Waiting on Wednesday [28]

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking The Spine allows bloggers to share which books we are most anticipating

This week I am waiting on The Love that Split the World by Emily Henry (January 26, 2016)

Summary from GoodReads

Natalie Cleary must risk her future and leap blindly into a vast unknown for the chance to build a new world with the boy she loves.

Natalie’s last summer in her small Kentucky hometown is off to a magical start... until she starts seeing the “wrong things.” They’re just momentary glimpses at first—her front door is red instead of its usual green, there’s a pre-school where the garden store should be. But then her whole town disappears for hours, fading away into rolling hills and grazing buffalo, and Nat knows something isn’t right.

That’s when she gets a visit from the kind but mysterious apparition she calls “Grandmother,” who tells her: “You have three months to save him.” The next night, under the stadium lights of the high school football field, she meets a beautiful boy named Beau, and it’s as if time just stops and nothing exists. Nothing, except Natalie and Beau.

Emily Henry’s stunning debut novel is Friday Night Lights meets The Time Traveler’s Wife, and perfectly captures those bittersweet months after high school, when we dream not only of the future, but of all the roads and paths we’ve left untaken.

Why I'm Waiting

This sounds really intriguing, minus the football-ness to it.  The disappearing world sounds so interesting! I can't wait to see what it actually is, a parallel universe or a vacuum within the existing world.  Either would be awesome!

Somewhere in Between

by Katie Li

Summary from GoodReads

Two friends find a portal to another dimension and use this “in-between place” to avoid the stress of their everyday lives. What they don’t realize is that every time they enter, they alter reality.

Pseudo-punk Magnolia and underachieving gamer-geek Rom are two unlikely friends who only hang out during their walks home together after school. When they find the a portal that leads to different worlds, they use the “in-between place” as an escape from their lives in high school, then later, after college. 

Their visits through the portal bring them teetering along a tight-rope of fantasy and reality, where they don't always believe what is in front of them, not even their feelings for each other. 

The book is about changes—the ones that you can control, and the ones that you can’t. It’s about commitment and friendship. It’s about the stages in between where you have nothing but the unknown ahead of you.

Inspired by the work of Haruki Murakami and films like Eternal Sunshine of A Spotless Mind, Somewhere In Between is metaphysical coming-of-age story about defining love and finding yourself.

Thoughts on the Book

I received this book from NetGalley, I loved the cover and the premise sounded very interesting.

My Review

This book had a lot of jumping between the present - the reunion of Magnolia and Rom, and the past - when Magnolia and Rom first started to become friends.

I half loved this book and half was annoyed by it.  The jumping back and forth got very confusing, but that could have just been the formatting of the ebook.  The end bugged me though, I might need to reread it, I can't figure out exactly what happened, what was real and what wasn't, and at what point in their lives are these two?  But that could be the entire point of the story.

Magnolia was a very weak and insecure person, while at the same time she was fantastically unique, smart, and fun.  In trying avoid dealing with people she ended up ingraining herself with a bad group of people and she wasn't able to extricate herself from them.  Rom on the other hand was unforgivably himself even though he tended to be very shy.  He never tried to change himself for other people for any reason, either people appreciated who he was and were his friends, or they didn't and he didn't spare them a second thought.

I loved the story of the two friends despite the jumpy way it was told.  The end, when both fought their demons and realized exactly what they meant to each other was fantastic.  I love how Magnolia was back in the past of the day that she made the biggest mistake of her life, while Rom's was in the present debating whether or not he should make the biggest mistake of his life.

I give this a 8/10.  I loved it, but it was somewhat difficult to read and the ending was half awesome and half "so what happened?".

A Clockwork Orange

by Anthony Burgess

Summary from GoodReads

A vicious fifteen-year-old "droog" is the central character of this 1963 classic, whose stark terror was captured in Stanley Kubrick's magnificent film of the same title.

In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. When the state undertakes to reform Alex—to "redeem" him—the novel asks, "At what cost?"

This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition and Burgess's introduction "A Clockwork Orange Resucked".

Thoughts on the Book

I've been wanting to read this one for a while.  I've heard nothing but good/crazy things about the movie, and I have a firm policy of book before movie, since 99.99999998% of the time the book is far better.  My friend recently read it, which rekindled my desire to read it, so he lent it to me and I immediately dove in not knowing what to expect from it at all other than amazingness.  Well, and a warning that the beginning is rough to get through due to the slang.

