Time Between Us

Title: Time Between Us
Author: Tamara Ireland Stone
Narrator: Amy Rubinate
ISBN: 9780307967862 (hardcover 9781423159568)
Discs/CDs: 8 CDs, 9 hours
Pages: 368 pages
Publisher/Date: Hyperiod, an imprint of Disney Book Group, c2012.

And while the thief is distracted by the contents of the safe, three things happen, so fast and overlapping that they seem to take place simultaneously. Bennet disappears completely, and suddenly he’s kneeling next to me on the floor. He grabs my hands and closes his eyes, and I must follow suit, because when I open them, the store is gone. The robber and his knife are gone. And Bennett and I are in the exact same positions–him kneeling, me sitting, still holding each other’s hands–only now we’re next to a tree in the park around the corner, the wind throwing snow violently around us. (99)

Anna sees a teenage boy she’s never met watching her as she does her morning run. Upon meeting her observer at school and identifying him as new student Bennett, she confronts him and he denies the incident. Against the advice of her friends and her gut instincts she is attracted to Bennett, but Anna can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t right about Bennett. During a robbery attempt, Bennett finally reveals that he is hiding a huge secret and is actually a time traveler from 17 years in the future. Pulled inexplicably to each other, Anna relishes the opportunity to fulfill her life long dreams of travel. But as their relationship prompts them to continually break rules that Bennett has established, Bennett’s prolonged presence might be causing consequences that he cannot fix.

More mild-romance than mind-bender or mystery, if you combine Twilight with The Time Traveler’s Wife, you get this book, but in both cases I would go to those other books first. While this book also has a time traveling couple, The Time Traveler’s Wife had depth and substance and emotional draw that this book seems to lack. However, you still having the brooding teenage girl in a relationship that everyone cautions her against yet she feels that unexplainable and instantaneous attraction/attention towards him. I guess that’s actually the problem, because while we see the relationship in Time Traveler’s Wife grow and evolve, I didn’t get that sense here. It feels like their relationship grows out of intrigue rather than love, with all of the long, lingering looks and none of the emotional sparks that are supposed to materialize.

Anna’s friendships, including her relationship with Bennett, are less than appealing. It seems like she’s using Bennett because of the promise of travel opportunities, which she absolutely is intent on taking advantage of. Bennett himself strikes me and Anna’s friends as slightly creepy, what with his popping in and out of Anna’s life. Anna’s friend Justin, whom she has known since she was five, plays a very minor part in the book, and also seems to be used by Anna for music, whether in the form of personalized mixes she can run to or tickets to the hottest concerts. His possible attraction to her is mentioned ever so slightly and then ignored for most of the rest of the story, only to be thrust in our face suddenly towards the end. Even her friend Emma doesn’t seem fully fleshed out, playing the role of comedic side-kick more than a true friend. When the characters fight, which they do sporadically, they all seem to solve their problems by ignoring each other until one or the other gives in for no reason.

This is especially true when applied to Bennett’s rules regarding time travel, which he broke once with disastrous consequences yet that doesn’t stop him from considering breaking the rules for Anna, a girl he’s just met. The time travel portion of the plot is also marginally explained. While Bennett subconsciously/inexplicably realizes that he can’t travel to a time before he was born or into his future, the ending climatic separation between Bennett and Anna has no explanation. I don’t want to reveal too much here, but I wonder if answers will be more readily available in October with the upcoming sequel, which will be told from Bennett’s perspective. Also, as a reviewer pointed out on Goodreads, at one point in the story there are three Bennett’s in the same time line, which was loosely explained as possible because they weren’t “within range of our other selves” and therefore won’t “disappear”, which seems like a flimsy reason.

And don’t get me started on the ending, which I’m sure to spoil for readers who get that far. Let’s say the problem is solved but with no satisfactory explanation to decipher what caused the problem or how it was solved. I honestly wish it had ended differently. Amy Rubinate did a passible job at narrating the material she was given, but the plot left a lot to be desired in my opinion. Goodreads reviews are full of star-struck readers swooning over what I see is a lackluster love story. Maybe it just wasn’t meant for me.

The Raven Boys

Title: The Raven Boys
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Narrator: Will Patton
ISBN: 9780545465939
Pages: 409 pages
CDs/Discs: 10 CDs, 11 hours 9 minutes
Publisher/Date: Scholastic Press (Scholastic Audiobooks), c2012.

