Category: Speculative Fiction
Blackout by Mira Grant
(Cover picture courtesy of A Dribble of Ink.)
The conspiracy that rules post-zombie America is alive and well. The same can’t be said of the bloggers who dared to tell the truth as they found it.
Now, with too much left to do and not much time left to do it in, Shaun Mason and his team must face mad scientists, zombie bears, and rogue government agencies—and if there’s one thing they know is true in post-zombie America, it’s this:
Things can always get worse.
Being the snarky, rather opinionated person I am, I am rarely lost for words. But after reading Blackout,the last book in the Newsflesh trilogy, there’s only one thing to say.
Wow.
After that enormous cliffhanger at the end of Deadline, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Blackout and when I did, I wasn’t disappointed. Funny, dark, suspenseful and full of plot twists, Blackout was no disappointment. And it even had a satisfying, if not entirely happy, ending. What else could I really ask for?
In Deadline, Mira Grant explains the Kellis-Amberlee virus itself so we can understand things like reservoir conditions and spontaneous remissions. But in this last book, we find out pretty much everything about the virus, including why mosquitoes have suddenly become a vector. As you have probably guessed, this new vector is manmade and Dr. Abbey has her hands full figuring out the structure of this new threat before time runs out.
One of the recurring themes throughout the trilogy is the importance of the truth, but this features even more prominently in Blackout. Shaun, Becks, Alaric, Mahir and a character I won’t mention because it’s a spoiler have some very tough choices about whether the truth is really the best thing. I had serious doubts about their resolve, especially near the end, but the team stays true to themselves. Sadly, one of my favourite characters dies, but at least they go out in a blaze of glory protecting those they love.
And now, to lighten things up, here’s one of my favourite parts of the whole novel (Warning: language not suitable for younger readers):
“I, Shaun Phillip Mason, being of sound mind and body, do hereby swear to poke dead things with sticks, do stupid shit for your amusement and put it all on the internet where you can watch it over and over again.” (Pg 4)
That pretty much sums up Mira Grant’s sense of humour, doesn’t it?
I give this book 5/5 stars.
Deadline by Mira Grant
(Cover picture courtesy of Orbit Books.)
Shaun Mason is a man without a mission. Not even running the news organization he built with his sister has the same urgency as it used to. Playing with dead things just doesn’t seem as fun when you’ve lost as much as he has.
But when a CDC researcher fakes her own death and appears on his doorstep with a ravenous pack of zombies in tow, Shaun has a newfound interest in life. Because she brings news—he may have put down the monster who attacked them, but the conspiracy is far from dead.
Now, Shaun hits the road to find what truth can be found at the end of a shotgun.
After Feed cured me of my irrational zombie fear, I decided to read the second book in the Newsflesh trilogy: Deadline. I’m really glad I did because it builds on things hinted at in the first book very well. If you don’t want to read any spoilers, I suggest you stop reading right now.
It’s been a year since Georgia died, but since Shaun talks to her in his head constantly, it feels like she’s a major character. Shaun talks to her aloud and accepts that he is mentally ill because he doesn’t want to let go of his adoptive sister. His point of view is very different from George’s because he’s more reckless and unsure of himself and what he’s doing. I guess that’s a natural response to shooting your sister in the spinal column after she’s been injected with live Kellis-Amberlee. Deadline follows Shaun’s quest for the truth and throughout the journey he has a lot of character development as each new, horrible revelation comes to light.
The focus of Deadline isn’t politics like it was in Feed. Instead, it focuses a lot more on the Kellis-Amberlee virus itself. The level of detail Mira Grant has put into her world-building is fantastic and, unlike a lot of zombie novels, she explains what causes people to turn into zombies. Truly, this is science fiction at its finest because it has a fast-paced plot while paying attention to character development and world-building.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
Incarceron by Catherine Fisher
(Cover picture courtesy of Never Too Fond of Books.)
Finn cannot remember his childhood. He cannot remember his life before Incarceron—a prison that has been sealed for centuries, where inmates live in cells, dilapidated cities, and unbounded wilderness. No one has ever escaped. But then he finds a crystal key and a girl named Claudia.
Claudia’s father is the Warden of Incarceron. And Claudia is about to become a kind of prisoner herself, doomed to an arranged marriage. If she helps Finn in his escape, she will need his help in return.
But they don’t realize that there is more to Incarceron than meets the eye. Escape will take their greatest courage and far more than they know…because Incarceron is alive.
There is only one word to describe Catherine Fisher’s Incarceron:
Weird.
There is no other world to describe this futuristic science fiction-fantasy hybrid but weird. Truly, even as widely read as I am, I have never read a book like this. It’s unique in a good way, with excellent world-building and interesting themes. I’m not even going to hazard a guess as to where the inspiration for the world of Incarceron came from. It probably wouldn’t make sense to most people anyway.
The fantastic and bizarre world of Incarceron sort of makes up for the characters, which were somewhat lacking. For whatever reason, I just really couldn’t connect with either Claudia or Finn. Claudia is like me in some ways, so I should have been able to connect with her, but I just couldn’t. Finn…I really didn’t like him from the start, so there was no hope there. In my eyes, Catherine Fisher just couldn’t breathe life into her characters.
