Yzabel / February 28, 2015

Review: The Death House

The Death HouseThe Death House by Sarah Pinborough

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Toby’s life was perfectly normal . . . until it was unravelled by something as simple as a blood test.

Taken from his family, Toby now lives in the Death House; an out-of-time existence far from the modern world, where he, and the others who live there, are studied by Matron and her team of nurses. They’re looking for any sign of sickness. Any sign of their wards changing. Any sign that it’s time to take them to the sanatorium.

No one returns from the sanatorium.

Withdrawn from his house-mates and living in his memories of the past, Toby spends his days fighting his fear. But then a new arrival in the house shatters the fragile peace, and everything changes.

Because everybody dies. It’s how you choose to live that counts.

Review:

(I got a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

I resent the comparison with The Fault In Our Stars, because The Death House was more readable: Toby, for all his faults, wasn”t so insufferable, probably because he behaved like a somewhat surly, but all in all normal teenager. And Clara was enjoyable, with a positive look on what happened to her, even though she knew how all the kids at the Death House were doomed to end.

I wouldn’t deem this the best novel ever. It left me wanting for more explanations. However, as a character study, at least for the main ones, it fairly hit the spot for me. The children and teenagers in that strange house all had to cope with their fear (and prospect) of dying in their own ways, andI thought we got to see quite a few interesting examples. Ashley, the believer kid who finds strength in the Bible and tries to share it with others. Toby, retreating into himself and pretending he doesn’t care, yet still takes very much care of the younger ones. Louis, both extremely intelligent, though still a child in many ways. Will, all innocent and carefree, thus hiding his fears from himself. Clara, who had to live to her parents’ expectations, and oddly enough was somewhat “freed” by the house. Jake, disguising his own fear behind his bully attitude.

Those were interesting portrayals, and through their interactions, we got to see how days and nights were spent in that microcosm that so much looked like a boarding school of sorts, yet was anything but—shadowed as it was by the mysterious sanatorium that none of the kids ever got to see, only hearing about it, only knowing one of them had been taken there when they discovered that child’s belongings being gone in the morning. And the presence of the Matron and the other silent nurses only made the pressure worse.

True, not much happens in terms of plot-twists during the largest part of the novel. It was still a nice read nonetheless. The ending was a 50/50: part of me expected it to be different, more original… but at the same time, the other part thought it couldn’t (and shouldn’t, anyway) have been otherwise.

I didn’t rate this book higher because in the end, too many things weren’t explained, and they kept bothering me, try as I might to ignore them. The “Defective gene”, for starters, was rather sketchy. How came the kids displayed so many different symptoms, and what was it suppose to lead to? Would it turn them into monsters of sorts, as was hinted at a couple of times? The kids were isolated like freaks, carried away in vans by men in dark suits, as if to protect the world from them; in my opinion, this would have warranted more than a few vague hints about the exact nature of the Defectiveness.

The same applied to the nurses and to their behaviour, especially considering a specific twist. Why would they hide it, and try to hush it? Out of fear it would go public? An actual reason would have been nice here.

Also, most of the twists were fairly obvious. It may be just me, I don’t know. I just guessed pretty early where they were leading.

One aspect of the book I can’t decide about were the other kids. While the characters I listed abover were indeed interesting, the rest were more like cardboard figures (even Tom, who got to share Dorm 4 with Toby and the others), which was weird in such a close space where I would’ve expected everyone to know everyone else. However, this fitted Toby’s tendency to close his eyes on his surroundings, and increased the feeling that each child was on his/ her own, and that at the end, they couldn’t afford to care about the others, only themselves.

Overall, I was leaning towards “I like it”. However, the lack of explanations, and the somewhat bland figures of the nurses and some of the kids, left me feeling that something was missing.