He fell to his knees — a soundless gesture for a boy with no real body. One hand splayed in the dirt, fingers pressed to the ground. Blue saw the blackness of the church more clearly than the curved shape of his shoulder.
“Neeve,” Blue said. “Neeve, he’s — dying.”
Neeve had come to stand just behind her. She replied, “Not yet.”
Gansey was nearly gone now, fading into the church, or the church fading into him.
Blue’s voice was breathier than she would have liked. “Why — why can I see him?” [...]
“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve, Blue. Either you’re his true love,” Neeve said, “or you killed him.” (15-16)

Blue Sargent has been told that she will kill her true love with a kiss, and therefore has sworn off men entirely. But when she sees a spirit in a graveyard on St. Mark’s Eve, there’s only two reasons she would see him: either she’s his true love or she killed him. Neither bodes well for Blue, so when she runs into the boy, named Gansey, when he visits her psychic relatives, she’s curious about him. It turns out he and his friends Adam, Ronan, and Noah have been searching for the hidden burial-place of an ancient king that will grant a wish to his discoverer. But little do they know that their group isn’t the only ones searching for the lost king, and their competition will stop at nothing to reach the tomb first.

Initial thoughts were that I didn’t enjoy this audiobook as much as I had hoped to. Loyal readers might remember that I was surprised by how much I found myself enjoying Shiver and raved about Scorpio Races. Looking back at my Waiting on Wednesday post when I had first heard The Raven Boys was being published, I expressed some confusion about the plot and characters. Unfortunately, my suspicions turned true, and I had a hard time connecting with the characters in this story. There were a lot of unexplained phenomenon that I’m assuming will be explained in the upcoming sequel, but I wish I we had been rewarded with some of those answers at the end of this book.

For people who like gothic mysteries, this might be a good book to try. There are lots of spooky descriptions, unexplained physic phenomenon, and brooding boys. The romance is a little gothic too, since I found myself comparing Adam to the guy from Corpse Bride, even though he and Blue are both very much alive. Blue starts off dating Adam, but is inexplicably ”drawn” to Gansey, the leader of the pack of boys that also includes perpetually sullen Ronan and the perpetually silent Noah. I thought Adam was the most flushed out of all the boys, and we get a really good sense of his motivations and feelings, more so than anyone else. It’s got some mysticism too as Gansey’s obsession with finding lay lines and an ancient king who may (or may not) be buried nearby dominates his thoughts and actions.

But in order to get to the romance (which is a predictable love triangle unlike what we find in Scorpio Races) we have to slog through the first third of the book, which is a slow recount of back story after back story, first with Blue, than with they boys, then finally Gansey’s quest. The action is almost nonexsistent until the final chapters, where it then becomes so rushed (maybe making up for lost time?) that you have difficulty following what’s happening. It’s not so much that there are unexplained coincidences, but things are so intertwined that it’s difficult to accept that these five teens would get along with each other so well in real life. It’s Gansey’s search that holds them all together, but no one appears as interested in it as he is until the very end. We see very little of anyone’s life separate from each other, which makes me wonder if that’s why I found it so difficult to relate with them. I spoke with another librarian who also really liked Scorpio Races but couldn’t get into The Raven Boys so if you fall in this category I would probably say skip the inevitable let down and go reread Scorpio Races for the umpteenth time.

Thirteen Reasons Why

Title: Thirteen Reasons Why
Author: Jay Asher
Narrator: Joel Johnstone and Debra Wiseman
ISBN: 9780739356500 (book on CD)
Pages: 288 pages
Discs/CDs: 5 CDs, 6 hours, 25 minutes
Publisher/Date: Listening Library, c2007.
Awards: Named to the Best Books for Young Adults, Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers, and Selected Audiobooks for Young Adults lists by YALSA 2008

Hello, boys and girls. Hannah Baker here. Live and in stereo.
I don’t believe it.
No return engagements. No encore. And this time, absolutely no requests.
No. I can’t believe it. Hannah Baker killed herself.
I hope you’re ready, because I’m about to tell you the story of my life. More specifically; why my life ended. And if you’re listening to these tapes, you’re one of the reasons why.
What? No!
I’m not saying which tape brings you into the story. But fear not, if you received this lovely box, your name will pop up . . . I promise. (7)

Clay Jensen returns from school to find a box addressed to him. Inside are seven tapes and a map of town. When he plays the tape labelled “1″ with bright nail polish, he hears the voice of his secret crush Hannah Baker, who had killed herself just two weeks prior. She starts the tapes with a word of caution that each of the people listening to the tapes are one of the reasons she killed herself. Clay, studious and sweet, can’t imagine what he did that might have contributed to Hannah’s death. But he spends the rest of the night following the voice of Hannah as she directs him through town and through her last moments of life.

Wow. Just … WOW. If you haven’t listened to this audiobook, you need to. There’s a reason it’s included in YALSA’s 2008 list of Selected Audiobooks for Young Adults. The connections and experience of listening to a book that is primarily narrated by a set of audiotapes is so different from either reading the words or listening to an audiobook that is narrated the more traditional way. The production team was fantastic in timing a lot of the ends of a tape in the story to coincide with the end of the CD that you’re listening to, so you’re going through the motions of changing out the tape at the same time the narrator is doing the same action you are. It’s a level of involvement that you don’t traditionally experience, and it gave me goosebumps on occasion. Fabulously done.

