Tagged: masq1
Qualify by Vera Nazarian
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
You have two options. You die, or you Qualify.
The year is 2047. An extinction-level asteroid is hurtling toward Earth, and the descendents of ancient Atlantis have returned from the stars in their silver ships to offer humanity help.
But there’s a catch.
They can only take a tiny percent of the Earth’s population back to the colony planet Atlantis. And in order to be chosen, you must be a teen, you must be bright, talented, and athletic, and you must Qualify.
Sixteen-year-old Gwenevere Lark is determined not only to Qualify but to rescue her entire family.
Because there’s a loophole.
If you are good enough to Qualify, you are eligible to compete in the brutal games of the Atlantis Grail, which grants all winners the laurels, high tech luxuries, and full privileges of Atlantis Citizenship. And if you are in the Top Ten, then all your wildest wishes are granted… Such as curing your mother’s cancer.
There is only one problem.
Gwen Lark is known as a klutz and a nerd. While she’s a hotshot in classics, history, science, and languages, the closest she’s come to sports is a backyard pool and a skateboard.
This time she is in over her head, and in for a fight of her life, against impossible odds and world-class competition—including Logan Sangre, the most amazing guy in her class, the one she’s been crushing on, and who doesn’t seem to know she exists.
Because every other teen on Earth has the same idea.
You Qualify or you die.
[Full disclosure: I requested and received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
Now, from the description of this novel you may be getting the impression that Qualify is one of those awful Divergent-Hunger Games hybrid novels that publishers think all teens want (again). That’s not really the truth, though. Qualify takes some of the good aspects of Hunger Games without the whiny factor of Divergent and makes something completely new and interesting.
Gwen Lark is really a klutz and a nerd. When she takes many of the tests to officially qualify as one of the ten million humans aged 12-19 that the Atlanteans will save, she really does fail quite a few of the physical exams. Sure, she gets better throughout the training and she really has to work hard at it, but she knows she’ll never be the number one candidate anywhere. In this way, it’s a lot more realistic than someone who goes from nerd straight to jock who can kick butt. But Gwen isn’t just a bumbling nerd; she’s got hidden talents that she’s terrified and really embarrassed about. When these come to light, they change almost everything for her.
One of the things that Vera Nazarian does is write long books that still hold a reader’s interest. Qualify is over 600 pages but you shouldn’t let that intimidate you because it really does keep your interest the whole way through. Sure, some things start out a little stereotypical in the beginning but Nazarian’s amazing descriptive style takes over and things smooth out pretty quickly. She really does focus a lot on inner conflict as well as interpersonal conflicts so if you’re looking for constant action, you’re looking in the wrong place. This is a really great look not only at the lives of regular teens under extraordinary circumstances but also a look at how the world really would handle a doomsday scenario like the one presented. At first there would be every effort to destroy or divert the asteroid, there would be collaboration with the mysterious Atltanteans who just showed up, etc. But after that? Things go back to an uneasy calm before the storm as people go into denial and then explode in anger at their impending doom. All the while, millions of teenagers are competing for the coveted 10 million worldwide spots. It’s horrific and fascinating at the same time.
While the characters and descriptions were great and the world-building was good, one of the things I noticed was a little rough was voice. The descriptions of Gwen’s surroundings are amazing and the descriptions of Atlantean technology are good as well but Gwen’s voice is a little rough. Sometimes her dialogue is incredibly mature for her age (16 bordering on 17) and other times she speaks and acts like a stereotypical teenager. It makes reading Qualify a little jarring at times and I think this could have been improved with a few more cuts to unnecessary passages. There is very little fluff in Nazarian’s story here but when there is fluff and filler you really do notice it. If Gwen’s voice had been a little more consistent, this would have been an absolutely amazing novel. Instead, it stays at ‘good’ or ‘above average’. However, having read just one of Nazarian’s other works, I think things will improve with the next book as she gets a handle on her new characters and new world because Gwen’s voice was much more consistent near the end.
So overall the writing is good if choppy in sections, Gwen is a well-defined main character with complicated thoughts, emotions and goals and the world-building is a little vague but there are some hints at amazing detail later on for Gwen and the readers to discover. Things get pretty intense sometimes and even though this book is around 600 pages, you’ll want to read it in one sitting. I know I did.
I give this book 4/5 stars.
The IX by Andrew P. Weston
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
Soldiers from varying eras and vastly different backgrounds, including the IX Legion of Rome, are snatched away from Earth at the moment of their passing, and transported to the far side of the galaxy. Thinking they have been granted a reprieve, their relief turns to horror when they discover they face a stark ultimatum:
Fight or die.