Yzabel / February 8, 2015

Review: Red Queen

Red QueenRed Queen by Victoria Aveyard

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

Mare Barrow’s world is divided by blood—those with red and those with silver. Mare and her family are lowly Reds, destined to serve the Silver elite whose supernatural abilities make them nearly gods. Mare steals what she can to help her family survive, but when her best friend is conscripted into the army she gambles everything to win his freedom. A twist of fate leads her to the royal palace itself, where, in front of the king and all his nobles, she discovers a power of her own—an ability she didn’t know she had. Except . . . her blood is Red.

To hide this impossibility, the king forces her into the role of a lost Silver princess and betroths her to one of his own sons. As Mare is drawn further into the Silver world, she risks her new position to aid the Scarlet Guard—the leaders of a Red rebellion. Her actions put into motion a deadly and violent dance, pitting prince against prince—and Mare against her own heart.

From debut author Victoria Aveyard comes a lush, vivid fantasy series where loyalty and desire can tear you apart and the only certainty is betrayal.

Review:

(I got a copy from NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

3 to 3.5 stars. I mostly enjoyed this book, but I wish some aspects had been more developed, and I can only hope they will be in the next installment. (Which I would gladly read.)

The weak points, first:

– In general, the ideas and world-building weren’t too original. The novel is very close to many dystopian YA novels, with typical elements: class divide, a war, a group of rebels, the love triangle (square?)… In all fairness, had I not already read several books with similar plot devices, this one would have felt better for me, so who knows, it might not be such a problem for another reader.

– The world itself suffered from the (also typical) “pocket-universe” syndrome: everything seems to happen in an enclosed space, with just a few hints to other countries. I couldn’t help but wonder about those neighbouring governments and the rest of the planet, as well as the deep reasons to the war, and how Reds and Silvers came to be. It was easy enough to accept that “this is not our world, so these two races are just something that I can see as normal”; but it would still have been nice to get a better grasp on the larger picture, all the more because Mare got lessons about this, so it would’ve been a good place to insert some more information (without falling into the info-dumping trap, that is).

– The romance subplot, with a love triangle, or even a love square. I understand that parts of this subplot were not what they seemed to be; however, the potential romance, the love interests, didn’t strike me as believable, and rather out-of-the-blue in general. I didn’t feel any chemistry between Mare and either of the guys, and so that specific aspect of the story seemed forced and contrived.

– Sometimes the characters and their motives were too one-sided. I’m thinking of Evangeline specifically, with her Queen Bee attitude that, in my opinion, wasn’t really justified: Mare was never a threat to her position, and Evangeline already knew where she stood and that what she had would remain hers, so while mere contempt may have been logical, such open animosity wasn’t.

However, Red Queen also has several good points going for it:

– In spite of the typical, cliché sides, the author still managed to make them hers and to develop an enjoyable world. I liked the various powers displayed by the Silvers, and the many possibilities they offered.

– The roles of the main characters: they aren’t so clear-cut as they appear at first, and even though I admit I could sense a particular twist coming, I was still nicely surprised when it happened, in a “aha, YES, I knew it!” way. There was a lot of double-thinking and potential betrayal going on behind the scenes, and this was great.

– The political side of the romance. It explains a lot of things.

– Although the aforementioned romance left me cold, I liked that Mare wasn’t merely “the girl torn between two boys, wondering who to choose”. That aspect was a rather minor one, and mostly she placed her opinions, her aims, her conviction first. She wasn’t just passive and helpless while The Guys did all the work, and she took matters in her own hands. Granted, some of her decisions may be seen as naive; on the other hand, such naivety was also understandable, since Mare had never been schooled in court politics, and was ripped away from her world and family to be thrown into very different surroundings. Being alone, feeling isolated, wanting to clutch at the people who showed kindness: that was understandable.

Not a perfect novel, but not a bad one either.

Yzabel / October 7, 2014

Review: Station Eleven

Station ElevenStation Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time-from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains-this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it.