Bravo also to narrators Joel Johnstone and Debra Wiseman, and again kudos to the production team for recognizing and respecting the fact that they needed two narrators, one female and one male, to do the book justice. I can’t pick a favorite because their skills were equally admirable. At times gut wrenching and dejected, snarky and sarcastic, hopeful and hopeless, the emotions run the gamut and readers/listeners are dragged along whether they want to be or not. But I found myself appreciating the manhandling because it makes you think and consider life in a whole new way, especially when considering the reasons that she has for killing herself, since some of them might seem minimal until taken into context as a whole.

Jay Asher’s story is haunting. It’s like a train wreck, where we know what’s going to happen and we recognize the upcoming disaster, but we’re captivated by the realistic dialogue, the pain and heartbreak, and the inability to change the outcome. While you might not remember every detail of every story as well as Hannah does, you’ll remember the emotions that the story evokes. It’s a cautionary and eye-opening tale of what little jabs and snide remarks can accumulate and escalate into becoming so much more to a person. I’m reminded of a story that I read, I think in a Reader’s Digest magazine or Chicken Soup for the Soul book. A student sees a loner walking home from school weighed down with books, and invites that person to a party. At graduation, that book-burdened student, no longer a loner, reveals to the whole class that he/she was planning on committing suicide that weekend. The backpack was so overloaded so that the parents wouldn’t have to clean out the student’s locker after the funeral, but that invitation changed everything. We see that missed opportunity in the story, where just one action, on the part of so many people, would have changed Hannah’s mind. She was unable to ask for help outright, but as we see in the tapes the warning signs were there, if only anyone had seen them. I readily look forward to reading whatever Jay Asher writes next. Along with Hate List by Jennifer Brown, I feel like this should be required reading for high school or college freshmen.

A must read, or better yet a must listen to, story for everyone.

Seraphina

Title: Seraphina
Author: Rachel Hartman
Narrator: Mandy Williams with Justine Eyre
ISBN: 9780307968920 (audiobook), 9780375866562 (hardcover)
Pages: 465 pages
CDs/Discs: 11 CDs, 13.5 hours
Publisher/Date: Listening Library, Random House Children’s Books, c2012.
Publication Date: July 10, 2012

“We find your security inadequate, Captain Kiggs. This is the third attack in three weeks, and the second where a saar was injured.”
“An attack you set up shouldn’t count. You know this is atypical. People are on edge. General Comonot arrives in ten days–”
“Precisely why you need to do a better job,” she said coolly.
“–and Prince Rufus was just murdered in a suspiciously draconian manner.”
“There’s no evidence that a dragon did it,” she said.
“His head is missing!” The prince gestured vehemently toward his own head, his clenched teeth and windblown hair lending a mad ferocity to the pose.
Eskar raised an eyebrow. “No human could have accomplished such a thing?” (25-26)

Forty years after a treaty was drafted and agreed upon, relationships between the dragon and human populations are strained at best. When the human Prince Rufus is murdered in a draconian manner, all eyes turn to the dragons. Dragons, who can assume the physical appearance of humans in order to interact with them, are being taunted, attacked, and held under suspicion. With the treaty anniversary approaching and official dignitaries from both sides meeting, Seraphina is kept busy as the newly hired music assistant. But her close, long-time friendship with a dragon puts her in a unique position to understand their analytical, emotionally detached way of thinking, and Seraphina quickly finds herself aiding Captain/Prince Kiggs in his investigation. They’d better act fast though, as the dragons and humans are meeting soon, and there may be a murderer in their midst with plans for more mayhem.

What can I say about this book that hasn’t been said already? I’ve tried really hard to avoid all the praise that has been heaped on this debut novel, but it’s almost unavoidable. Even the cover is stamped with praise from such big names as Christopher Paolini, Tamora Pierce, and Alison Goodman. I truly fell in love with this book, and the audio was excellent from start to finish. Yes, the dragons might be the stereotypical unemotional beings, but Hartman does manage to add depth to the dragon characters’ rationality, even though feelings are treated like the plague for their kind. If I remember correctly, I compared the story to someone as if Star Trek Vulcans could fly and were plopped down in Renaissance court, something of a Spock meets Shakespeare.

