post-apocalyptic Archives - Page 3 of 3

Yzabel / February 17, 2014

Review: Dream Caster

Dream Caster by Najeev Raj Nadarajah

My rating: [rating=2]

Summary:

Haunted by memories of his massacred settlement, sixteen-year-old Weaver seeks cover in a hidden refuge among the remains of a ruined city. In the midst of building a new life, Weaver discovers that he has the amazing power to cast his dreams into reality. Convinced it’s just an anomaly, Weaver ignores it. That is until he learns of a mysterious man who shares the ability, and uses his power to bring nightmares into existence and wage war on the world. The peaceful life Weaver hoped for begins to unravel as waves of chaos begin to break loose about him. In a race against time, Weaver must learn to accept his role as a dream caster and master his new power, before his new home is destroyed and humanity is pushed to the brink of extinction.

Review:

(I got a copy of this book through Goodreads’ giveaway/First Reads.)

I’m not too sure how to rank this book; it’s a toss between “it’s OK” and “I liked it”. Some ideas I really enjoyed, but they weren’t enough to make me love the novel.

What I liked:

* The concept of materialising dreams into reality. It paves the way for incredible possibilities, and the whole idea lends itself to basically “imagination come true”. Oh, what a writer can do with that. And Weavers seems to find original ways of exploring his powers at the end.

* Corollary of this: the creatures. The Fire Hounds are just so wicked, and I love the paradox of fire as having sustained humanity for centuries, yet turning into its worst enemy. The people must’ve felt miserable without it to keep them warm.

* The Dream Eater (although I’m not sure why he got that nickname, considering his way of acting). While his goals aren’t totally clear, they seem to run deeper than mere destruction.

What I didn’t like:

* I couldn’t wrap my mind around the dialogues. The characters speak (and think) as if out of a fairly literary book. It would work if the narrative was, say, first person POV and told by someone with an academic background—but it doesn’t cut it for dialogues. I know quite a few teachers and people with solid backgrounds in literature, and even they don’t talk in such a way in everyday life. It makes little sense that survivors in a post-apocalyptic setting, all the more teenagers, would talk like that.

* Weaver was so. frelling. dense. Having spent years working the way he did for Ruben, there’s just no way he could be so naive regarding other human beings. When Abanel tells him “Show me”, it’s obvious she means his settlement, not his cloak. Then, when they reach the new settlement, he’s told—at least twice—that he’ll be given a job for life; his five days as a guard can’t compete against years of cleaning waste, but the people here don’t know he’s been a guard for a few days only, right? He could have lied. He could’ve said “I was a guard”, period. Instead, he tells the truth, and then feels crushed when he’s appointed as, well, waste-cleaner. Well, duh. Could’ve sensed that coming from miles. He becomes more clever later, but after his first blunders, such a growth appeared to be too quick. It would’ve worked better for me if he had been less sense in the beginning.

* Also, “coincidences”. There’s ice around his bed, just like in his dream, even though the room is well-heated. There comes a moment when you have to accept that, no, “coincidence” just doesn’t cut it. It’s not like he had been told he had awesome powers without ever seeing proof. The proof is there.

* The archetypal bad-guys-who-don’t-like-him-on-a-whim. I found them useless and predictable (and they did a poor job as bullies anyway).

* The catastrophe that led mankind to the brink of destruction: it happened a few decades ago, yet nobody seems to remember much, not even the old guys who lived through it. It felt weird: I would’ve expected at least some records, if only written down a few years later by younger people who had heard accounts from “first-generation survivors”.

Yzabel / November 30, 2013

Review: Angelfall

Angelfall by Susan Ee

My rating [rating=2]

Summary:

It’s been six weeks since angels of the apocalypse descended to demolish the modern world. Street gangs rule the day while fear and superstition rule the night. When warrior angels fly away with a helpless little girl, her seventeen-year-old sister Penryn will do anything to get her back.

Anything, including making a deal with an enemy angel.

Raffe is a warrior who lies broken and wingless on the street. After eons of fighting his own battles, he finds himself being rescued from a desperate situation by a half-starved teenage girl.