My Review

This book is about a teenager, Alex, who lives in a dismal future world where he is a victim of society.

The beginning was difficult to get through, both the slang and the subject matter.  Alex is painted right away as a character that you cannot like.  He thrills in beating up old men and gang raping women, not to mention mugging everyone in between.  That is all the first third of the book.  Once you finally get through that he's in prison and then being brainwashed, then the final third of the book is him struggling against his instincts and the effects of being brainwashed as well as getting his comeuppance, which does not teach him a single thing.  The last chapter, which was removed from the original US printing redeemed the entire story for me.  This last part was also left out of the movie.

There were no characters that I enjoyed reading about, Alex was awful, as were his droogs.  The only one that was even remotely okay was Pete, only because he mostly hung back in the first third of the book and when he made his reappearance in the last chapter he was extremely likeable.  Of the other two Georgie was awful, and got what he deserved, and Dim was the absolute worst and unfortunately the last we see of him he's happy as can be fully abusing his power.  As for other characters, when F. Alexander returned I thought he would be the one character I could like, but sadly he was quickly revealed to be an awful person, but he at least had cause for it.  His friends however were even worse.

The story is very bleak, especially without the last chapter which offers a glimmer of hope for the future.  This book isn't the greatest of stories, it's more of a anecdote of the time in which it was written.  For me A Clockwork Orange is another one of those books that people love and clamor about that I just don't get, like A Catcher in the Rye.  Granted, I did like this one far better than the latter.

Overall I give this a 7/10.  It was a good story, and as I've said the last chapter is why, I can't fathom why the New York publishers didn't want to print it, the rest of the world did!  Now I have to watch the movie, maybe then I'll understand some of the hype around it...

Winter

by Marissa Meyer

Summary from GoodReads

Princess Winter is admired by the Lunar people for her grace and kindness, and despite the scars that mar her face, her beauty is said to be even more breathtaking than that of her stepmother, Queen Levana.

Winter despises her stepmother, and knows Levana won’t approve of her feelings for her childhood friend—the handsome palace guard, Jacin. But Winter isn’t as weak as Levana believes her to be and she’s been undermining her stepmother’s wishes for years. Together with the cyborg mechanic, Cinder, and her allies, Winter might even have the power to launch a revolution and win a war that’s been raging for far too long.

Can Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter defeat Levana and find their happily ever afters?

Thoughts on the Book

This book made an appearance as a Waiting on Wednesday.  I read Cinder back when it was first published, and I've been hooked to the series ever since.  I remember when Cress came out we had a bad snow storm, and I had to force myself to put the book down so I could shovel.  Fortunately Winter didn't come out in February, so I didn't have to worry about shoveling snow, just raking leaves.

My Review

This book continues shortly after where Cress leaves off, but with no major developments to the story.  Everyone is still in the Rampion plotting except for Scarlet who's making friends with a wolf.

This book really introduced a new character, Winter, who was pretty awesome.  She was so smart and intuitive and really played up her lunar sickness to make herself seem pathetic and unremarkable.  We got to see a lot of returning characters as well.  Thorne was as awesome as always, as were Cinder, Iko, Scarlet, and Kai.  We got to learn a lot more about other characters like Jacin and Wolf as well as see Cress really grow - be heroic.

Reading this book I wasn't quite sure what to expect.  Some authors it's obvious they won't be killing anyone off, other authors you know no one is safe.  But with Meyer, she wasn't shy of killing characters, so you just didn't know who would survive.  Some characters were obvious she wouldn't be killing, but others, there was no coming back from what was done to them, so how could they all have a happy ending?

The ending was perfect for the series, as epic and amazing as the previous books.  Meyer did a fantastic job of tying everything together while leaving plenty of unknowns to ponder and imagine the conclusions.  I would love to read a novella that takes place years later just to see where everyone ended up and what exactly happened with everything in the works.

I give this a 10/10.  I absolutely loved this book!  What a fantastic conclusion to the series!  Pretty sure the Lunar Chronicles just made it into my top 5 favorite series ever written.

Short Story Sunday [13]

Harrison Bergeron
from: Welcome to the Monkey House
by Kurt Vonnegut

My Welcome to the Monkey House review will be split amongst several weeks of Short Story Sundays.  I will review each short story that appeared in the book.