The language is beautiful, the setting has depth and breath and, since Seraphina is a music teacher, sights and sounds come alive. Hartman has created a world with social and cultural background, from a full pantheon of diety-like saints and court etiquette to navigating political turmoil and espionage. Mandy Williams does an excellent job with her voices and has the inflection spot on, in turn emphasizing the emotion of the humans and the reserved nature of the dragons. I really appreciated the choice to have Justine Eyre contribute (I won’t say in what way) because it clearly separated those two narrators and indicated the shift to readers. I have to feel sympathetic towards Kiggs because you know by the end of the book he has some of this figured out and he’s just trying really hard to ignore the obvious inconsistencies of Seraphina’s personality. What a personality Seraphina has though, it’s no wonder she makes friends so easily. She’s very likable in her naive sort of way, which aids her in convincingly lying when necessary to aid her in treading that fine line between navigating and mediating for the two distinct worlds. She’s got a quick mind that is showcased throughout the book, something we don’t really see in strong female protagonists very often who are usually too busy trying to save their own skin or getting involved in some sort of love triangle. Seraphina does both at some point throughout the story, but it’s not the whiz-bang action but more a thinker novel. If you’ve seen the newest version of True Grit, I view her as very comparable to Mattie Ross (the little girl) in regards to her wits, intuition, and tenacity.

There were two things that I do have to complain about though. At the very end with the scene between Kiggs and Seraphina, I kind of wish that had gone differently, just because they have an amazing friendship that is built over their mutual collaboration and admiration for each other. Seraphina’s humanity and her struggle to find her place in the world really ring true, with the author exploring some topics that some teenage girls are faced with in terms of self-acceptance. The other thing that fell flat for me was Seraphina’s ”mental imaginings” (what would you call them without giving them away) until you figured out what they actually were. Then they just struck me as massively convenient. As in “REALLY? You just did that because you’d backed yourself into a corner and needed somewhere to go with this, so you added this stuff to make it work.” I think the story would have been much more interesting and Seraphina much more relatable if she didn’t have this mental block hanging over her head and she didn’t have all these clues to fall back on. Isn’t one distinguishing aspect of her enough, now she’s a freak of nature? I hope this makes sense to people who have read the book.

Both of those things played a very small role in the book, and while I think they’ll later have a larger impact on my appreciation of the series, it should by no means detract from anyone’s enjoyment of this book. I’d heard good things about this book, but the real reason I finally made an effort to snag a copy was that it was named a finalist for the Morris Award, YALSA’s award for a work of young adult fiction by a debut author. YALSA’s blog The Hub has issued a challenge to readers everywhere to finish the finalists before the award is announced next week. Go check out the Hub’s interview with Rachel Hartman that they just recently posted, along with information about the challenge itself. It’s also a Cybils finalist for the Teen Science Fiction and Fantasy category. At least take a look at this book before the sequel, titled Drachomachia, is released this fall.

Tiger Lily

Title: Tiger Lily
Author: Jodi Lynn Anderson
ISBN: 9780062003256
Pages: 292 pages
Publisher/Date: HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, c2012.
Publication Date: July 3, 2012

Tiger Lily shimmied her wrists. It was the twitching that gave her away.
Peter’s face grew grim and perplexed. He reached for her wrists. It was the wrong thing to do.
For all the time I had watched over Tiger Lily, I still underestimated her. She must have been free for some time, because as he leaned in, she flung all her rage against him with her weight, held him against a tree, her fingers around his neck. Panting, her heart racing, she squeezed until he choked for breath and sank slowly down the tree, half conscious.
She left him dazed and lying in the dirt, and ran.
It wasn’t until the next day that Tiger Lily realized she’d left her necklace behind, hanging around his neck. (56)

Tiger Lily, found and adopted by the shaman when she was just a baby, has never really been accepted by the tribe due to her tomboyish ways. She excels at hunting, running, and swimming, quite often better than the boys. So when she encounters both the despised pirates and the infamous and feared Peter Pan in the same day, any other person would be scared. But Tiger Lily’s demeanor intrigues both of them, and she receives a challenge from Peter to find the Lost Boys hide-out, all the while being watched by the pirates who are hoping she leads them to their sworn enemies. So begins a unique friendship, which might be more except that Tiger Lily is promised to a oafish older man in her own tribe. With the arrival of Englishmen and a blonde-haired girl named Wendy who is everything girly that Tiger Lily is not, her father’s position in the tribe and her alliance with the Lost Boys is challenged. Will the pirate’s persistent fight against the Lost Boys lead to a solution to all of Tiger Lily’s problems, or lead her down a path that no one sees coming?