[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook copy in conjunction with the blog tour in exchange for an honest review.]
One of the things that Roman historians and various scholars debate is what happened to the Ninth Legion. One day they were flushing out rebellious tribes in Caledonia and the next they’ve vanished into thin air. Logic would point to their disappearance being caused by a total massacre of the legion and yet no bones have been found. So what happened to them? Well, Andrew P. Weston attempts his own little explanation for their disappearance as well as other mysterious warrior disappearances throughout the history of warfare.
While Marcus from the Ninth Legion is one of the characters and the book is called The IX, he’s not the main character. Instead, Weston chose to follow around 3 distinct voices. Their stories start when they were all ambushed and things get really interesting when they think they’ve been killed in action only to wake up and be told by extremely tall people that they now have to save an entire ancient civilization. That really threw me for a loop because the stark ultimatum they find, ‘fight or die’, made me think that we’d be in for a gladiator show. And that’s really the opposite of what happens. Marcus and the others, including some of the tribesmen that killed him and his compatriots have to work together to protect the remnants of an ancient civilization from the mysterious Horde. I can’t go into too much detail or I’ll spoil all of your fun, but needless to say that the Horde is not what it seems.
One of the greatest strengths of Weston’s writing is how much he thought out his world. He has created an amazing scientific world where science and history combine to great effect. The only real problem with this world is how we see it. We see it through the eyes of various peoples, including the people that brought Marcus and the others there but at the same time much of the language is very technical. You see, in order to fully appreciate Weston’s world I think you have to be a fan of hardcore science fiction. That’s fine, but I’m generally not a fan of that so I found a lot of the technical explanations either confusing or boring. But at the same time I think even fans of hardcore science fiction would get bored by some of the monologue explanations for how this or that works. If Weston had cut down a little on the explanations I also think the narrative would have flowed better. It was okay as it was, but it still could have been improved.
Overall, The IX is something I’d recommend to hardcore science fiction lovers who happen to know a little history. Even if you don’t know a little Roman history, you’ll still appreciate and enjoy all of the effort Weston put into creating his world. Because of that, although this book is quite long by most standards, it will quickly be a page-turner you don’t want to put down.
I give this book 4/5 stars.
The Dead Days Journal by Sandra R. Campbell
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
The daughter of a radical doomsday prepper, Leo Marrok spent her entire life preparing for the end. A skilled fighter and perfect marksman, Leo is her father’s second-in-command when Armageddon comes to pass. Together, they lead a group of survivors to a secure bunker deep in the Appalachian Mountains.
Vincent Marrok is willing to take extreme measures to repopulate their broken world. Leo’s refusal marks her as a traitor. With father and daughter at odds for the first time, their frail community is thrust into turmoil. Until the unthinkable happens, a blood-thirsty horde arrives. The impending attack will destroy all that they have worked for.
To protect her home and everything she believes in, Leo puts her faith in the arms of the enemy—a creature only rumored to exist—the one she calls Halloween. An alliance born out of necessity evolves into feelings Leo is ill-equipped to handle.
The Dead Days Journal is a post-apocalyptic story of love and family told through Leo Marrok’s first-hand account and the pages of Vincent’s personal journal, giving two very different perspectives on what it takes to survive.
[Full disclosure: I requested and received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
One of the things you have to know about The Dead Days Journal is that it’s not a zombie book. More of a vampire book, to be honest but at the same time it’s nothing like classical YA vampires. No, the majority of these vampires are hungry, rabid beings who have no higher thought processes at all. There are of course some notable exceptions but these vampires are part of what makes Sandra R. Campbell’s book quite unique.
Imagine that the world has come to an end as you know it and you’re living in a small community in a cave, scavenging for survival, knowing that at any minute you could be vampire food. What would you do? Just survive or try to thrive and take the world back from the rabid vampires? It’s an interesting question and many of the characters give it very different answers. Vince Marrok, as you read in the blurb, is willing to take extreme measures to repopulate the world and poor Leo (his own daughter) isn’t even immune. In fact, their disagreement about having children is part of the reason their safe little community comes to a dramatic end as everything they once knew changes. I don’t want to give too much away because part of the fun is seeing how the two characters will react to each others’ actions but let’s just say that one or both of them will snap. Once that veneer of safety is taken away, all bets are off in regards to predicting the behaviour of everyone in the community.
