were 2-dimensional -they weren't-, but when it was told in the first person that's all it was: the first person.
However, alternating the points of view really did give different takes on what's happening: We're worried with Evelin about Alissa's sanity, and almost sympathetic to Simon when he's talking.  But then when Alissa is talking, everything going on in her head seems so real, and all we want to do when Simon appears is scream and run away.
My favourite character has to be Evelin.  She is the most awesome best friend and, in my opinion, the true hero of the story.  A), because she is always there for Alissa, and B) because of the ending, which I won't give away.

Summary: Tell Me What You See is all about friendship, obsession, death, loss, Berlin, ravens, love and angels. It's one of those "what more could you want?" books (more individuality in the characters, but...). 
Rating: 4.

Review: Gone

Dear Blog,

Today's review is for Gone by Michael Grant.  I've spent  many many late nights reading it.

Summary (from Goodreads): In the blink of an eye. Everyone disappears. GONE. Except for the young. Teens. Middle schoolers. Toddlers. But not one single adult. No teachers, no cops, no doctors, no parents. Just as suddenly, there are no phones, no internet, no television. No way to get help. And no way to figure out what's happened.
Hunger threatens. Bullies rule. A sinister creature lurks. Animals are mutating. And the teens themselves are changing, developing new talents—unimaginable, dangerous, deadly powers—that grow stronger by the day.
It's a terrifying new world. Sides are being chosen, a fight is shaping up. Townies against rich kids. Bullies against the weak. Powerful against powerless. And time is running out: On your birthday, you disappear just like everyone else...

Review: First things first: I much prefer the UK cover (the one I've posted), to the US one. I generally prefer UK covers. Not just because I live there, but because often I just think they're better, is all.

Second things second: Take seriously the 12+ rating and WARNING: CONTAINS SCENES OF VIOLENCE AND CRUELTY sticker on the back (again don't know if that's on the US cover).  Either way, do not misinterpret it.  It's the most graphic book I've read in ages.  Even Persepolis isn't that graphic, and that's a graphic novel about growing up during the Iranian Revolution.  If  they make it into a film (which it would be the purest awesome if they did), I should expect to recreate the true horror of the book,it would have to be a 15.  I certainly think the age rating on the back ought to be 14+.  Some parts of it are very gruesome, very graphic, very creepy and very, very disturbing.

I can't remember which newspaper said that if Stephen King had written Lord of the Flies, then Gone would be it.  I've read Lord of the Flies and I also read that part of The Green Mile where Edward Delacroix's execution goes wrong and he's fried like an egg.  I wish I hadn't.  Oh well, I was 11 and curious about the dark world of horror fiction.  What more can I say?  Either way, that quote completely nailed it and that's how I would describe it to somebody who asked what it was about. 

Although it's so gripping you would want to stay up all night reading, I'd suggest you don't.  Last night I was reading it and I kept looking around my bedroom to check everything was in its right place.  Perhaps it's just me being a wuss because despite my slightly creepy love for end-of-the-world apocalypse fiction, this is almost a horror novel and I read very little of that.  Or perhaps it was just the contrast between Gone and the book I read right before that, Strawberry Marshmallow (Ichigo Mashimaro) 3, a.k.a the cutest, fluffiest, silliest manga in the history of the world.

The book, for all its size, is set over the point of 299 hours and 54 minutes, so there's always something going on.  It drives me round the bend when books say "weeks passed", or "months passed".  In that sense, *Gone* is brief and gets right to the point.

Most likely my only complaint is that I wish you found out more about the FAYZ (Fallout Alley Youth Zone, the name the kids give to their world-without-adults). Why's it there?  How long will it be there? Is there any way out? What was giving the kids powers? (I assumed it was something to do with nuclear radiation or something but isn't really explained) Who (or what) exactly is The Darkness?  What exactly was Little Pete's connection to the FAYZ? I read the scene where that question comes into the equation three or four times but it still didn't make much sense.  I can't say much more about that because it is a major spoiler that gives much away.  If you can make sense of it. Either way, it seemed to ask more questions that it answered, but it's going to be a 6-book series and no doubt more and more will be revealed about it as the series goes on. The second and third books *Lies* and *Hunger*, are out already in the US (alas *Lies has only just been released in the UK).  As soon as they're out in the library I'll definitely be reading them.

Rating: 4.5