Review

This story is about a future where everyone was made completely equal.  Those people smarter, or more athletic than the stupidest or least athletic people were given handicaps to dumb them down or make it difficult for them to move.  The main character, George, is smart, so he has to wear his handicap earphones which constantly plays loud noises to prevent him from thinking analytically or too intensely.  His wife, Hazel, doesn't have any handicaps.  The story revolves around them watching a government sanctioned television program in which their son, Harrison, makes an appearance.

This just might be my favorite story from the anthology.  I loved how Vonnegut portrayed the idea of total equality.  He made it look as ridiculous as it is, nobody is truly equal to another, one will always have advantages over the other.  Not that one is better than the other, but two people, one will be smarter, but the other might be more athletic, or more artistic, or more attractive.  Vonnegut demonstrates this fantastically, from the conversation between George and Hazel to the musicians playing the music for the ballet and the dancers performing the ballet.  He also demonstrates how ridiculous a government has to be to in order to enforce equality.  This story was written during the Civil Rights Movement for racial equality in the US.  Vonnegut likes going to the extremes of what people were asking for (like what he did with "Welcome to the Monkey House" with the Church's stance on contraception).  It sort of reads as a cautionary tale - be careful what you wish for.

I give this one a 10/10.  It was such a great story, I loved it.  I listened to this as part of the Welcome to the Monkey House audio book.  It was narrated by Maria Tucci.

Short Story Sunday [12]

Where I Live
from: Welcome to the Monkey House
by Kurt Vonnegut

My Welcome to the Monkey House review will be split amongst several weeks of Short Story Sundays.  I will review each short story that appeared in the book.

Review

This story is about Barnstable Village in Barnstable County, on Cape Cod.

I found this very dull, there didn't seem to be a point to the story, it just kind of haphazardly rambled on about Barnstable.  I did enjoy the bit with the seafood and them not realizing you could eat mussels or tuna.

There really isn't much to say about this story.  Though one thing that bothered me with it was it started with an encyclopedia salesman, then he was never mentioned again as Vonnegut got more into describing the village.  But it ended with the library getting a new set of encyclopedias, but there was no closure as to who they got them from.

I give this one a 5/10.  It was slightly amusing, especially if you know the area, but there was nothing really engaging about it.  I listened to this as part of the Welcome to the Monkey House audio book.  It was narrated by Bill Irwin.

Who Am I This Time
from: Welcome to the Monkey House
by Kurt Vonnegut

Review

This story is about a man, Harry Nash, who has no personality but is the most amazing actor, and a woman, Helene Shaw, who falls in love with Nash's character.  

I loved this story.  Helene seemed to fall in love with the character Nash was playing and ignored all attempts by the directors of the play to try to get her to understand that the character was not Nash.

I feel like I can't say too much about this story without giving spoilers.  But I will say this - the ending was awesome, I loved it!  Helene's solution for Harry was great!

I give this one a 9/10.  It was a lot of fun.  I listened to this as part of the Welcome to the Monkey House audio book.  It was narrated by Dylan Baker.

Illuminae

by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Summary from GoodReads

This morning, Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the hardest thing she’d have to do.

This afternoon, her planet was invaded.

The year is 2575, and two rival megacorporations are at war over a planet that’s little more than an ice-covered speck at the edge of the universe. Too bad nobody thought to warn the people living on it. With enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra—who are barely even talking to each other—are forced to fight their way onto an evacuating fleet, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.

But their problems are just getting started. A deadly plague has broken out and is mutating, with terrifying results; the fleet's AI, which should be protecting them, may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady hacks into a tangled web of data to find the truth, it's clear only one person can help her bring it all to light: the ex-boyfriend she swore she'd never speak to again.

Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents—including emails, schematics, military files, IMs, medical reports, interviews, and more—Illuminae is the first book in a heart-stopping, high-octane trilogy about lives interrupted, the price of truth, and the courage of everyday heroes.

Thoughts on the Book

I got a copy of this at BEA.  It was kind of amusing how I came across one of the most coveted ARCs.  I went to a signing then was wandering around looking for my friend and saw someone handing these out, so I was looking trying to see what it was and the woman was like 'oh it's a YA sci-fi book', so I figured I would be down with reading that and grabbed it.  A while later I found my friend, we're walking around talking and I mentioned getting this ya/sci-fi book and she asked for the name.  She totally freaked when I told her and I had to immediately lead her over to where they were handing them out, luckily there were some left (it had been at least an hour after I got my copy) so, yay!  It was such a low key book drop all the way in the corner of the venue.