Leo is a very interesting character. She’s matured in a world that doesn’t forgive weakness and she’s realized that humanity realistically has very little chance of coming back from something like this. So, understandably, she doesn’t want a physical relationship with any of the men her age and she definitely doesn’t want children. Why would you want children when you could be devoured by some insane creature at any second of any day? Things get complicated when Leo decides that she does want a relationship because she does love one of her fellow group members, Ben. Once her father sees her in a relationship, things get heated between the two and he does something that really breaks up their once trusting relationship. And that’s when she meets Halloween, an intelligent vampire who tears down a lot of the preconceptions Leo had about his kind. (Oh, and he’s definitely not a typical vampire either because Campbell made these ones unique.) When the two start travel together and go through all kinds of hardships together, it’s not hard to see how things could get messy when feelings begin to be involved.
The plot is slow but interesting in the beginning and then it gets both fast-paced and interesting later on. There’s a lot more interpersonal conflict than action per se but some of the conflicts between people get pretty heated. It helps that there’s always this undercurrent of tension running throughout the narrative and even when things seem to settle down, they can change very quickly. Just when Leo thinks she’s safe, she learns that she is far from it, for example. Or just when she thinks that she’s averted a disaster and saved people, things turn out very differently. The plot is very unpredictable; Sandra Campbell really does a great job at keeping readers on the edges of their seats. I know I sure didn’t want to put this book down until I finished it! And the cliffhanger at the end doesn’t seem forced so you’ll definitely want to read the next book as much as I do.
If you’re looking for some post-apocalyptic fiction but want something that diverges from the regular formula, The Dead Days Journal is a great place to start. It’s got three dimensional characters, amazing world-building and a plot that just keeps surprising you. I can’t recommend it enough.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
Lifemaker by Dean F. Wilson
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
The Regime is on the hunt, forcing the Resistance to take refuge aboard the Lifemaker, an advanced submarine that houses a special cargo: a handful of women who are can give birth to human children.
To evade the Regime’s own submersibles, all parties must work together, but tensions are high, and not everyone on board is looking out for the greater good.
As they descend into the deeps, they quickly learn that not all monsters work for the Regime.
[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook in conjunction with the blog tour in exchange for an honest review.]
Lifemaker is the sequel to Hopebreaker, a steampunk novel featuring a smuggler named Jacob as he navigates a world essentially controlled by demons. I had given the first book 4 stars in March and was eagerly awaiting this second installment. So when I saw the blog tour for it, I signed up immediately. Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed with Wilson’s second book in the Great Iron War series. Not because the characters had truly gone downhill or because he world-building suddenly tanked, but rather because of the plot.
Despite all of the good things that do happen in Lifemaker, I was a little disappointed in the plot. It was predictable in comparison to the first book and not more than a little boring around the halfway point of the book. There are characters interacting, sure, but there’s not really all that much for interpersonal conflict. And until the end there’s really not all that much for action either. It was essentially just Jacob and Whistler having a sweet sort of father-adoptive son bonding time and occasionally being interrupted by Taberah. Oh, and playing cards with Rommond. Compared to the sheer action of Hopebreaker, this second book was a bit of a letdown. It does set things up nicely for the third book but at the same time I did have a little trouble getting through it.
Jacob is still a decent enough character although I’m still having problems relating to him on an emotional level. It’s much better than my struggle to relate at all with him in the first book but it’s definitely still there. He’s not a bad character and he’s more of an ambiguous figure than a bad or good person but I found that because he wasn’t really doing anything that I got bored. Essentially he skulks around the ship and bonds with Whistler, occasionally running into members of the crew. I liked that he’s finally attempting to woo Taberah back to him and is trying to mentally prepare himself for fatherhood, though. In that respect, Jacob has certainly improved.
The world-building was still good here in Lifemaker. It didn’t expand all that much, but we learned some fascinating things about Rommond’s background, Taberah’s past and the history of demons taking over. The submarine everyone is staying in doesn’t exactly make it easy to expand on a whole world but Jacob’s exploring does lead him to some interesting new discoveries. Was I absolutely as blown away in this book as I was in the first one at the world-building? Not really, but it was still very solid and despite the somewhat boring tone of the book you can feel Dean F. Wilson’s enthusiasm for the world he’s created shine through.
