The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi

The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi(Cover picture courtesy of Geeky Scifi.)

The Ghost Brigades are the Special Forces of the Colonial Defense Forces, elite troops created from the DNA of the dead and turned into the perfect soldiers for the CDF’s toughest operations.  They’re young, fast, strong, and totally without normal human qualms.

The universe is a dangerous place for humanity—and it’s about to become more dangerous.  Three races we’ve fought before have allied to halt our expansion into space.  Their linchpin: the turncoat scientist Charles Boutin, who knows the CDF’s biggest secrets.  To prevail, the CDF must find out why Boutin did what he did.

Jared Dirac—a superhuman hybrid, created from Boutin’s DNA—is the only person who can provide answers.  Jared’s brain should be able to access Boutin’s electronic memories, but when the memory transplant appears to fail, Jared is given to the Ghost Brigades.

At first, Jared is a perfect soldier.  then, as Boutin’s memories slowly surface, Jared begins to intuit the reasons for Boutin’s betrayal…and the fact that some of humanity’s enemies have worse things in mind than our mere defeat.

Just like the first book in the series, Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades was nothing like I expected.  If you thought it was a little cliché for the Colonial Defense Forces to be the undisputed ‘good guys’ as it seemed in the first book, you’ll love the spin John Scalzi puts on the CDF in his sequel.  Trust me, you do not want to read this book if you’re squeamish because here we see the ugly side of the CDF and its Special Forces, the Ghost Brigades.

Enter our protagonist, Jared Dirac.  With some questionable ethics, he was specially grown and implanted with the consciousness of another man in an attempt to figure out why one of the leading scientists turned traitor.  I won’t even pretend to understand John Scalzi’s science-filled explanations for consciousness transfer, but fans of hard sci-fi will love them.  There’s also some throwbacks to earlier sci-fi writers who experimented with the ethics surrounding consciousness and souls.  Of course all this involves some pretty heavy ethical debates, but that’s just a sign John Scalzi actually puts faith in the intelligence of his readers.

Jared is an interesting character.  Since he’s born an adult, he’s also born without a personality and must develop one when it’s seemingly clear that Charles Boutin’s consciousness hasn’t taken.  We get to see the Ghost Brigades very intensive training, see some of their horrible missions and watch as Jared’s personality slowly develops through all of the crazy events.  And just when you think you’ve guessed how things will end for poor Jared, you’ll find out that you’re wrong.  John Scalzi is just that good at making believable plot twists motivated by the characters themselves.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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The Best and Worst of April

Well I’m happy to report that my total views are up since March, reaching 3,748 instead of 3, 548.  Part of that I credit with the fact I reviewed books by authors who publicized my posts and the fact that I had a huge giveaway in conjunction with Carla Hanna.  Giveaways always bring up statistics.

Enough about that for now.  What were the most popular posts for April?

1.  The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome

2.  Giveaway: Starlet’s Web & Starlet’s Run by Carla J. Hanna

3.  End of Days by Eric Walters

4.  Matilda by Roald Dahl

5.  The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton

I definitely have my theory as to why my Hunger Games article soared to the top this month: a teacher is using it in their curriculum.  How do I know this?  I followed the link that was giving me so many referrals and logged in as a guest on Owensboro Public Schools Moodle (an online correspondence course tool).  It seems my article is being used to help teach The Hunger Games to students and that makes me very, very happy.  I suspect some school(s) is/are doing a novel study about Eric Walters’ End of Days because it fits in with the themes that are supposed to be covered in most curricula.  As for the others, they’re very popular books or giveaways; those things normally get plenty of traffic.

So if The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome is at the top, what are some of the bottom ones?

1.  Kaiulani: The People’s Princess by Ellen Emerson White

2.  Why Books Should be Rated on a Logarithmic Scale

3.  The Host by Stephenie Meyer

4.  Extras by Scott Westerfeld

5.  Lady of Palenque: Flower of Bacal by Anna Kirwan

What’s not surprising is seeing two books from The Royal Diaries on here, but I’m disappointed that Margaret’s hilarious guest post Why Books Should be Rated on a Logarithmic Scale isn’t doing so well.  It’s definitely not for a lack of effort or creativity on her part, but I suppose it isn’t all that clicky (not a lot of keywords people search for).  As for The Host and Extras, they’re not exactly the most popular books around, but with The Host movie coming out you’d think there’d be more traffic.  Oh well; it wasn’t the most flattering review anyway.

