Tagged: speculative fiction
Blog Tour: Since Tomorow by Morgan Nyberg
Guest Posting for The Streetlight Reader
Today I’m guest posting. I know, again. That’s why I announced Round Two of my giveaway today. Anyway, I’m posting over at The Streetlight Reader. It’s a book review on The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer. Clones, opium, friendship, love and drug lords…what more can you ask for in speculative fiction?
The Bar Code Tattoo by Suzanne Weyn
(Cover picture courtesy of Random Buzzers.)
The bar code tattoo. Everybody’s getting it. It will make your life easier, they say. It will hook you in. It will become your identity.
But what if you say no? What if you don’t want to become a code? For Kayla, this one choice changes everything. She becomes an outcast in her high school. Dangerous things happen to her family. There’s no option but to run…for her life.
I’ve heard a lot of great and terrible things about this book in the YA community. Again, this prompts the question: Is it worth the hype?
Well, not really.
Much like Matched, it is an average book, but nothing more. It’s not fantastic and it’s not terrible, but it falls somewhere in between. An interesting dystopian society, a decently paced plot and an okay cast of characters…yet there is nothing really exceptional about The Bar Code Tattoo. Some aspects of it are Orwellian, others remind me of that documentary Food Inc. and still others remind me of The Giver. Suzanne Weyn is a competent enough writer, but she doesn’t really stand out for me.
The Bar Code Tattoo is set in a dystopian future where the fears of right-wringers, left-wingers and centrists come to pass. For the right, it is the scary amount of government overreach and a complete lack of respect for the Constitution. For the left, it is the fact that the poor are pretty much left to fend for themselves while corporations take over America. As for the centrists, all this will scare the crap out of them. This is why I admire Suzanne Weyn’s dystopia in an odd sort of way: it combines the fears of all political spectrums into one decently built future.
Kayla is a decent enough protagonist, but is nothing really special. To me she’s pretty much your stock dystopian protagonist: she sees nothing wrong with the society until something happens (like falling in love or someone close to her dying) to make her into a rebel. Highly predictable. The plot is decently paced, but I could predict every plot ‘twist’.
Overall: meh.
I give this book 3/5 stars.
The Host by Stephenie Meyer
(Cover picture courtesy of Stephenie Meyer’s website.)
Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away.
Our world has been invaded by an unseen enemy. Humans become hosts for these invaders, their minds taken over while their bodies remain intact and continue their lives apparently unchanged.
When Melanie, one of the few remaining “wild” humans, is captured, she is certain it is her end. Wanderer, the invading “soul” who has been given Melanie’s body, was warned about the challenges of living inside a human: the overwhelming emotions, the glut of senses, the too-vivid memories. But there was one difficulty Wanderer didn’t expect: the former tenant of her body refusing to relinquish possession of her mind.
Wanderer probes Melanie’s thoughts, hoping to discover the whereabouts of the remaining human resistance. Instead, Melanie fills Wanderer’s mind with visions of the man Melanie loves—Jared, a human who still lives in hiding. Unable to separate herself from her body’s desires, Wanderer begins to yearn for a man she has been tasked with exposing. When outside forces make Wanderer and Melanie unwilling allies, they set off on a dangerous and uncertain search for the man they both love.
One of the most compelling writers of our time, Stephenie Meyer brings us a riveting and unforgettable novel about the persistence of love and the very essence of what it means to be human.
I received this book as a late birthday gift (coincidentally, it was from the same friend who gave me The White Queen) and after I’ve read it a few times, I’m glad I didn’t spend my hard-earned money on it.
The Host is supposed to be a novel about love, loss and what it means to be human. It is none of these three. It is a long, rambling novel that could have been written in less than 300 pages, rather than the 600+ pages of my hardcover edition. The plot is slow, with many pointless subplots that go nowhere. Wanderer would have been a decent character if she was stronger and well-developed, but she was not. She is your stereotypical gentle alien who is horrified at human barbarism. She practically went catatonic when she saw some of the experiments conducted by the “wild” humans on souls.
The idea that the aliens (or “souls”, as they’re called) have taken over other planets and live through the natives is an interesting one. However, it is at the height of hypocrisy that the souls are depicted as good, despite the fact that they take over people’s bodies and extinguish their host’s soul, killing them. Humans are depicted as horrible creatures even though all they want is freedom from the souls.
I give this book 1/5 stars.