The plot is fast-paced and switches points of view in all the right places to keep people reading. There are a few predictable plot points, but I certainly couldn’t predict every plot twist. So if you like fast-paced novels with great world-building but don’t mind poorly developed characters, you’ll love Incarceron.
I give this book 3.5/5 stars.
Wither by Lauren DeStefano
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males born with a lifespan of 25 years, and females a lifespan of 20 years–leaving the world in a state of panic. Geneticists seek a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children.
When Rhine is sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Yet her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can’t bring herself to hate him as much as she’d like to. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband’s strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement; her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next; and Rhine has no way to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive.
Together with one of Linden’s servants, Gabriel, Rhine attempts to escape just before her seventeenth birthday. But in a world that continues to spiral into anarchy, is there any hope for freedom?
(Summary courtesy of Amazon.)
A friend of mine was absolutely gushing over this novel, so she and I did a book exchange. I lent her my copy of Timeless by Alexandra Monir and she lent me her copy of Wither by Lauren DeStefano. As it turned out, it was a pretty good book exchange in which both of us got excellent new reading material.
The premise of the novel sounded quite promising to me: because of genetic modification, kids are now perfect, but have decreased life expectancies. Severely decreased, as in 25 for men and 20 for women. So, in an attempt to both live life to the fullest and carry on the very existence of the human race, wealthy men are now polygamous. Which, of course sets up the plot of Wither: Rhine, a sixteen-year-old girl is taken from her only family, her twin brother Rowan, to become one of the new wives to Linden Ashby, a twenty-one-year-old man whose first wife is dying. Rhine is chosen because of her heterochromia, her two different coloured eyes that her parents who were geneticists gave her and because she looks like Rose, Linden’s dying wife.
I bet you think you can predict the ending. But with that said, I bet you’re wrong, at least partially. I know I was.
Of course Wither includes what seems to be a staple of YA novels nowadays: a love triangle. It certainly seems like it’s your stereotypical love triangle at first, but it is Rhine’s choices throughout the novel that keep it from being predictable. Instead of accepting her fate as one of three wives and falling in love with her husband, she resolves to escape and to stay true to herself and Gabriel, the boy she really loves. Rhine Ellery certainly deserves to be called a memorable character.
My only real complaint is that for science fiction, there is a definite lack of science. We know that each person has a genetic time bomb because of scientists messing around with everyone’s genes, but it doesn’t get much more in depth than that. Then again, most YA science fiction would be classified as ‘soft science’ anyway. Still, I’d like to know a lot more about the science behind this mysterious genetic time bomb.
I give this book 4/5 stars.
The Giver by Lois Lowry
(Cover picture courtesy of Whatcha Readin’, Books?)
Jonas’s world is perfect. Everything is under control. There is no war or fear or pain. There are no choices. Every person is assigned a role in the Community.
When Jonas turns twelve, he is singled out to receive special training from The Giver. The Giver alone holds the memories of the true pain and pleasure of life. Now it’s time for Jonas to receive the truth.
Okay, start writing your hate mail. I’m about to criticize what many laud as a literary masterpiece above questioning.
Here we have yet another popular novel that we have to ask ourselves about: Is it really worth all of the hype? In a word, no, but it’s not as simple as that. One of the main things that’s made this book popular is the fact that it’s studied by middle school students. In fact, I studied this book in grade 9 and having read it in grade 6, was incredibly bored. I remember telling my teacher that this wasn’t really a grade-appropriate novel, but it’s actually in the grade 9 curriculum in Saskatchewan, if you can believe it. Reading it years later, I thought I might get something new out of it, but I think I got the message the first time around.
My overall impression of The Giver is that it’s good, but it’s not the greatest thing since paper that educators seem to praise it as. It does have meaning and wonderful messages that make readers debate comfort versus freedom, but it feels as if Lois Lowry was trying too hard to make sure readers got this message. The phrase beat-you-over-the-head-with-a-stick-obvious comes to mind, which was even my impression when I first read the novel. The Giver was somewhat unique in its own time, but now with the explosion of YA dystopia, it is one novel among many that does not even stand out particularly well.
The main character Jonas is good, but he is not memorable. He rebels against the society and sees what’s wrong with it, but only after The Giver shows him quite a few memories of the freedom of the past. Before then, he’s hasn’t really questioned the society, which makes the novel start off fairly slow, but as Jonas acquires more memories, he does change for the better. He becomes angry and frustrated with his society, pining for freedoms he never knew he wanted. While Jonas has a lot of depth, but since emphasis is placed on controlling emotion, we don’t feel his emotions as well as we should.
The world of The Giver is well built, but it is nothing exceptional. What is interesting is the sheer amount of control the leaders have over the Community, which hammers home the “complete comfort at the price of freedom” message. One of the things that bugged me the most was that although this is classified as science fiction, we never really learn about how The Giver passes the memories of the past on to Jonas. There is no technology involved and it is only hinted at that The Giver and Jonas are special because they can See or Hear Beyond.
So in conclusion, The Giver actually is a good novel and a decent read, but it really felt like Lois Lowry was trying too hard to hammer the message home. Generations of kids have grown to dislike this book because teachers try to over-analyze the novel as well and I honestly can’t blame them.
I give this book 4/5 stars.