The River

Written by Michael Neale
Original Publication Date: 2012

Rating: 3 Stars

Book Notes:

I received this book for free from the publisher, via Netgalley.

Review:

I didn't realize until after I requested the book that this is a novel that is considered religious fiction; the summary gave me no such clue.  I guess I wasn't thrilled when I read that, because while religions all fascinate me, "Religious Fiction" tends to mean a books that "Shove Christianity Down Your Throat."  Luckily, this book really didn't give off that vibe.  It's comparable to how I love Flyleaf - yes, they're technically Christian Metal, but they're not overtly so, and I love them anyway.  Now, I didn't love The River, but it was a nice story.

When Gabriel Clarke was five years old, his father took him out to The River.  A risk taker in a kayak didn't know The River well, and he went over the falls; Gabriel's father jumped in after the man.  The man survived, but Gabe's father never resurfaced.

Gabriel moves out of Colorado and to Kansas where his mother lives, where he struggles to overcome the mental issues that The River instilled in him.  He grows up, damaged, in more ways than a "normal" child, until he rediscovers The River and the healing begins.

Bottom Line:  This was a nice story, though the writing style was fairly simple and nothing terribly special.

Mini Review: dreamland

Written By Sarah Dessen
Original Publication Date: 2000

Rating: 3 Stars

I decided to go with a mini review for this, as really the book only took me 3 hours to blast through, and I can assume that the review probably won't be terribly long.  Now as I'm reading through some other reviews on Goodreads, I'm seeing that this is one of Sarah Dessen's darker books.  I'm not sure how I feel about that, as I feel like this reads very similarly to a lot of young adult that I've read in the recent past.  I'm not saying it was bad or boring, but I didn't see it as any darker than young adult that I liked a lot more and young adult I liked a lot less.

Caitlin's older sister Cassandra runs away on Caitlin's 16th birthday (what a bitch, right?  She couldn't have waited 24 hours?).  This throws her life into chaos and Caitlin spends the next months trying to both step into her sisters shoes, comfort her mother, and be nothing at all like Cass. The conflicting ideals of what she wants to do throws her into a world that she never thought she would be a part of. 

At times I wanted to shake Caitlin.  Why was she staying with Rogerson through all the emotional and physical abuse!?  However, this is where I give Dessen a lot of credit, Caitlin reads like a real person in an abusive relationship.  Rogerson is spoken of as though he were her meth or cocaine.

and all the stars

Written By Andrea K. Host
Original Publication Date: 2012

Rating: 3 Stars

Book Notes:

I received this ebook for free from the publisher, via NetGalley.

3%

Toxic ... glitter?

92%

I just spent way too long trying to figure out how these people were flashing their torches.

Torches = Flashlights.  Derp.

Silly Australians.

Review:

Firstly, this cover is friggin' gorgeous.  I thought the little thumbnails I'd seen were beautiful, but when I blew it up for this review I realized how much detail I was missing, in the model's eyes, specifically.  and all the stars, obviously refers to the stars under the model's left eye, but honestly the more I look at this cover, the more I like it - it also could have been a reference to the sparkle in her eyes, or even the freckles on her neck.  Basically, the cover art gets a full five stars from me; the photographer in me enjoys all the details.

The books opens on Madeleine, regaining consciousness, in what used to be a train station - used to be.  She's surrounded by rubble, dead bodies, and a bizarre glittery dust is in the air.  All this destruction is caused by giant, featureless towers that seem to have sprouted from the Earth, spraying the strange dust that sparkles.  Finding her way out of the rubble, she is able to call her parents, and make her way to her famous cousin's apartment, where she showers off the glittering dust that she has become coated with.

Watching the news, and her own body, Madeleine discovers that she is turning ... blue.  Some of the population, like her, is turning blue, and some are turning green.  Not everyone is surviving this transformation, however, and soon those that do are seeking each other out to test what other changes this dust has brought to them.

The answer?  Hunger Games for body-hopping aliens!

I must say, I enjoyed quite a lot about this book.  The story was interesting and a bit unique in that it's definitely a post-apocalypse, but cell phones and news networks are still working and running - being taken care of by those that survive.  Usually post-apocalypse stories have a much more pessimistic view of the population, that people would chip in and actually keep things running, even if they're teens?  I don't know if I love it because it's got an optimism to it, or hate it because I'm not sure I can believe that that would happen.  I chose to love it.

I really liked the people that Madeleine teams up with, I find them to be fairly accurate representations of our teenage population.  My problem however, with these people is that they're fairly interchangeable.  They all different skills, but I had a really hard time remembering which one was which person.  It was rather confusing.  

I also found the flow of the writing not quite right.  Personally, I was definitely thrown by the amount of Australian slang, but that wasn't the only reason that I didn't think it flowed well.  Some of the sentences, I read quite a few times and they still didn't make sense, even within the context of the sentences before and after.