My Review

This book is about a planet with an illegal mining operation being attacked by a rival mining company.  Some refugees from the planet made it onto two research vessels and the only warship that came to their rescue.  A plague breaks out, introduced by refugees, and the warship's AI is highly problematic.  Oh yeah, and one of the ships that attacked the planet is chasing after the three ships with the refugees.

Oh My God.  This book.  Just look at it, it's soooooo cool.  I love every little bit of it, the cover is cool, but then take off the dust jacket and it's even cooler!  The inside cover is awesome too, but I think that's just for the ARCs, I want to see what they do for the final version.  I love the theme of the book and how everything fits into that theme.  It's so unique and so awesome and wow, what a great book.  

The way it's written is so different from anything else I've ever read.  It's a mix of confidential reports, IM logs, emails, transcribed conversations.  The beginning was a little rough to get into, it kept switching between Kady and Ezra's interviews and each interview picked up where the other's left off.  So it was difficult to follow who was being interviewed.  But once those were completed the rest of the book read quite easily.

I love Ezra, he's such a great character.  He's so anti-authority, snarky teenage boy, who's a total softy.  He cares so much about everyone.  Kady I wasn't too fond of.  She's awesome, don't get me wrong, but she comes off as very holier-than-thou and standoff-ish.  AIDAN I have mixed feelings about, totally crazy machine, but then at the end...I think it'd come super close to passing, or actually pass a Turing Test.  Which is a terrifying notion.

At first the story felt like there was way too much crap going on, the initial attack, being pursued by the Lincoln, the crazy AI, then the plague?  Way too much.  But it really wasn't, the story tied it all together beautifully.  At points while reading, especially during the second half, I had to put the book down.  I couldn't take it, what they were going through was just too much.  The ending especially was way difficult to read.  And I was excepting a cliff hanger, a really really bad one that I would curse the authors for while anxiously watching the calendar until book 2's release date.  And there almost was one, but then there were those few pages, almost like an epilogue, but not because this isn't your typical book.  The last part, the almost epilogue, that very last surveillance footage summary, it left me with tears in my eyes. Then that last line.  Beautiful.  Loved it.  So freaking good.  So glad it ended the way it did.  It was complete, it was amazing, it was everything you could want with a book. 

I was actually surprised at the end.  I totally called the two big "shocking" things earlier in the book.  Like when Ezra said something I was like that's it! That'll be the shocking revelation right before the final climax of the series, or at least the kicker for book 2.  Then near the end, I called something else, which if I allude to it it's automatic spoilers.  In the final IM conversation in the book it confirmed both things I figured out, and it didn't make a big deal out of it.  I found that surprising.  Illuminae is so not your typical book.  It's allure isn't mysteries and tensions.  It's all about what is happening and how the people involved are coping with it.  This is going to be a book that sticks with you a long time.

I give this a 11/10.  Such a phenomenal book.  I'm so glad I stumbled upon it at BEA.

World War Z

by Max Brooks
Narrated by: Max Brooks, Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, Henry Rollins, Eamonn Walker, Ajay Naidu, Jay o. Sanders, Dennis Boutsikaris, Becky Ann Baker, Steve Park, Frank Kamai, John McElroy, John Turturro, Rob Reiner, Carl Reiner, Jürgen Prochnow, Waleed Zuiater, Dean Edwards, Michelle Kholos, Maz Jobrani

Summary from GoodReads

“The end was near.” —Voices from the Zombie War

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War. 

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brookssays in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead’?”

Note: Some of the numerical and factual material contained in this edition was previously published under the auspices of the United Nations Postwar Commission.
Eyewitness reports from the first truly global war

“I found ‘Patient Zero’ behind the locked door of an abandoned apartment across town. . . . His wrists and feet were bound with plastic packing twine. Although he’d rubbed off the skin around his bonds, there was no blood. There was also no blood on his other wounds. . . . He was writhing like an animal; a gag muffled his growls. At first the villagers tried to hold me back. They warned me not to touch him, that he was ‘cursed.’ I shrugged them off and reached for my mask and gloves. The boy’s skin was . . . cold and gray . . . I could find neither his heartbeat nor his pulse.” —Dr. Kwang Jingshu, Greater Chongqing, United Federation of China


“‘Shock and Awe’? Perfect name. . . . But what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? Not just won’t, but biologically can’t! That’s what happened that day outside New York City, that’s the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn’t shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They’re not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid!” —Todd Wainio, former U.S. Army infantryman and veteran of the Battle of Yonkers


“Two hundred million zombies. Who can even visualize that type of number, let alone combat it? . . . For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth.” —General Travis

Thoughts on the Book

I read this book years ago and I loved it.  For my road trip I grabbed it, I figured of all books to listen to, this one would be the best.  It is, after all, an oral history on the zombie war.

