Tagged: ruby
The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government “rehabilitation camp.” She might have survived the mysterious disease that’s killed most of America’s children, but she and the others have emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control.
Now sixteen, Ruby is one of the dangerous ones.
When the truth comes out, Ruby barely escapes Thurmond with her life. Now she’s on the run, desperate to find the one safe haven left for kids like her-East River. She joins a group of kids who escaped their own camp. Liam, their brave leader, is falling hard for Ruby. But no matter how much she aches for him, Ruby can’t risk getting close. Not after what happened to her parents.
When they arrive at East River, nothing is as it seems, least of all its mysterious leader. But there are other forces at work, people who will stop at nothing to use Ruby in their fight against the government. Ruby will be faced with a terrible choice, one that may mean giving up her only chance at a life worth living.
There are very few books out there that I would say insulted my intelligence, but this is absolutely one of them.
First off, let me start with the premise. Some disease mysteriously kills pretty much all children and teenagers but those that survive get mind powers ranging from math skills to erasing memories. I could live with that somewhat unbelievable premise if not for what happened next: all the kids in the country that survived were rounded up and taken to internment camps. Sure, some parents would be terrified by their kids but honestly? I very much doubt that the majority of parents would willingly give up their surviving children to the government as Alexandra Bracken imagines. Also, the sheer cruelty all of the guards in the camp show toward the low-risk children (blues and greens) is ridiculous. There would be some displays of even a little bit of human compassion but Bracken just made a total caricature out of the guards.
I could ignore the premise if the writing wasn’t so awful. But it was awful, truly awful. There are big long scenes where absolutely nothing happens then action appears out of nowhere and suddenly we’re back to a boring scene with no transition in between. When the skip tracer appears and Ruby hits her head (or something like that) I flipped to the next chapter and went ‘huh?’. She was suddenly back in the van with no explanation as to what happened. Transitions are important, people!
You’d have to go through The Darkest Minds with a fine tooth comb to actually find anything vaguely resembling a plot. It’s basically a futuristic road trip with talking heads in a dark room! Alexandra Bracken doesn’t feel the need to describe pretty much any of the characters Ruby meets when she runs away from her captors until at least 300 pages in or so. It was like listening to a bunch of people talk in a pitch black room. People that all sounded the same. There was really no difference in the patterns of speech of Suzume, Chubs and Liam. They all sounded like the same character.
As for Ruby, don’t get me started. She hates herself and feels like she can’t trust anyone, which is completely understandable because she lived in what turned out to be a concentration camp for children. Yet Liam waltzes in and in no time at all she trusts him completely! I don’t trust people that quickly and I haven’t experienced anything anywhere near the level of what Ruby has experienced. It’s just not believable. And when they finally meet the Slip Kid and Ruby learns who she is, she immediately trusts him. As if someone with his background could be trusted! Does she remember who his father is? Ugh, just kill me now.
I can’t recommend this book to anyone. It’s a waste of paper and ink and is an insult to the intelligence of its target audience.
I give this book 0.5/5 stars.
Slumber by Tamara Blake
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
Once upon a time, Ruby believed in magic…
When Ruby volunteers to take her mother’s housecleaning shift at the gothic Cottingley Heights mansion, she thinks it’s going to be business as usual. Clean out the fridge, scrub toilets, nothing too unusual. But nothing could prepare her for the decadent squalor she finds within. Rich people with more money than sense trashing their beautiful clothes and home just because they can. After the handsome Tam discovers her cleaning up after him and his rich friends, Ruby has never felt more like a character from her sister’s book of fairy tales.
Tam sees beyond Ruby’s job and ratty clothes, and sweeps her off her feet, treating her like a real princess, but Ruby is sure this beautiful boy is too good to be true. And as one tragedy after another befalls Ruby and her family, Ruby painfully learns that magic is all too real, and it always comes with a price.
[Full disclosure: I received a free ARC ebook through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
I decided to request Slumber through NetGalley despite my misgivings about it being a typical Cinderella fairytale romance where fairies are only said to be vicious but are actually pretty tame. Boy, was I wrong.