That’s how my April went.  How was yours?  Anything new going on with you guys?

Fallen by Lauren Kate

Today I’m guest posting for Savindi over at The Streetlight Reader.  So I decided to review a book that has been on my radar for years: Fallen by Lauren Kate.  I was attracted to the cover, but was judging a book by its cover the right call?  Find out by heading on over.  And while you’re over there, check out both Savindi’s awesome book reviews of very diverse fiction as well as her occasionally successful cooking attempts.

Starlet’s Web & Starlet’s Run Giveaway Winner(s)

First off I would like to thank everyone who entered and publicized the giveaway I had with Carla Hanna for paperback copies of Starlet’s Web and Starlet’s Run.  Thank you for making this my most successful giveaway yet.

Secondly, I would like to give a HUGE thank you to Carla Hanna, both for sending me her great book(s) to review and for agreeing to go along with this giveaway.  (As a side note this giveaway was the first she’s ever done with a blogger.)  Her questions for you guys were amazing and brought up many thoughtful entries, but it’s her replies to those entries that really seemed special for me.  Carla took an active role in the giveaway, tirelessly promoting it and giving her best responses to your entries.  She really is an incredible woman.

I digress.  Here are the results of the giveaway:

All thirteen people that entered the giveaway will be receiving a prize pack consisting of print copies of Starlet’s Web and Starlet’s Run.

Carla had such a hard time picking out just one winner and she was so grateful for the thoughtful entries that, yes, she has decided to ship out a prize pack to every single person who entered as a thank you.  Not every author has the resources to do this, so I ask only one thing of the winners: that you leave an honest review of her books on whatever sites you want, whether it’s Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads or your own blog.

It doesn’t have to be a thousand words and it doesn’t even have to be positive.  But I would ask you all to show Carla some thanks by leaving a couple sentences or even paragraphs about her books.  After all, there are very, very few contests where everyone is a winner.  So please, make this one count.

Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

The old life is dead.  But the old Lena is dead too.  I buried her.  I left her beyond a fence, behind a wall of smoke and flame.

In this electrifying follow-up to her acclaimed New York Times bestseller Delirium, Lauren Oliver sets Lena on a dangerous course that hurtles through the unregulated Wilds and into the heart of a growing resistance movement.  This riveting, brilliant novel crackles with the fire of fierce defiance, forbidden romance, and the sparks of a revolution about to ignite.

No.  Just no.  Lauren Oliver, why did you have to go for the love triangle?  Hasn’t that been done enough already in YA?  I know it generates excitement amongst fans, but really?  Really?  That wasn’t necessary, you know.

My personal cliché gripes aside, Pandemonium was actually a pretty good sequel.  There were some great plot twists, a decent amount of character development and some world-building expansion, but there wasn’t that wow-factor some sequels have.  Lena changed quite a bit from her old, soft city self and into the harder but still emotionally vulnerable girl from the Wilds.  She’s also learned to hide her emotions better, which makes her interactions with Julian Fineman interesting.  Seeing her feelings develop for him and the confusion she feels over Alex’s alleged death makes for quite a bit of internal conflict, but at times it felt manufactured.

What I did like (although it took a little getting used to) was the flipping back each chapter between ‘then’ and ‘now’, Lena’s time in the Wilds and her current undercover mission in the city, respectively.  Not only did it convey background information without info-dumping, it led to very suspenseful moments, especially near the end.  And the plot twists, wow!  I saw the very last one coming, but the others?  For the most part, no.  Despite the love triangle (ugh) I actually like where the trilogy is going.

So there was decent character development, especially in Julian as odd as it sounds, a fast-paced plot and a fascinating cliffhanger.  Overall, Pandemonium was a good sequel, but I wouldn’t call it a great one.

I give this book 4/5 stars.

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