My Review

This book is about World War Z, or the Zombie War.  It is a compilation of different stories about the war told by representatives of each aspect of the war.  

The audio book is sadly abridged, it cut out some of my favorite parts, like the K9 unit and how important dogs were to the war.  I also loved the astronauts section of the book.  But it was still amazing to listen to.  I loved hearing all the different voices telling the tales.  It made it so much more real.  And that's saying a lot because the way Max Brooks wrote this it sounds 100% plausible.  Well, plausible if zombies were actually scientifically possible.

I thought it was so cool that the narrator, the main narrator not the people giving the accounts, was actually Max Brooks.  It gave it that authentic feel.  Max really did interview these people for the United Nations Postwar Commission, the Zombie War was a real thing.

There's so much I love about this book that the audio did an amazing job capturing.  I feel like I'd just be sitting here listing each part of the book saying "this was awesome, I love how they did this"  So main points of the story I absolutely loved - Battle of Yonkers, Israeli Refugee camp (which they cut short- boo), Japanese atom bomb survivor, and the sweep of the United States - especially the battle they needed to be bulldozed out of.  And check out some of the narrators, they're fantastic! Mark Hamill, Rob Reiner, Alan Alda, Becky Ann Baker. So damn good!

I give this a 10/10.  Fantastic book, fantastic narration.  Max Brooks is as much of a genius as his father.  

Doctor Who: Bloodtide

by Jonathan Morris

Summary from GoodReads

The prehistoric Earth is dying. Thunderclouds roll across the skies, cloaking the land in darkness. The seas crash and boil as the rain turns to acid. The remnants of the Silurian race place themselves in suspended animation, deep below the surface.

One day they will awaken and reclaim their world…

The TARDIS has landed on the Galapagos Islands, a desolate outcrop of rocks shrouded in mist and fear. In the settlement of Baquerizo Moreno, there are rumours that prisoners have been mysteriously disappearing from the gaolhouse. A fisherman has been driven insane by something he saw in the caves. And the Doctor and Evelyn are not the only new arrivals; there is also a young natural philosopher by the name of Charles Darwin…

Chronological Placement
This story takes place between the television adventures, The Trial of a Time Lord and Time and the Rani. 

Thoughts on the Book

I'm a huge Doctor Who fan, I grew up with my dad loving Tom Baker, and I really got into the 2005 reboot.  I've since gone back and hunted through the interwebs to find classic who episodes, I'm currently almost done with the first Doctor.  So when I saw an audio book (for lack of a better term, it's more of a radio serial type story) staring Colin Baker I jumped all over it, a Doctor Who story read by the 6th Doctor? Hells yes.

My Review

The Doctor brings his companion, Evelyn, to the Galapagos when the HMS Beagle is in port as a surprise for her.  They meet Darwin right away but the Doctor quickly discovers something is amiss with the prison on the island.  

I really really enjoyed listening to this.  Each leg of my commute I was able to listen to one installment of it.  I must have looked like an idiot to anyone driving past me, I had a goofy grin the whole time because it was so funny.  The Doctor's horrible puns were just amazing.  I also enjoy when the Doctor has smart companions and Evelyn was definitely one of those, not once did she scream "DOCTOR!!!!!!!!!!!" like so many of the others do when they get into trouble.  She was independent and the Doctor trusted her to do what needed to be done while he was busy with something else.  Even when she ran off with Darwin the Doctor wasn't overly concerned, it was more like "well, I suppose I should go fetch her now".  It was refreshing to have a companion like that, they're few and far between.

The story was fun too, although I need to watch more Classic Who because the Silurians weren't anything like those from the new series.  Anatomically I mean, these had a third eye and had telepathic powers.  The derogatory terms and hostility towards humans definitely remained in the new series, except for that one annoying one Moffet seems to love to include for no reason.

But I digress.  The story was great and it was a really fun listen.  I give this a 9/10.  

Waiting on Wednesday [18]

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking The Spine allows bloggers to share which books we are most anticipating.

