In My Mailbox 27

Dear Blog,

In My Mailbox is hosted by Kristi over at The Story Siren.

So, it's the summer holidays, and therefore I have no extracurricular activities and next to no schoolwork.  Which means two things: 1) hooray!  and 2) I have more time than usual to devote to reading. Therefore when I was in the huge library in the centre of town the other day, I took out a lot of books. They'll keep me busy for a little while.

GIFT

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (currently reading)

FROM THE LIBRARY

Selected Poems by e. e. cummings

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

The Wish House by Celia Rees

The Awakening and Selected Stories by Kate Chopin

Purple Hibiscus by Chimanda Ngozi Adichie

Lies by Michael Grant

BOUGHT

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (*excited squeal*)

 So, there you go.  Did you get any interesting books this week?

That's all. Over and out.

Five challenge- Great Series

Dear Blog,

today the subject of the Persnickety Snark FIVE challenge is great series I've read this year.   I'll mention that most of these are all the UK release dates, seeing as confusion can occasionally ensue when I mention books that have come out this year in the UK but came out last year in the Land of the Free.  So, in no particular order:

GONE by Michael Grant
2010 release: Lies

I've read the first three books in these series (which is going to be six books, I believe).  They're all fantastic;  Disturbed, disturbing, and always, always exciting.  One of those series that's great fun to imagine what it would be like if you were one of the characters.

DEAR AMERICA by various authors

2010 release: The Fences Between Us

I have to include Dear America because it's been one of my favourite series since I was nine, and it got relaunched this year. Booyah.  So even though I have potentially outgrown them, they are some of my ultimate comfort reads. 

THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins

2010 release: Mockingjay

perhaps this could be considered cheating, in that I've only read the first two books, but the third is the one that came out this year. Well, I don't care, because The Hunger Games and Catching Fire are both, despite a mere handful of flaws, worthy of a mention.

CHAOS WALKING by  Patrick Ness

2010 release: Monsters of Men

Sci-fi setting? Check.  Unique hero? check. Fantastic heroine? check.  Complex antagonists? Check. Likeable supporting characters? Check. Fast-paced plots? Check.  Gripping opening? Check. Intriguing sequel? Check. Stunning conclusion? Check.  What more do you want from a trilogy? 

TRANSLUCENT by Kazuhiro Okamoto

2010 release: Volume 4

To my mind, Translucent grabs the top spot in any Underrated Shojo Manga Ever list.  It's a will-be quintet- Volume 4 was released in August, and volume 5 is yet to come- and everyone who claims to like shojo manga should read it, even though nobody I've spoken to who claims to like shojo manga has read it.  What's not to like?  Are the characters not realistic enough for you?  Not enough action going on in the utterly charming romance?  Pah. 

Well, that's all for me this evening.  I made a rash promise to a friend I'd send her the first hundred pages of my NaNoWriMo novel for Christmas, and none of it is edited.  So all for now. 

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. 

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