This is a unique telling of the Peter Pan story from primarily Tinker Bell’s perspective, which seeing as how the book is named after Tiger Lily I did not expect. I found myself enjoying it anyway, and Tinker Bell’s unique perspective and ability to read people’s hearts allowed us to see everyone through an objective (although still opinionated) filtered lens, and get swept away by the story more than the emotional turmoil of one character. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t love what Anderson did with the characters, because she did a great job of making them her own. Stripped of almost every fantastical element, she still brings the mystery and magic of the story we all know to life without changing the major plot points or characters. Granted, I’ve never read the original and have only seen the Disney version, but the more retellings I read the more I want to read the original by J.M. Barrie. We still have the one-handed Hook, still have Peter Pan and the Lost Boys and Tinker Bell. But Smee was a serial murderer before enlisting in Hook’s crew, Wendy arrives by much more conventional means, and Tiger Lily’s adoptive father, Tick-Tock (named after the infamous clock) is a cross dresser, which I did not see coming but adds another layer to this peculiar tale and contrasts nicely against Tiger Lily’s tomboy tendencies. It’s bare-bones, realistic magic more reminiscent of Tuck Everlasting than flying boys and pixie dust.

The setting is also lush and vibrant. At one point Anderson mentions Tiger Lily swimming with someone (I won’t reveal who, because that would spoil it) and describes her holding on to his neck and wrapping her legs around him, and I could visualize it perfectly with just the few words she uses. The hostility between the groups is palatable, and the climax and the conclusion keep readers engaged until the very end. I could picture so much of the story while reading, it was almost like a movie playing in my head, and I couldn’t stop until I finished the story several hours later.

There are so many points of discussion with this book, as Tiger Lily has a few hard decisions to make and she doesn’t always act the way readers expect her to act. In fact, I like this strong, powerful, and fierce warrior version so much more than the meek, tame, Pocahontas like character I expected. I think this is really the key to reading this book, is that you don’t get what you expected. You expect a simple love story, and while it does end happily, it twists and turns in a way that leaves you guessing. Allow this book to pull you in and lead you to where it ends, because you will be satisfied by the journey and the eventual conclusion. Definitely recommended for fantasy fans who enjoy retellings or are tired of the love-triangle angle in fantasy, or older readers who enjoyed Barry and Pearson’s Peter and the Starcatchers series when it first came out.

Chess Rumble

Title: Chess Rumble
Author: G. Neri
Illustrator: Jesse Joshua Watson
ISBN: 9781584302797
Pages: 64 pages
Publisher/Date: Lee & Low Books Inc., c2007.

My Daddy
used to play chess
to calm his nerves
after workin’ all day
in a room
with no windows.
I wanted to play him,
but he always say
I wasn’t ready.
“This is a man’s game,” he say.
“You a man?” (4)

Marcus is leading a hard life that just got harder. After his sister suddenly died, his father left him, his mother, and his twin siblings to fend for themselves. Taunted by a bully at school, Marcus is frustrated and feels like the world is out to get him. That’s when he gets shoved into the school’s chess program by his principal, a woman who sees him going down the wrong road and wants to help him stay out of trouble. But while his dad used to play, Marcus is not about to become a chess chump just because some guy’s talking about endgame and strategy.

It’s hard to put into words what I like about this book. I’m a fan of chess, so maybe that adds to my appreciation. I like the idea of using chess to teach kids, and by the front jacket text, it sounds like people are actually doing that, since Neri was “inspired by inner-city school chess enrichment programs.” I loved the dialogue too. Marcus comes across as very realistic, dropping letters and not speaking entirely grammatically correct, throwing down challenges to anyone who will listen. It’s not just the speech patterns, but also the behavior shown, and readers are able to relate to Marcus even if they’ve never been there themselves. CM, the Chess Man, is also realistic in his approach, as he waits for Marcus to come to him. While he might lay the lessons on thick, he doesn’t force the issue and he still approaches the problem in a way that Marcus understands.

This short debut book packs a powerful punch, and between this, Yummy and Ghetto Cowboy, Neri is making a name for himself for relatable, readable, urban fiction for boys.

Pandemonium

Title: Pandemonium
Series: sequel to Delirium
Author: Lauren Oliver
Narrator: Sarah Drew
ISBN: 9780061978067
Pages: 375 pages
CDs/Discs: 9 CDs; 10 hours, 34 minutes
Publisher/Date:

The next day, the sky is a pale blue, the sun high and amazingly warm, breaking through the trees and turning the ice to rivulets of flowing water. The snow brought silence with it, but now the woods are alive again, full of dripping and twittering and cracking. It is as though the Wilds have been released from a muzzle.
We are all in a good mood–everyone but Raven, who does her daily scan of the sky and only mutters, “It won’t last.”
On my way to the nests, stamping through the snow, I’m so warm I have to take off my jacket and tie it around my waist. The nests will be green today, I can sense it. They’ll be green, and the supplies will come, and the scouts will return, and we’ll all flow south together. [...]
Red. Red. Red.
Dozens of [birds]: black feathers coated thickly with crimson-colored paint, fluttering among the branches.
Red means run. (126-127)