This week I am waiting on Our Lady of Ice by Cassandra Rose Clarke (October 27, 2015)

Summary from GoodReads

Hope City, Antarctica. The southernmost city in the world, with only a glass dome and a faltering infrastructure to protect its citizens from the freezing, ceaseless winds of the Antarctic wilderness. Within this bell jar four people–some human, some not–will shape the future of the city forever:

Eliana Gomez, a female PI looking for a way to the mainland.

Diego Amitrano, the right-hand man to the gangster who controls the city’s food come winter.

Marianella Luna, an aristocrat with a dangerous secret.

Sofia, an android who has begun to evolve.

But the city is evolving too, and in the heart of the perilous Antarctic winter, factions will clash, dreams will shatter, and that frozen metropolis just might boil over…

Why I'm Waiting

This just sounds so cool.  How many books are set in Antartica?  How about ones that involve androids?  I'm really excited for this one.  I have high hopes that it will be utterly amazing.

Short Story Sunday [10]

The Ascent of Unreason
by Marie Brennan

Review

This story is about a dancer who gives up dancing to become a work of art until war changes everything.

I found the story to be pretty unremarkable, it was neither good nor bad, it just was.  I didn't really understand the protagonist.  She didn't like to conform to the rules of dancing so instead of quitting she made sure she was kicked out?  I did like the ending though, her final confrontation with the artist.  It was just getting there that took to long, too much exposition, a little more character development for the main character and less describing dancing and the works of art she became would have been better.

I give this story a 5/10, it was solidly in the middle for me the bad equaled the good and the narration was good.

I listened to this story on Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Go have a listen.

Short Story Sunday [9]

Made of Cats: A Love Story
by Judith Tarr

Review

This story was so much fun.  It's about an alien race that comes to Earth and as a show of good will they make cats as cute as possible.  So funny.  I love the tone of the story, I love what they did to the cats, and I love love LOVE the resolution.  Can we have that?  Please?

I give this story a 10/10 for the sheer fun of it.

I first hear this story on Escape Pod.  It was narrated by Amanda Ching who did a fantastic job with it.  The full text is also there if you prefer to read rather than listen.

Short Story Sunday [8]

Enjoy the Moment

by Jack McDevitt

Review

This was such a great story.  It's about a physicist who wants her name to go down in history, she gives up on dark matter energy for that dream and instead just wants to have a comet named after her.  It's a lesson on be careful what you wish for, she gets something much more than a comet with her name attached to it.  I loved this story, and I loved the pre apocalypse idea.  It's all about the discovery that the end is coming, but there's nothing about when the end happens.  Such a fantastic idea for a story!

I give this a 9/10, only because I wish it were longer! It didn't completely and utterly wow me, but I did love the story a lot and I kind of want to get the apocalypse triptych...

I first hear this story on Escape Pod, it was narrated by Sara Tolbert who did a fantastic job.  Go have a listen!

Stone Rider

by David Hofmeyr

Summary From GoodReads

"Intense, original, compelling . . . bristles with attitude. So cool. Just read it."--Michael Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Gone and BZRK

In the vein of The Outsiders and the early Western novels of Elmore Leonard, this inventive debut novel, a cross between the cult classic Mad Max movie series and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, blends adrenaline-fueled action with an improbable yet tender romance to offer a rich and vivid portrayal of misfits and loners forced together in their struggle for a better life.

Adam Stone wants freedom and peace. He wants a chance to escape Blackwater, the dust-bowl desert town he grew up in. Most of all, he wants the beautiful Sadie Blood. Alongside Sadie and the dangerous outsider Kane, Adam will ride the Blackwater Trail in a brutal race that will test them all, body and soul. Only the strongest will survive.

The prize? A one-way ticket to Sky-Base and unimaginable luxury.

And for a chance at this new life, Adam will risk everything.

Thoughts on the Book

Yet another BEA pick. There were three YA book piles, each with a different book, by the time I got to it (there was a line leading up to table) only two of the three books remained, this was one of them so I grabbed it.  This past weekend I finally organized my BEA loot in order of when I should read things.  This made it to the top of the list since it was published earlier this month.

My Review

This book is about a kid, Adam, who is orphaned and friendless.  He lives in a society that relies heavily on bykes.  If you don't race with the byke you're forced to work in the mines, which is a horrible existance, alternatively if you do race and you survive you are allowed to work anywhere.