Tamara Blake’s fairies go back to the roots of their legends and are really, truly vicious bordering on sadistic. Well, maybe passing into sadistic quite frequently rather than just bordering on it. They live a spoiled party life and have exactly zero morals or qualms about treating humans like dirt for their own amusement. It doesn’t take Ruby long to figure this out and although she slips down to their level a couple of times she actually comes out of the story with her human values intact. Trust me, considering she lived with the fae in Cottingley for a while, that is an enormous accomplishment.
Ruby was an awesome narrator. She falls in love with Tam slowly but never, ever puts her love for him ahead of her family. When her family gets in trouble and she learns that living with him at Cottingley is her only choice, she does. And although she loses sight of her goal through something not entirely her own fault, she remains loyal to her family in the end. As I said, she still retains her values by the end and I was incredibly impressed with that. So many narrators in YA books lose sight of their old lives when they’re swept up into a magical world of parties and riches, but not Ruby! She was truly amazing and carried the story on her shoulders.
At the same time the plot was actually quite fast-paced without leaving out character development. There is no sort of middle bloat as the middle is actually where Ruby discovers that she’s the cause of her mother’s illness and that there’s only one way to save her life. And just when you think things have settled down at the end, Tamara Blake threw a huge twist into the happy ending that leaves me with no doubt there’s a sequel coming. Tam and Ruby’s story isn’t finished and I can’t wait for the sequel, even though Slumber was technically just published three days ago.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
*Only available as an ebook.
Drought by Pam Bachorz
(Cover picture courtesy of Pam Bachorz’s website.)
Ruby dreams of escaping the Congregation. Escape from slaver Darwin West and his cruel Overseers. Escape from the backbreaking work of gathering Water. Escape from living as if it is still 1812, the year they were all enslaved.
When Ruby meets Ford–an irresistible, kind, forbidden new Overseer–she longs to run away with him to the modern world, where she could live a normal teenage live. Escape with Ford would be so simple.
But if Ruby leaves, her community is condemned to certain death. She, alone, possess the secret ingredient that makes the Water so special–her blood–and it’s the one thing that the Congregation cannot live without.
Drought is the haunting story of one community’s thirst for life, and the dangerous struggle of the only girl who can grant it.
In most books there is often a sentence or question that keeps coming up for me as I read them. The recurring question for me in Drought was: “What is going on?”
Pam Bachorz raised so many questions in Drought, but very few of them were answered. Who is Otto? Why does his blood have magical properties? Why hasn’t the Congregation escaped after 200 years of slavery? Why did Otto leave? Why haven’t any kids been born since the Congregation formed? How did Darwin West enslave people like this? And why is the Congregation completely in the dark about modern inventions when it’s 2012 in the story? Surely Darwin wasn’t able to keep them completely isolated.
There are some pretty heavy religious undertones in the book, but they made no sense whatsoever. The Congregation is much like a cult and Ford introduces Ruby, the main character, to the idea that they’re worshipping a false god (Otto), but I had no idea where Pam Bachorz was going with it. As my English teacher frequently wrote on my essays, “So what?” Why is religion discussed so much in Drought but never actually plays a believable role in the motivations of the characters?
Ruby, the protagonist, is decent enough I suppose. Like in most YA novels, she is 200 years old but essentially acts like a teenager and falls in love with a teenager. Okay, I get that the Congregation ages much more slowly than regular people, but really? Even if you are treated like a child for 200 years, if you see the kind of violence Darwin West inflicts on your own mother, you’re going to grow up a lot faster than Ruby has. Her ‘romance’ with Ford feels completely contrived. It’s like the author didn’t know how to make readers truly connect with the characters; her writing doesn’t have that much emotion in it, to be truthful.
Drought had so much potential but ended up being a complete mess plot-wise and character-wise. This is one of the few series I will not be continuing in the foreseeable future.
I give this book 1/5 stars.