Review:

(I received a free copy courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

A strange read, one that didn’t seem to have that much of a plot in itself, but that kept me fascinated and enthralled all the same. This is clearly one of those “hard to explain” cases. In other circumstances, I might have found more faults with this book… but I just didn’t, or when I did, they didn’t register with me full-force.

For instance, the Georgian Flu that wiped off 99% of the world population was handled more as a pretext than as a deeply researched medical possibility. And it’s true: from a purely scientific point of view, I don’t think the situation as a whole was handled in a really believable way. When you stop to think about it and consider things logically, it had quite its lot of holes. (E.g.: some people seemed immune, while others remained cooped up in their shelters for weeks… but when they got out, why didn’t they catch the flu? Was it gone, and if yes, why? If not, then did it mean they were immune?).

However, the atmosphere permeating the novel made up for those kinds of details at which I would normally raise an eyebrow. Granted, I did raise an eyebrow—then went on enjoying the prose all the same. Perhaps because I read much of the Severn Airport part while in an actual airport and plane, and was thus fully immersed? Or perhaps because of the Station Eleven story within the story (now that was a comics I’d definitely like to read). Or because the characters’ stories, while not so exceptional, were tied together in a way that just clicked with me. (I tend to enjoy plots that jump between different time periods, present and past… I know this doesn’t work so well for lots of readers. Well, it does for me.)

At the end, some mysteries remain. Where is the Symphony going? What’s with the new grid? What happened to Elizabeth? Is anyone going to ever discover who was the unknown man who tried to save Arthur, and what became of him? In a way, not getting those answers was annoying; on the other hand, I’m not sure having them would be essential to my enjoyment of this novel.

It could have been better. It wasn’t. Yet I connected with it nonetheless. It’s quite strange, indeed.

Yzabel / June 18, 2014

Review: Reckoning

ReckoningReckoning by Kerry Wilkinson

My rating: [rating=2]

Summary:

In the village of Martindale, hundreds of miles north of the new English capital of Windsor, sixteen-year-old Silver Blackthorn takes the Reckoning. This coming-of- age test not only decides her place in society – Elite, Member, Inter or Trog – but also determines that Silver is to become an Offering for King Victor.

But these are uncertain times and no one really knows what happens to the teenagers who disappear into Windsor Castle. Is being an Offering the privilege everyone assumes it to be, or do the walls of the castle have something to hide?Trapped in a maze of ancient corridors, Silver finds herself in a warped world of suspicion where it is difficult to know who to trust and who to fear. The one thing Silver does know is that she must find a way out . . .

The heart-stopping first book in a new trilogy by UK author Kerry Wilkinson, Reckoning is the story of one girl’s determination to escape the whims of a cruel king, and what she must do to survive against all odds.

Review:

(I got an ARC through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

2-2.5 stars. In itself, it was a decent enough read, only I couldn’t help but be reminded of many other dystopian YA stories… and after a while, those start to blend together. Among other things, it felt quite reminiscent of The Hunger Games  and similar stories, except that the people involved weren’t actively trying to kill each other, but were doing so in underhanded ways, notably being cowards and telling on others.

I was drawn towards this story because of its setting (post-war UK, or rather England/Wales—Scotland, well, nobody talks about Scotland, there must be something fishy with Scotland) and the promised mix of technology and mediaeval buildings/structures. However, such a mix is usually kind of hard to achieve, and I’m not sure it always worked here. The idea of a King totally fits the United Kingdom (much more than it would a US setting, for sure), and I think oppression resting on the ashes of a lasting civil war might be believable for a time. I can see people being so wary that they just want to close their eyes and ignore their current predicament, because at least they don’t have to fight anymore.