Lena has escaped from the “civilized society,” but has lost her love and savior Alex in the process. Now she’s living with Raven and Tack, two people she met after escaping, trying to portray an obedient life while helping the resistance from the inside. Through flashbacks to “Then”, we see her being rescued from certain death by a company of resistance fighters, hiding in the Wilds, surviving on what little they can scrounge and preparing for the coming winter and move south. But Lena, Raven, and Tack have to push their harrowing journey behind them if they are to stay hidden from prying eyes. In her task to get close to and watch a young man named Julian who serves as figurehead of the movement insisting upon “the Cure” for all, she finds herself kidnapped with Julian and held with nothing but an umbrella and a tube of lipstick at her disposal. Can she turn Julian into an ally without exposing her own secret, or will they be unable to bridge the gap that separates them?

If you remember, I fell in love (pardon the pun) with Delirium upon my first reading. This sequel made me question what I loved about the first one. I started listening to it as an audiobook, and could NOT get into it. It might have been the narrator, but Lena sounded whiney, overly brooding, and just melodramatic. The writing, which I’m sure was trying to be poetic and descriptive, just seemed to languish. Everything seems to take her breath away or amaze her with either its beauty or its horror. She feels everything and internalized the minutest of details, and Oliver takes the time to explain everything. For instance:

Alex is the only boy I’ve ever known or really spoke to. I don’t like to think of all those male strangers, just on the other side of the stone wall, with their baritone voices and their snorts of laughter. Before I met Alex, I lived almost eighteen years believing fully in the system, believing 100 percent that love was a disease, that we must protect ourselves, that girls and boys must stay rigorously separate to prevent contagion. Looks, glances, touches, hugs–all of it carried the risk of contamination. And even though being with Alex changed me, you don’t shake loose the fear all at once. You can’t.
I close my eyes, breathe deeply, again try and force myself down through the layers of consciousness, to let myself be carried away by sleep. (16-17)

Who thinks like this?! Okay, we get it, you can’t sleep. We got that with the previous, unquoted (is that a word?), paragraph where you talk about the noises you hear. We as readers don’t need to have everything spelled out for us so completely.

Once I got the printed book from the library, I gave up on the audiobook. It went a lot faster, but now I had the narrator’s voice stuck in my head. And I couldn’t get it out. They really need a new narrator for this series, because I know I would have liked it more if I hadn’t been so focused on all the times that Lena went reflective. Even when she’s getting attacked, about halfway through the book, she’s much more reflective in her descriptions than matter of fact. “I am striking without looking, struggling to breathe, and everything is bodies–hardness and enclosure, no way to run, no way to break free–and the slashing of my knife.” Maybe the book should have been written as a novel in verse.

I also struggled with the jumping back and forth between “Then” and “Now”. The timeline of events got confused in my brain, and readers still don’t witness how Lena, Raven, and Tack actually infiltrated the “real” world, which I was most curious about since it seems like people rarely move between cities in this new society. I would have liked it much better if the story had started and finished with Then, and proceeded to Now chronologically.

I have to admit though that Oliver knows how to write the action sequences, even with the overly descriptive passages. Lana is a warrior similar to Katniss from The Hunger Games and she readily adapts and acquires her survival instincts. She fights with the best of them, and is not about to get taken, captured, or killed, especially after Alex tried so hard to get her out and avoid the cure. The ending is a doozy. On the one hand, it is cliche and predictable and groan-enducing that we now have to wait for book three, but I still wanted to stand up and applaud her for her execution as red-herrings were thrown at us from the beginning and had thoroughly convinced me it wasn’t going to happen, ESPECIALLY not on the last page. And the plot twist regarding the kidnapping was also something I did NOT see coming.

Be prepared to read this as opposed to listening to it, and you’ll be able to avoid the overly dramatic whine that permeates my reading now and you’ll enjoy the action much more.

Forever

In celebration of Banned Book Week’s 30th Anniversary, I’m spending the entire week reviewing books that have been challenged for one reason or another. While yesterday’s Robopocalypse was a new release, today’s book of choice has been around for a long time but one I’d never read until now.

Title: Forever
Author: Judy Blume
ISBN: 9781416934004
Pages: 192 pages
Publisher/Date: Simon Pulse, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division, c1975 (renewed c2003)

It occurred to me in the middle of the night that Michael asked if I was a virgin to find out what I expected of him. If I hadn’t been one then he probably would have made love to me. What scares me is I’m not sure how I feel about that. (20)

Katherine and Michael’s first meeting is innocent enough, the exchange of a few words at a friend’s New Year’s Eve party. But they’re both intrigued by each other, and have their first date the very next day. It’s a great way to start off the New Year as their relationship blooms and advances from hand holding to declaring their love for each other. Their parents caution them about first loves, but Katherine and Michael are adamant that this is going to work out. With everyone saying “take it slow” and “this won’t last”, Katherine and Michael have big decisions to make as they finish their senior year, decisions that will affect their lives and relationship.

