Category: Speculative Fiction
Insurgent by Veronica Roth
(Cover picture courtesy of Veronica Roth’s blog.)
One choice can transform you–or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves–and herself–while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.
Tris’s initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with her chosen faction; instead, the day ended with unspeakable horrors. War now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. And in times of war, sides must be chosen, secrets will emerge, and choices will become even more irrevocable–and even more powerful. Transformed by her own decisions but also by haunting grief and guilt, radical new discoveries, and shifting relationships, Tris must fully embrace her Divergence, even if she does not know what she may lose by doing so.
New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth’s much-anticipated second book of the dystopian Divergent series is another intoxicating thrill ride of a story, rich with hallmark twists, heartbreaks, romance, and powerful insights about human nature.
Somehow I think I won’t be reading anything by Veronica Roth after reading Insurgent. Tris, who was quite a strong character in Divergent, has turned into a damsel in distress and the explanation for why factions were created was half-assed at best. (I know, I hate swearing too, but there is no other way to describe the ‘explanation’ we are given.)
Tris has, to put it quite plainly, has turned into a wimp. She does not do many proactive things in the course of Insurgent, but seems to react to everything. To be fair, there was not much action in the novel except near the end, so it was hard for her to actually showcase her strength, but still. Tris lets Tobias (Four) boss her around, goes into the Erudite trap despite the fact that going there will kill even more people than if she didn’t and is just as judgmental, if not more, than in Divergent. All Erudites are completely evil, cold, calculating pathetic excuses for human beings, we get it already! At least she begins to change her attitude at the very end, but it’s too late for redemption.
Before I read Insurgent, some people had told me it explained and went more into depth about why the factions were created. And there is an explanation: on the last two pages! It’s a pathetic explanation as well, as if Veronica Roth just shoved it in the end to keep her fans from tearing her to shreds. I still don’t buy the explanation that factions are great things to prevent the moral breakdown of society and that the Divergent are the key (because they’re oh-so-special) to bringing society back to normal. Veronica Roth is completely wrong in assuming that most people can be conveniently placed into 5 basic categories. If the faction system actually occurred, nearly everyone would be Divergent because our personalities are not as simple as Roth would like to pretend.
I wish there had been more reminders of what happened in Divergent because there are so many names and events to remember. But Veronica Roth barely drops any hints and just assumes readers will be able to immediately jump back into the story. There’s a fine line between too much backstory and not enough and Insurgent falls drastically on the latter side. I only read Divergent in July, but had to actually look up the Wikipedia summary to find out who the heck half of the characters were. Despite that, the writing itself was not bad and when there was actually action, there was a great balance between description and dialogue. But a good writing style can’t make up for all the offenses Insurgent was guilty of.
I give this book 2/5 stars.
The Return Man by V. M. Zito
(Cover picture courtesy of Staffer’s Book Review.)
The outbreak tore the U. S. in two. The east remains a safe haven. The west has become a ravaged wilderness. They call it the evacuated states.
It is here that Henry Marco makes his living. Hired by grieving relatives, he tracks down the dead and delivers peace.
Now Homeland Security wants Marco for a mission unlike any other. He must return to California, where the apocalypse began. Where a secret is hidden. And where his own tragic past waits to punish him again.
But in the wastelands of America, you never know who—or what—is watching you…
Whoa.
I honestly can’t decide which book I love the most: Feed by Mira Grant or The Return Man by V. M. Zito. And for those of you who know how much I loved Feed, you’ll know that that’s the best comparison I can give. This is the best book I’ve read in the past few months and is a fitting start to my reading challenge.
Marco is living in the Evacuated States, working as a return man, someone who kills the zombies of people who hire him. The logic behind this is that no one wants to know their loved one is shambling around somewhere, slowly rotting and possibly even suffering. However, when the Department of Homeland Security ‘hires’ (coerces) him into putting down one particular man he knew a while ago, before the Resurrection. His connection to the man, Roger Ballard, is slowly revealed through flashbacks that, surprisingly, don’t halt the action. V. M. Zito actually makes readers care about Marco, which is why the flashbacks are interesting and exciting.
However, Marco isn’t traveling alone to California to put down Roger. He’s travelling with Kheng Wu, my favourite character. I can’t say much about him because that would spoil things, but his back and forth dialogue with Marco is priceless. The Return Man rotates between Wu’s and Marco’s points of view, which is a good thing because Wu is hiding his motivations and true identity from Marco and despite himself, will come to respect the American.
The Return Man is a pretty serious story, which is why it’s a relief that Zito used humour occasionally to keep things from becoming too depressing. Mira Grant did the same thing with Feed (another reason why the comparison is so fitting). Both authors write things in graphic detail, but the subject of this detail is different.