I started reading this book knowing nothing about it, so when I just looked at the summary posted at GoodReads I had to laugh.  My first thought after opening the book was "wow, this is a lot like The Outsiders".  It definitely started with that same feel, but Stone Rider is so much better.  It's a YA book that is definitely more geared towards boys, riding bykes (fancy mind-melding motorcycles that run on sun-power)and  minimal romantic entanglement, there's a girl, Adam has a major crush on her, he's incoherent when she's around, he races and writes her off until she joins him.  

I really enjoyed this book, which is surprising because I wasn't expecting to, it didn't seem like my type of book at all.  The race was kind of predictable, even the horror of it, setting things up so kids would die while the Watchers from the sky watched for entertainment and made bets.  The characters really made the book.  Adam was great, he's your average kid, not really wanting to be part of anything, to scared to risk his life in the race, but knowing that he was an excellent rider.  His personal growth throughout the book is great, I absolutely loved his decision at the end.  Sadie was a great character too, a bad ass girl who didn't take shit from anyone, especially her brother.  She knew exactly what she wanted and she made sure she got it.  Sadie's also really smart, kind, and open-minded.  She was definitely my favorite character.  Then there's Kane, he was by far the most interesting character, you have no clue about anything about him until the very end of the book.  You learn bits along the way, but it's not until shortly before the finish line that you really find out exactly who he is.  It's almost out of left field, unless you're very imaginative and pick up on the smallest hints dropped throughout the book. 

Overall I give this book a 8/10.  The race was a little predictable (although the order of the finish I was slightly surprised at), and I wish Hofmeyr spent a little more time describing things, like the wolf attack.  And an explanation for Adam's blackouts, why he suddenly stopped having them, what exactly happened when he did have them.

Owner's Share

by Nathan Lowell

Summary from PodioBooks

When Diurnia Salvage and Transport undergoes a change in management, Captain Ishmael Horatio Wang finds himself adrift in a sea of red ink, and intrigue. He dives in only to find that he is over his head in a universe where cut-throat competition takes on an all new meaning.

What price will he pay for his Owner’s Share?

Thoughts on the Book

This is the last book in the Trader Tales series.  I've loved the previous 5 books, Ishmael Wang is awesome, I'll never get tired of hearing stories about it.  I waited a long time to finally give this one a listen, mostly because I knew it was the last one and I didn't want it to end.  I also would listen to these stories with my dad when we commuted to work together.  Since we both left that company I didn't feel right listening to it without him.  He did not have those qualms.  So I finally sucked it up and listened.

My Review

Ishmael has finally worked his way up through the ranks from quarter share in the first book to the owner in Owner's Share.  As with most of his advancements this one was thrust upon him in a whirlwind of politics and business.

Lowell did a fantastic job with series continuity in this book.  Characters from earlier installments come back, some in a very large role, others in smaller roles.  Some long running mysteries are solved, one of which was the biggest unknown in Ishmael's life, which drove him at the start of Quarter Share.  Even minor events in Ishmael's travels came back, which concluded the series.  I really hope he shows up in Shaman Tales...

I love the way Lowell writes in a slow meandering fashion.  It really brings out what is important to Ishmael.  Most of his meals are described beautifully, whether he's cooking or not, while other more mundane aspects are not so detailed, like the cleaning.  Although, it is still mentioned quite frequently.

Near the end of the series I was jaw-dropped and close to tears.  The way Lowell wrote out the climax was amazing.  Everything is told through Ishmael's perspective, and the state he was in while everything was happening was just too much.  My heart broke for him.  I wanted to jump into the orbital and help him, try to save him from what was happening.

I've listened to the audio books for the entire series, the ebooks didn't come out until after Captain's Share, I think.  Nathan Lowell is the narrator as well as the author and he does such a fantastic job.  I briefly considered reading Owner's Share but promptly decided against it because Lowell's voice is Ishmael's voice.  Ishmael wouldn't be Ishmael without Lowell narrating.

I absolutely loved this installment, a great end to a wonderful series.  I give it a 10/10.

Lowell writes under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 license.  Which means I can happily say read Owner's Share or start from the beginning of Ishmael's travels with Quarter Share.  Or even take a look at all of Lowell's work here.  Some of his stuff (like Trader's Tales) is available as an ebook, but I highly recommend listening to the audio book, even if you don't usually like listening, try it with this one, Lowell does such a fantastic job reading you may surprise yourself and start to love listening to Ishmael!