A refreshingly honest portrayal of first romance and love that still rings true after all these years (and I really didn’t realize how many years it has been). Unlike today’s books where we see instant sparks and love at first sight, Katherine and Michael’s love for each other starts off slow and builds. They attend different schools, so they only see each other mostly on the weekends and some nights. I think this adds to their evolution together, as they aren’t available for hand-holding, walking each other to classes, eating lunch together or stealing kisses in the hallway.

The story is almost timeless, with just one mention of records at the very beginning and a lack of cell phones being the only glaring difference between now and when the book was written more than 35 YEARS(!) ago. It’s older than Banned Book Week, which is celebrating its 30th Anniversary this year. I actually don’t recall reading a whole lot of Judy Blume when I was younger except the Fudge series, although I acutely remember writing a paper on her because years later I found the same book I used to write the report in my library (I recognized the cover photo) so she must have made some impact.

I’m presenting this book during Banned Book Week and I can understand why parents might still object to it all these years later (it was number #16 of top 100 books banned from 2000-2009). While not explicit or overly graphic, it does portray the characters having sex. Katherine is intent on waiting, and although it’s not a very long time (about three months) before they’re seriously considering sex, it’s nice to see a guy who’s respectful of that choice and doesn’t pressure her (much). While everything is told from Katherine’s perspective, we do witness a little bit of what the guy goes through, as Michael complains about pain, there’s premature ejaculation, and also a time when things just aren’t happening. (I’m afraid including these details is going to give me a lot more traffic from people not looking for book reviews, but there’s no other way to describe it. *laughing*) The othering refreshing aspect of the book is it portrays different points of view, with the novel bringing up topics of pregnancy and sex out of wedlock, sexually transmitted diseases, abortions, and questioning sexuality.

Katherine’s family is just as upfront about it as Blume is in her descriptions. Her mother and grandmother (who if you think about it would have been born sometime in the 40s at the latest!) are surprisingly frank but also hands off about their advice, giving Katherine articles about sex and referring her to Planned Parenthood. They do answer her questions when she approaches them, but they let Katherine make her own decisions about when it’s the right time to talk. Katherine’s father is understandably more straight-forward about the discussion. He sits down with her and flatly tells her that he doesn’t “want to see her tied down” and that she’s “too young to make lifetime decisions.” (74) The Planned Parenthood scene is portrayed as very clinical, sterile, and professional, presenting her options and describing the process with again very minimal details.

My physical consisted of weight and blood pressure, a routine breast exam, with the doctor explaining how I should check my breasts each month, then my first pelvic examination. I tried to act as if I was used to it, but I didn’t fool the doctor, who said “Try to relax, Katherine. This isn’t going to hurt.” And it didn’t either, but it was uncomfortable for a minute, like when he pushed with one hand from inside and with the other from the outside.
Then he slipped this cold thing into my vagina and explained, “This is a vaginal speculum. It holds the walls of the vagina open so that the inside is easily seen.” […]
“I’m almost done now, Katherine . . . just a Pap smear . . . there,” he said, passing a long Q-tip kind of thing to his assistant. “And the gonorrhea culture . . . okay . . . that does it.” He took off his rubber glove. (119-120)

Quite obviously meant for teens, I would recommend it to any girl who considered herself in a serious relationship or was thinking about having sex. Katherine and her friends show times of insight that every reader could benefit from. While the challenges are correct that it does portray sex between teenagers, masturbation, and birth control, these are all things that teens should be informed about before reaching college. Katherine shows responsibility, restraint and forward planning, all things that readers are encouraged to emulate, and something that parents should be relieved is being portrayed to their children in a positive and nonjudgmental manner.

Robopocalypse

Title: Robopocalypse
Author: Daniel H. Wilson
ISBN: 9780385533850
Pages: 347 pages
Publisher/Date: Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. c2011.