On the other hand, I’m not sure that “oil ran out” could be used as the sole justification behind wars on the world level; I keep wondering what else should’ve been involved to make the situation as desperate. Also, the class society in the novel didn’t really convince me: it remained too vague. What do Elites do, except being “the upper class”, with the Members and Inter being, let’s say, “upper-middle” and “lower-middle”, and the Trogs being the “working class”? It seemed to me that no matter their status, those people kind of did the same jobs: an Elite guy and a Trog girl both end up working in the kitchens, for instance, and this system seemed to clash with how the Offerings were assigned to their jobs depending on skills (Silver ends up in a technology-related environment, because she was picked a tech-savvy during her Reckoning, but whether she was a Member or a Trog didn’t seem to matter at this point). So in the end, I didn’t really understand the point. I suppose it would’ve made more sense if I had seen society as a whole depicted here, with non-Offerings going about their work. Whenever I saw some, those were people who hadn’t gone through the Reckoning (like Silver’s mother, or the Head Kingsmen, who were already there before Reckonings first took place). They were outside the new class system, so to speak, and it didn’t help me understand the latter.

Another problem was that I found a lot of things predictable. It might be just me, it might be due to similar stories I’ve read before, I don’t know. It was obvious from the beginning that the King was completely mad, to the point of killing Offerings on a whim, which sure explained why nobody ever heard of them again, hah. The “let’s try to escape” part was obvious as well, just like the romance part, and what actually happened to the families of those who didn’t keep a low profile.

Silver Blackthorn: let’s not dwell on that name; I still can’t stand it. I had mixed feelings about her. In some ways, she came off as a coward, but at the same time, this attitude was also clever: don’t get noticed, so that you live longer, and if you live longer, you have a chance of actually doing something. She limited her interactions with, and therefore her understanding of, other characters, who mostly remained bland and stereotypical. On the other hand, she also kept other people in mind: her family, Opie’s, as well as the other Offerings. She’s not planning a selfish escape just for herself and The Boy (OK, she does at first, and then she considers the bigger picture). I think what bothered me was that I would’ve expected her to do more tech-related stuff. Well, she does, but… in such a way that it’s only seen afterwards.

And here’s where I must touch upon something that really hindered the novel in my opinion: the first person point of view. There’s a moment when a big twist unfurls, and the reader is led to believe something, while something else altogether is brewing. However, I think that the first person narrative is problematic in such cases, because once the twist is revealed, the reader immediately thinks: “Hey, the character knew about it, so how come s/he withheld the information, both from me and from him/herself?” This is what happened here. Before that point, the narrative was all right. After it, I couldn’t get back into it anymore. For those who’ve already read the book: I’m talking, of course, about how we’re led to believe Imrin has betrayed Silver, but in fact this was all part of an act, and the other boys and girls were plotting in the background so that everybody could escape. Which Silver knew, yet deliberately “withheld” from herself, and therefore from me, reader. Tough there are a couple of hints here and there, they’re not enough. In any case, what followed was a recap of who did what, and then only Silver’s role was made more apparent… but by then, I felt cheated.

I would add to this a mild case of convenient chains of events, such as this or that character forgetting to lock a door on a regular basis. It didn’t sit so well with me when it came to a place where paranoia was a rule.

Bonus point, though, for the romance, in that:

1) It doesn’t dwell too much on a potential love triangle. This might come back in the next book, but for now, I’m going to ignore such a possibility, because I can and I want to.

2) The characters are attracted to each other while they do and think of other things. They mostly meet to find a way out, not merely to kiss and grope in the dark. The attraction comes later—and it doesn’t take too much space, contrary to what I’ve seen happen in too many other stories.

I somewhat enjoyed this novel; I’d probably have enjoyed it more if it didn’t feel and taste like many others in the same genre.

Yzabel / June 9, 2014

Review: Glitch

Glitch (Lost in Time #1)Glitch by Brenda Pandos

My rating: [rating=1]

Summary:

When a mysterious guy from the zombie zone sneaks an illegal slip of paper to a beautiful young girl from Brighton, she must decide if she should turn him in or follow what the note says in the first book of the Brighton Zombies Series, Glitch.