Mira Grant focuses more on the Kellis-Amberlee virus that creates zombies whereas Zito focuses on the zombies themselves. In extremely graphic detail. I expected some details, but the warnings in the Amazon reviews did not do it justice. Although it takes a lot to gross me out, I suggest that the weak of stomach and regular readers do not eat while reading The Return Man. Especially not something chewy and meaty like jerky. You have been warned. So don’t be like a lot of people who gave the book a mediocre rating because of the gore. Since I’ve warned you, you have no excuse. Here’s a sample passage from page 153:
“A sludge of blood and offal carpeted the floor, inches thick. But solid. Hardened with time. The bodies had been dead for years, dried now and colourless. Spines torn apart, brains gnashed. These victims had been devoured too quickly, too completely to resurrect.”
The plot is fast-paced and unpredictable, what with zombies around every corner. Unlike a lot of books with huge plot twists, the ending of The Return Man actually makes sense, even if it is a bit sad. And what a plot twist in the Epilogue, just when you think it’s all over! I want the next book now, but unfortunately there is no word on when Zito plans to write the sequel. After all, his debut novel was just released in 2012.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
Delirium by Lauren Oliver
(Cover picture courtesy of Lauren Oliver’s website.)
They say that the cure for love will make me happy and safe forever. And I’ve always believed them. Until now.
Now everything has changed. Now, I’d rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.
And now since opera usually says things best, here are some lines from Verdi’s La Traviata:
Love is a heartbeat throughout the universe,
mysterious, altering,
the torment and delight of my heart.
It sounds better in the original Italian, but you get the point. Love is important; it’s in our everyday lives and it is one of two main forces that motivate people’s actions. (The other is greed.) But what happens if you remove one of those forces from the entire adult population of a country? You get Delirium, that’s what.
The main character, Lena (short for Magdalena) lives in a world where love is called amor deliria nervosa and is the only recognized mental illness anymore. That’s why when people turn 18 they must get an operation to ‘cure’ them. After that, they are safe from love and all the nasty consequences that usually come around because of it. But they never get to feel the ecstasy it brings either.
You can probably guess where this is going, right? You’d be right if you said that Lena will fall in love with a mysterious boy who is originally from the rebel movement but snuck his way into the city. Yes, I totally saw that coming as I was reading Delirium, but there are a few plot twists and Lauren Oliver at least tells the story well.
She does rely on the forbidden love factor a little too much if you’re reading this as an adult, but teens will love it. Lena is going through her first love, which is both awkward and amazing at the same time. For a teen that just experienced love for the first time or has yet to experience love, this is the perfect description of what it is like. So although I rolled my eyes at some parts of Delirium, on the whole it’s a well written story. It’s well written enough that I’ll be reading the sequel, Pandemonium, at any rate.
And for those of you that forget what love is like to the young, go see what Mozart says about it in his classic opera Le Nozze di Figaro:
I give this book 4/5 stars.
“Reached” by Ally Condie
Cassia’s journey began with an error, a momentary glitch in the otherwise perfect façade of the Society. After crossing canyons to break free, she waits, silk and paper smuggled against her skin, ready for the final chapter.
The wait is over.
One young woman has raged against those who threaten to keep away what matters most—family, love, choice. Her quiet revolution is about to explode into full-scale rebellion.
With exquisite prose, the emotionally gripping conclusion to the international–bestselling Matched trilogy returns Cassia, Ky, and Xander to the Society to save the one thing they have been denied for so long, the power to choose.
Much earlier this year I wrote reviews for the first two books in this series, Matched and Crossed where I admitted to liking the books more than I originally thought I would. I had high hopes for the concluding installment, figuring that Ally Condie would wrap the story up with some great action, interesting twists, and solid character development.
Imagine my surprise when Reached turned out to be none of those things.
Yes, the story of Cassia, Ky, and Xander gets wrapped up in a pretty little package at the end where most of them get what they are searching for after helping the Rising complete its power grab, or if not exactly what they want, an acceptable alternative, but along the way to that end result the book is incredibly flat and lacking in excitement or drive in my opinion.
As characters, especially leading characters, Cassia and Ky fell completely by the wayside. Cassia never changed from the beginning of the book to the end, she just kept doing the same thing over and over, never really learning anything from what was going on around her. Ky was the same way. As a pilot for the Rising he did his duty as he was given assignments but we never got to see him grow in an appreciable manner. I felt that both of them were incredibly boring which made reading their respective viewpoint chapters a bit of a challenge.
Xander on the other hand, is the one shining piece of Reached as he works to help not only the Rising in his role as medical spy, but also to help the general public of the Society as well. I wound up liking Xander as a character far more than anyone else in the trilogy by the time I was finished reading Reached. He showed growth, compassion, a hint of jealousy, acceptance of his fate, etc. The other two just got what they wanted and didn’t even seem to realize it.
I had high hopes for this book, I wanted a stellar ending to the story, but after easily being able to pick sides in the first two books I found I had a hard time seeing either the Rising or the Society as the villains or heroes of the people. Both seemed to have decent intentions, but really messed up putting them into action. As a result, I wasn’t really sure if I should be happy or not when I was finished.
For fans of the first two books, you should probably read Reached just to make sure you get the complete story, and some of you may even enjoy it quite a bit more than I did, but in the end it isn’t nearly as good a book as Matched or Crossed were; it almost seems as if it were forced in some ways.
Grade: D
Length: 384 pages
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.