“Stop. You have to stop. You’re making a mistake. We’ll never give up, Archos. We’ll destroy you.”
“A threat?”
The professor stops pushing buttons and glances over to the computer screen. “A warning. We aren’t what we seem. Human beings will do anything to live. Anything.”
The hissing increases in intensity. Face twisted in concentration, the professor staggers toward the door. He falls against it, pushes it, pounds on it.
He stops; takes short gasping breaths.
“Against the wall, Archos”–he pants–”against the wall, a human being becomes a different animal.”
“Perhaps. But you are animals just the same.” [...]
His breathing is shallow. His words are faint. “We’re more than animals.”
The professor’s chest heaves. His skin is swollen. Bubbles have collected around his mouth and eyes. He gasps for a final lungful of air. In a last wheezing sigh, he says: “You must fear us.” [..]
This is the first known fatality of the New War. (19-20)

After this initial uprising, it takes this highly intelligent and adaptable robot a year to hack into the computers governing every robot on the planet and coordinate a highly effective plan of attack. The robotic aids for the elderly, the computerized auto pilot cars, the military machines and computer controlled weapon systems, even the mechanized elevators and mail delivery systems, all systematically and simultaneously turn on their owners and controllers. Some survive the initial attack, either fleeing into the wilderness away from civilization or burrowing into what remains of the city, fighting for survival and standing against the machines. But with these scattered groups of resistance fighters unable to communicate with each other and barely able to move, it’s going to take all their ingenuity, unpredictability, and human spirit to fight off machines that can think, learn, and evolve.

This book is eye-opening and fear inducing, simply because it’s portrays something that could happen in the not so distance future. This isn’t just Star Trek’s Data going haywire and revolting. This book’s concept is so scary because it’s not just humanoid robots, it’s every computerized mechanism in the world that communicates with other things. Think about that for a second, because Wilson sure did. The smart cars of the future (Or even of today!) that can drive themselves start running over their owners and crashing into things, killing the occupants. The planes that talk to the tower and even today contain autopilot also take over the controls. Keypads on doors can lock people in or out of areas. Water and air purification and filtration systems can malfunction at a moments notice. Even houses today have computers where the lights, locks, mechanicals, and even your fridge can talk to each other and be controlled remotely. We saw a brief glimpse of what could happen during the 2003 Northeast Blackout that affected eight US states and people in Canada, and that was just an inconvenience. What if robots had gained control of the facilities and withheld the electricity for over two years?

The presentation of the story as collected flashbacks gives readers a vision of this war from the beginning to the climatic end. It also however proves to be a little choppy, and I found myself flipping through to read the accounts and actions of specific characters, rather than from the beginning to the end for a more well-rounded view. However, it gets better when the counter assault gets underway, as the various perspectives give you a clear view of how the war effort is progressing.

I’m presenting a review of this book during Banned Book Week because it’s inclusion on a summer reading list this year for a STEM-based class at Hardin Valley Academy in Tennessee was challenged by a parent for language. I’m actually somewhat surprised that language was the only complaint behind Mr. Lee and his wife’s objection to the book, although their counting the number of f-words (93 according to this article) leads me to believe that they did not read the entire book and simply searched for the objectionable word. There are some rather graphic descriptions of people getting injured and/or killed throughout the war that I would think some parents might find more objectionable than the language. If their excuse for the violence falls under the reasoning of “Well, that’s what happens when robots and humans enter all out war,” then I would think strong language would be just as justified by that reasoning. Ironically enough, this book is one of four choices that students at a local high school can read for required reading. We’ll have to see if they are faced by the same challenges and objections.

One of ten books to receive the Alex Award from YALSA for “books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18″, Robopocalype is an involving read and I can see the comparisons between Wilson’s writing and that of Michael Crichton in weaving science and scary together. But where Crichton had tension, Wilson relies heavily on action, technical details, and coincidences. I can see the appeal as the story because the fear it generates and questions it raises stay with you, but ultimately this is yet another robots take over the world tale similar to Transformers. The unique aspects of the story is the insidious nature and patience involved in getting to that point.

Waiting on Wednesday/Book to Pine For #7

The Story Siren calls it Books to Pine for. There’s a whole bunch of other people who call it Waiting on Wednesday and post their links at Breaking the Spine. In any case, these are the books I would love to read, and am looking forward to have in hand.

Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys February 13, 2013
I absolutely was amazed after reading Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys and quickly realized that she has another one coming out next year. Yes, next year, but I’m sure it will be well worth the wait.

It’s 1950, and as the French Quarter of New Orleans simmers with secrets, seventeen-year-old Josie Moraine is silently stirring a pot of her own. Known among locals as the daughter of a brothel prostitute, Josie wants more out of life than the Big Easy has to offer. She devises a plan get out, but a mysterious death in the Quarter leaves Josie tangled in an investigation that will challenge her allegiance to her mother, her conscience, and Willie Woodley, the brusque madam on Conti Street.

Josie is caught between the dream of an elite college and a clandestine underworld. New Orleans lures her in her quest for truth, dangling temptation at every turn, and escalating to the ultimate test.

With characters as captivating as those in her internationally bestselling novel Between Shades of Gray, Ruta Sepetys skillfully creates a rich story of secrets, lies, and the haunting reminder that decisions can shape our destiny.

What are you waiting on this Wednesday?