Look What Just Arrived! (#6)

Carrie Pictures 2012 279People seem to think (and I don’t know where they got this idea from) that I like books.  That’s why I got a lot of books for Christmas.  So here they are:

  • The Path of the Fallen by Dan O’Brien
  • The First Man of Rome by Colleen McCullough
  • The Riddle by Alison Croggon
  • The Skystone by Jack Whyte
  • City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare
  • The City by David Moody
  • The Return Man by V. M. Zito

Actually, the first one, The Path of the Fallen is not a Christmas present so much as a pleasant Christmas Eve surprise from the author who sent me his book to review.  Dan O’Brien’s book will be a workout for my wrists because it is 600 pages and is a surprisingly heavy book.

Aside from City of Fallen Angels, all of the books I received are ones I’ve never read.  Yesterday I finished The Return Man (expect a review soon!) and last night, or early in the morning depending on how you count I finished The City by David Moody.  I want to finish some of the books I received last time and the time before that (and the time before the time before that) before I start on any other new ones, which means I’ll be reading and reviewing popular fiction like Game of Thrones and 1984.

So, my fellow book lovers, what did you get for Christmas?

Characters

Have you ever wondered why your perfect plans are shattered? Why a seemingly perfect romance ended? Why good luck strikes at strange times? Why life seems like a bunch of meaningless chaos?

There is a very simple answer to all of these questions. We were created by an ancient race of aliens and are nothing but characters in their stories, created to alleviate their boredom.

As soon as they are old enough to write, they are given a computer software program and a manual with only the most basic rules of their writing universe. In order to create a new character, they must collaborate with other aliens to make sure two human parents give birth to a child. This child will be under their control from the moment it is born until the moment it dies.

You are always subject to the whims of your creator. Everything you say, everything you do is controlled by them. Usually, the aliens have jotted down things they want to happen during your lifetime. But some aliens detest this and make random decisions as to where your life will go. This is where chaos comes from.

Our world is relatively new, but the aliens have become bored with it. The best writers among them have declared that the Earth is a cliché, boring universe. They decided they want to write in a new, more exciting world, so they took a special vote. It was this vote that decided how our world will end.

“Why don’t we let a black hole swallow their planet?”

“Nah, we’ve done that already.”

“What if the Earth spontaneously combusts?”

“That’s way too cliché!”

“Okay, why don’t we knock their planet out of orbit and send it crashing into the sun?”

“That’s a stupid idea.”

“Fine. How about we give all their world leaders bad cases of paranoia and see what happens?”

“Sure. Why not?”

And so, our world will not end with a bang, but with slow decay. Our increasingly paranoid world leaders will declare war on each other and humanity will slowly die out. But, since the aliens lost all interest in us, we have gained something we never had before: free will. It is now up to us to decide our fates—and the fate of our planet.

***

Just as some background on the story, I want to say that it was inspired by David Eagleman’s Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives and was originally written to be read aloud.  So if you’re wondering why the language is so simplistic, there’s your answer.

Well, what did you think?  If you have criticism, feel free to say it.  I’m a book reviewer, after all; I wouldn’t be dishing out what I can’t take.  And if you have praise, that’s fine too I suppose.

Anyway, merry Christmas to those of you that celebrate it!  Now why are you still on the internet?  Go spend time with your families!

Are You a Blogger?

No, sadly, this is not my usual Monday rant.  Yes, I am currently ready to call a certain someone unprintable names, but I figure it’s best to ignore them as they obviously have the reading comprehension and manners of a five year old.  Maybe I’ll get back to ranting after the Christmas spirit wears off.

Anyway, that’s not what this post is about.  Here are some important announcements/questions for your reading pleasure:

1.  Would you be interested in being interviewed by me?

If you’re a book blogger or an author that blogs about books and writing, I would love to interview you.  Why?  Because I like doing interviews and I want to give my fellow bloggers/author-bloggers some publicity.  It also gives my readers a chance to discover other great blogs.  So if you’re interested in being interviewed, tell me below in the comments and I’ll be happy to get in touch with you.

2.  I’ve figured out the prize for completing The Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge!

(A big thanks goes to James Kennedy who suggested this in the comments!) Here’s what I will be doing: when you complete your challenge and another blogger completes the challenge on the same level or close to you I will put you in touch with one another.  You can then guest post for each other either about the challenge (what you learned from it, if you might do it next year) or just exchange reviews.  But how the grand prize is going to work is as follows:

Everyone who achieves Mad Reviewer earns 4 entries, Crazy Reviewer earns 3 entries, Slightly Sane Reviewer earns 2 entries and Sane Reviewer earns 1 entry.  I will put the names of the bloggers who have completed the challenge (and I have verified that they were honest) in a hat and draw one.  I’ll even do it on video so there are no complaints about honesty.  So what is the grand prize?

The grand prize will be a book blogger’s prize pack of a free book of your choice with the option of me to put my own annotations in it (some people like reading others’ annotations, but if you don’t like it, that’s cool too) and promotion on my blog.  Yes, it’s not exactly a large prize pack, but what I will do that other contest holders won’t is ship anywhere in the world, not just North America.  The promotion on my blog can be for either your blog or if you have a book out, I’ll promote that.

If more people enter next year’s challenge, I’ll likely up the prizes.  But for this first year I’ll stick with a free book and some promotion.

3.  Would you like to guest post for me?

Guest posting can be a drain on bloggers.  Believe me, I would know.  That’s why when someone guest posts for me, I always return the favour.  It helps both of us because we both get exposed to new readers and our readers get to read someone else’s thoughts.  I’ve had two amazing semi-regular guest posters, Caleb Flanagan and The Streetlight Reader, but a little variety is always nice.  For more information about guest posting, please check out this post.

4.  I will be posting a short story I wrote on Christmas.

I had intended on reviewing a Christmas-y book for Christmas, but I changed my mind.  I’m going to post a short story I wrote a couple years ago that I think a lot of writers and conspiracy theorists will be able to relate to.  It’s around 300 words and that’s all I’m going to say about it at this time.  If you celebrate Christmas, think of it as my Christmas present to you.  If you don’t celebrate Christmas, think of it either a special treat or torture, depending on whether you enjoy it or not.

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

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.

Amazon      Barnes and Noble

“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.

ReachedMuch 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

Amazon   |   Barnes & Noble   |   Goodreads