So overall, Lifemaker was not a bad book, but it was definitely not as good as its predecessor, Hopebreaker. The plot got a little boring and I definitely predicted the ending but it was not a book that I actively disliked. I even enjoyed some parts of it. Really, the main problem is that it suffers from Book 2 Syndrome: its trying to set everything up for the super exciting third book. Still, if you loved Hopebreaker, you’re going to want to read this book. The little cliffhanger for Skyshaker will ensure that and there’s still many things to enjoy about Lifemaker. It’s just that an exciting plot isn’t one of them.
I give this book 3/5 stars.
Jessica Rules the Dark Side by Beth Fantaskey
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
It’s one thing to find out you’re a vampire princess. It’s a whole other thing to actually rule. Newly married Jessica Packwood is having a hard enough time feeling regal with her husband, Lucius, at her side. But when evidence in the murder of a powerful elder points to Lucius, sending him into solitary confinement, Jessica is suddenly on her own. Determined to clear her husband’s name, Jessica launches into a full-scale investigation, but hallucinations and nightmares of betrayal keep getting in her way. Jessica knows that with no blood to drink, Lucius’s time is running out. Can she figure out who the real killer is —and whom she can trust— before it’s too late?
I liked the first book Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side in a kind of guilty pleasure way. There was an attractive guy, an average girl with hidden strengths and plenty of humour. It wasn’t the most original thing I ever read but I was pleased with the way Beth Fantaskey created her vampires and the sort of hierarchy within them. In all, it was just a good read. However, I was very disappointed with Jessica Rules the Dark Side.
One of the things that I loved about the first book was Jessica as she grew to accept her role as a vampire princess and found an inner strength. With the help of Lucius and her friend Mindy, she almost single-handedly reunited the two biggest feuding vampire clans in Romania. Despite Lucius trying to kill her in a fit of half-madness, she managed to reunite the clans and make him realize that they really can be together because they love each other. She was a sort of stereotypical shy teenager with low self-esteem in the beginning but Jessica triumphed and worked through a lot of those issues. It was really satisfying.
But in Jessica Rules the Dark Side, she seems to have regressed to her former self now that she’s married and it was really disappointing. Sure, she’s very much over her head when it comes to vampire politics but Beth Fantaskey starts the sequel at a point where she should at least be learning basic things about each vampire on the council, things about vampire lore and proper stake etiquette. She should also be learning Romanian, but she seems to make absolutely no effort to do so. It’s really frustrating, especially since in the first book she declared that she wanted to be a princess and learn how to rule. Then rule, woman! Don’t just sit there like a bump on a log waiting as events crash into you in wave after wave of dangerous plot twists. Even when Lucius is put in solitary confinement and deprived of blood, Jessica just sort of wanders around aimlessly. It’s really, really frustrating.
One thing I found the most frustrating about this novel is that it’s told not just from Lucius and Jessica’s points of view, it’s also told from the point of view of Mindy and Raniero, a deadly vampire warrior who just wants to be a surfer dude. Mindy is the most annoying character in this book because she’s such a walking stereotype: she’s slightly ditzy, a fashionista, loves make up, isn’t sure what to do with life, etc. It’s really, really frustrating because her story is told with the poor grammar that she actually uses when she speaks. Raniero, on the other hand is desperately trying to be a surfer dude while knowing full well that he can never really banish his warrior side, no matter how hard he tries. He’s very frustrating in the beginning because of this but I liked him in the end when he actually accepted his role in the vampire hierarchy.
So the characters this time around were mediocre at best (except for Lucius, of course) but the plot was absolutely painful. It almost felt like someone was pulling my nails out in front of my the whole time. Why? Because it’s a mystery and I figured it out shortly after Lucius had been accused of murder, sometime around the first third of the book. I had to watch as Jessica stumbled blindly around like her old self and in the end was saved by Mindy, someone who doesn’t really have the intelligence to figure out that Raniero isn’t all that he seems. It was so frustrating. I get that Jessica’s new to this world and is rather distracted by the fact that Lucius is slowly starving in the dungeons, but really? You only applied modern-ish forensics to the case at the eleventh hour? Wouldn’t it have been easier to examine the body first, like a logical human being would? Not only that, when someone is advising you to do things and those things keep going wrong, maybe you should be suspicious of your adviser!
In the end, I wish I had never read this sequel. It’s not badly written but it’s frustrating to see characters I liked completely regress and to have the whole book revolve around a mystery 90% of readers probably solved before they got to the halfway mark in the book. If you read the first book, I can’t honestly recommend reading Jessica Rules the Dark Side. It’s just disappointing.
I give this book 2/5 stars.