My last complaint was the Epilogue.  The book ended in a satisfying way, and then there was this epilogue that felt like someone screaming AND THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER!  THE END!!!  This is a problem I've seen in quite a few YA novels, the authors want to tie everything up, but it doesn't need to be gift wrapped for us.  Nothing wraps up that nice in the real world, and it seems like a cop-out.

In Summary:  Good book, with some problems.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Written By Seth Grahame-Smith
Original Publication Date: 2010

Rating: 3 Stars

Book Notes:

Page 32

"'I have since learned to distrust such stillness,' Abe wrote in 1852, 'as it is always, always prelude to some great calamity.'"

Unfortunately often true, even without vampires.

Page 41

Sarah Bush Lincoln?  I wonder if her maiden name was Bush?  Evan (my boyfriend) says that our past president Bush (and Bush) have traced their lineage back that far.  I wonder if it's true.

Page 114

"If we are to enjoy the bounty of the Mississippi, it shall need to be greatly improved, so that steamboats may navigate it freely."

There's some sort of parallel to the slavery issue here that I can't quite put into words.  Free a choked river for the bounty; free slaves for the bounty of a country.

Page 37

"I wept, for each of these boys was Willie.  Each of them had a father cursed as I am cursed; a mother weeping as Mary weeps.

I'm trying to imagine any modern president be so involved in the losses involved in war.  I can't.  We're so desensitized.

Review:

Abraham Lincoln was so damned cool in reality, that the story of his true life that went on behind the added Vampires actually overshadowed the Vamps!  Honestly what this book did was whet my appetite for a good ol' fashioned Abe Lincoln biography.  I want to know how much of what was said of Abe was truth.  I honestly think it was most of it.  I know that Lincoln kept obsessive journals, I don't know why I never thought of the fact that that would make him an exceptional president to write post-mortem bios about.

The vampires were a fun add-on to the Civil War, but as I said Lincoln's life was simply so interesting that they were unnecessary!  I found myself looking forward more to the parts of his life that didn't involve the vampires.  His relationship with his father.  The pre-Mary love story triangle.  The kids.  The emotion he showed.  Those were the things I loved about this novel.  The vampires were almost boring compared to the man that Lincoln was.

Shortish review today.  I finished this book on New Years Eve, and then proceeded to get shit faced, so any really sophisticated thoughts I had have disappeared.

Elegy Beach

Written By Stephen Boyett
Original Publication Date: 2009
Sequel to: Ariel

Rating: 3 Stars Out Of 5

Book Notes:

Page 13

Ariel came out in 1983, and takes place 6 years after the Change.  Elegy Beach takes place some 27 years after the first book, but it was also written almost 30 years later.  They're learning about the Internet in history class?  Me thinks that when the lights went out in 1983 the internet didn't exist.  Continuity fail.

Page 24

Pete from book one named his sword "Fred," in the first novel.  The second book focuses on his son... also named Fred?!

Page 79

Questions: they require question marks.  Boyett seems to have forgotten that question marks aren't optional. Did anyone actually edit this book?

Page 145

The smart ass unicorn is by far my favorite character in this series.

Review:

Fred has grown up in a post-Change world.  Magic has become a new tool for protection as well as for trinkets - but no one really understands the way it works.  It's all part of the trading world that has become the commerce industry.  He is 17 and apprenticed out to the resident caster, but he feels as though he has more talent than PayPay is allowing him to use.  His best friend, Yan, is learning casting from Fred, but they're also going further and faster than PayPay would have allowed.   They have a theory that magic is the science of the post-Change world. that it's similar to programming a computer, in that there is a language that the universe understands.

I really like the way magic is approached in this novel.  It makes the very vague Change from the first book make a little bit more sense.  They explain that somewhere in the world at 4:30 on the day of the Change, something - we don't know what - happened that changed the laws of physics.  As the world rotated into that spot in the universe, the whole of the world changed.  Some of the old rules of the world still applied, like gravity, but for the laws of physics just changed in such a way that magic became the new science.  It became the new reality.  I really like this approach.  The author gets big props for this after how randomly vague the first book was.  This was still vague, but in a more thoughtful, thought out approach.

Yan at one point in the novel is offended by what PayPay says, and burns down his shop.  Finding this out, Fred kicks him out of town.  This is when Ariel, the unicorn, returns.  She has a story of caster who killed her mate, which from the kind of magic that was done, Fred assumes it was Yan.  With Pete, Yan's father, and of course Ariel they head out to find and stop Yan.  Finding his grimoire, Fred learns that what Yan really wants to do with the power that he has discovered is reverse the Change, in effect killing Ariel and all the supernatural creatures that came with her.

This book in some ways is leaps and bounds better than Ariel, in that it had a much juicier plot and it was less skittish about sex.  It seemed like a much more grounded novel, even though it wasn't any less fantasy-driven.  However, do you have any idea how difficult it is to read a book when the author doesn't always use question marks.  It's hard to tell what is a question, versus a statement.  Isn't it.  He used them sometimes, but damn it was difficult to read other times.

A fun read, for sure, better than Ariel, but not really anything special at the same time.