Eighteen-year-old Abigail has no trouble following Brighton’s rules. For one, she’s OCD about checking her Date of Death clock latched to her wrist, making sure her decisions never shorten her timeline, and two, she enjoys the peace Brighton has to offer. In no way would she bring on another attack that destroyed earth’s inhabitants like her predecessors did from their selfishness and greed. But when her best friend returns from her Advice Meeting–a glimpse into the future–shell shocked and won’t tell Abby what’s happened, she’s worried what awaits her. The stranger with blue-eyes knows something, but does Abby dare enter the zombie zone to get answers? Or is she doomed to live the life set for her?

Review:

(I received this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

It took me some time to get and remain in the story, and I have to admit that in the end, well, I didn’t like it. There were good ideas, and it started off as promising; however, after a while, everything became so disjointed that I wasn’t sure anymore what I was reading, and the abrupt ending/cliffhanger just left me “wait, whut?”.

The first thing I couldn’t wrap my mind around was the world itself. It contains lots of elements, and seems quite rich in terms of background to exploit, but the way it was introduced didn’t make much sense to me. We have zombies who may or may not exist; Sasquatches (half-human, half-animal?) whose origin is definitely unclear; and what I’m going to call a “pocket universe”, a.k.a. Brighton, without any information about the rest of the world. I admit I wouldn’t have been bothered so much if I had read this book some 3 years ago, but after so many dystopian stories revolving about the same theme, I can’t help now but always wonder: “Is this community the only one? What about others? Don’t they communicate? Do people really believe all that, and never question anything, even privately, in their own thoughts?” The Oracle part was also problematic: she’s introduced around the 25% mark, as something everybody seems to know (at least, the way Abby mentions her), but I can’t remember her existence being mentioned sooner, and this felt weird. Also, this:

“The EA wanted to purge blue eyes from future generations, saying they had a proclivity to disease and illness.”

Why? This begged for an explanation, and we never got it. This looks like a really important element, so important that the EA goes to such lengths as to, well, spay people who might give birth to children with blue eyes. Why? Are blue eyes linked to some special power? Is some blue-eyed person born in the future, so they’re trying to prevent his/her birth by removing blue eyes from the gene pool altogether? As it is, it just didn’t make sense.

Some pacing problems, too. The beginning was interesting. The middle lacked in excitement (discover people outside, travel to camp, life at camp). The third part contained many time-jumps, and those were terribly confusing. I’d like to chalk said confusion to my being tired, but I’m really not sure about that. I get there are different timelines, and that there’s a key moment in the past from which various futures are determined… or was the key moment sometime in the future, with a cure being found for something that happened in the present, yet it had to be brought to the past for the present to be “normal” again? The way things happened in that regard were, again, very confusing, and that part of the plot kept contradicting itself. I still have no idea how the person able to jump in time did it (claiming “I have no control”, yet always conveniently arriving at the exact moment they aimed for?), nor how her powers suddenly came out, nor how she managed to sort through all those timelines. She seemed to learn that in a snap of fingers, when it’s probably something anyone would need at least days of training to master—if only in their mind.

I didn’t really like any of the characters. Abby: has every male character pining after her, and of course she can’t decide (it’s insta-love but it isn’t, no, wait, it is); whiny, needy, then turning badass out of nowhere. Kaden: stop being the broody loner and TALK, because I tell you, this clears up misunderstandings in record time. Memphis: any person calling another “Sugar” from the beginning (or “babe”, “baby”, or whatever other “cutesy” name) makes me cringe—and the testosterone contest regarding who gets the girl gets tiring, pretty fast: I felt like smacking him every time he made moves such as sliding his arm around Abby’s waist in a possessive gesture. The community: girls are at the camp, doing laundry and cooking and washing the dishes, because everyone knows they can’t have any useful skills like hunting or patrolling, nor can any guy cook a meal. Decisions: everybody seems to act on a whim, sometimes out of character, and a lot of problems could have been avoided if they had just initiated basic communication, instead of puffing chests and trying to prove how manly they were. Reader not impressed here.

On the writing side: a couple of proofing problems (Complement/Compliment), that got corrected after a while, but were still annoying. Maybe they’re not in the printed copy anymore, though.

Although the next book is bound to hold answers, after such a cliffhanger, I’m not interested enough to pick it.

Yzabel / June 25, 2013

Review: Diverse Energies

Diverse EnergiesDiverse Energies by Tobias S. Buckell

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

“No one can doubt that the wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men. No one can doubt that cooperation in the pursuit of knowledge must lead to freedom of the mind and freedom of the soul.”
—President John F. Kennedy, from a speech at University of California, March 23, 1962

In a world gone wrong, heroes and villains are not always easy to distinguish and every individual has the ability to contribute something powerful.

In this stunning collection of original and rediscovered stories of tragedy and hope, the stars are a diverse group of students, street kids, good girls, kidnappers, and child laborers pitted against their environments, their governments, differing cultures, and sometimes one another as they seek answers in their dystopian worlds. Take a journey through time from a nuclear nightmare of the past to society’s far future beyond Earth with these eleven stories by masters of speculative fiction. Includes stories by Paolo Bacigalupi, Ursula K. Le Guin, Malinda Lo, Cindy Pon, Daniel H. Wilson, and more.

Review:

I got an ARC of this anthology through NetGalley last year, and have just realised I didn’t post a review back then—I suspect I finished it at a moment I didn’t have time to do so, and then it unfortunately slipped my mind.

Most of the works I read are pretty much Caucasian-centred, and I thought this book would provide me with a nice change, as well as with an opportunity to learn more about some cultures I’m not too familiar with—I’m utterly convinced that learning this way, for someone like me, is a solid bridge to wanting to learn more afterwards, and this han’t proved wrong yet. The different cultural points of view developed in the dystopian stories here turned out interesting, and shed light on some very logical aspects I probably wouldn’t have considered at first, due to my own ignorance.

Of course, as is mostly the case in anthologies, some stories I enjoyed more than others (“Next Door”, “Solitude” and “The Last Day” being my favourite ones), but as a whole, “Diverse Energies” holds its ground with a steady momentum, and doesn’t disappoint. At the same time, I also appreciated that this book didn’t give the impression of being the proverbial stone thrown to get the pond to ripple: it was, all that simply, logical, which is in my opinion a very strong point.

Yzabel / September 6, 2012

Review: The Plot Against America

The Plot Against AmericaThe Plot Against America by Philip Roth

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary: 

In an astonishing feat of narrative invention, our most ambitious novelist imagines an alternate version of American history. In 1940 Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected President. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial “understanding” with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.

For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh’s election is the first in a series of ruptures that threatens to destroy his small, safe corner of America — and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother.

Review:

Hard to review, this one. I’m quite keen on Roth’s works in general, but I wasn’t so convinced here. I still found it enjoyable—just not as much as others of his novels.

What I liked:
* The “what if…” aspect (that’s why I had picked this book, after all). I have such a soft spot for these, especially when they involve American history and WW2.
* The way the story was told, through the eyes of a child. I think it allowed the author to toy (no pun intended) with a point of view that was both innocent and terribly lucid at times, in its ability to feel the raw intensity of events.
* The convincing narrative. I felt that the events unfolding in the story might indeed have happened, have been possible. It’s not totally far-fetched, on the contrary. And that’s precisely what makes it frightening.

What I liked less:
* The rushed half-assed end, and the impersonal way in which it was told. I found it really jarring, compared to the narrative style in the rest of the novel.
* Actually, Roth could’ve gone further with this story, and do more with it than (view spoiler)[a two-year parenthesis. In my opinion, he might as well gone the whole way, and not put History back on its normal trail. (hide spoiler)]
* The fact that past that point, the author seemed to have lost sight of what exactly he was aiming at.