Traveling through a dark and twisted Northern California, they have only each other to rely on for survival. Together, they journey toward the angels’ stronghold in San Francisco where she’ll risk everything to rescue her sister and he’ll put himself at the mercy of his greatest enemies for the chance to be made whole again.

Review:

I’ve thought about this book some more, and still can’t decide if I want to give it a 2 or 3 stars rating.

See, all things considered, it was an easy, entertaining read for me, and I can’t decently blame the book for delivering what I expected from it. Its setting is intriguing, and gives us to see that there’s more, much more, lurking behind the scenes. I liked the darker side, the experiments, the fact that the highest among the angels were far from being all white. What they did to children was horrific, and I must say, I appreciate when an author is gutsy enough to write about such doings and let us work our minds around what the ones behind them are trying to achieve. Nothing can be solved nor explained in just a few chapters here, and I like it when I know things can go deeper.

But can they? I don’t know. While reading “Angelfall”, I couldn’t shake off a nagging feeling, and after mulling over it, now I think I’ve put my finger on it: the angels are too human, and as weird as it sounds, this doesn’t work too well for me with the connections created between the character. We’re introduced to a post-ap world in which angels have killed a lot of people, destroyed a lot of places, and are controlling most of what’s left (the uncontrolled areas being prey to gangs, random violence, and so on). So I guess I was expecting them to be fairly different, non-human, with blue and orange thinking and behaviour patterns—in other words, “the enemy we can’t relate to because he’s just too alien.”

When Raffe an Penryn meet, she doesn’t need that much time to behave around him as if he were another human being, and this didn’t make much sense in retrospect. (I understand her plans of keeping an eye on him because he may be the only link to her sister; but she still warmed up too easily.) Same with Raffe: too easily as well, he passed for a human being, he behaved in such ways that made other humans believe he was like them. I don’t know… I would’ve imagined something like that very difficult to achieve, for a being who’s as old as the world and is supposed not to mingle with those pesky monkeys.

Still, it would’ve worked if Raffe had been some kind of exception; it would’ve added another explanation to his being cast off. (Well, maybe he was the exception; I just couldn’t see it in the progressing plot.) Only the other angels also behaved in very human ways, even going as far as to mimic going to night clubs, living in hotels, and so on. That part just boggled my mind, to be honest. It felt disconnected. Just like how Raffe and Penryn got to connect so much. Travelling companions in hard times, and at some point budding friends? OK. But romance? Not so early, not yet.

A few other things I wasn’t sure of include Penryn’s sister (we barely get to connect with her in the beginning, so it’s a little hard to care), and how society seemed to quickly revert, in a mere weeks, to male-dominated structures. Women doing the laundry, being allowed into the aerie as cheap trophies and perhaps whores on display… It might make sense in some ways, but it’s still annoying, and you’d think that modern USA would’ve ended up a little different in that regard, especially with a lead female character who’re supposed to be trained in martial arts. (She doesn’t use those skills enough, in my opinion; go kick a few more faces, Penryn, they deserve it anyway.)

And so, I remain torn over what I’m thinking of this novel. I can’t say I didn’t like it, since I was entertainted. I guess it just made me go “what?” in too many parts.

View all my reviews

Yzabel / July 29, 2013

Review: Fire Country

Fire Country by David Estes

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

In a changed world where the sky bleeds red, winter is hotter than hell and full of sandstorms, and summer’s even hotter with raging fires that roam the desert-like country, the Heaters manage to survive, barely.

Due to toxic air, life expectancies are so low the only way the tribe can survive is by forcing women to procreate when they turn sixteen and every three years thereafter. It is their duty as Bearers.

Fifteen-year-old Siena is a Youngling, soon to be a Bearer, when she starts hearing rumors of another tribe of all women, called the Wild Ones. They are known to kidnap Youngling girls before the Call, the ceremony in which Bearers are given a husband with whom to bear children with.

As the desert sands run out on her life’s hourglass, Siena must uncover the truth about the Wild Ones while untangling the web of lies and deceit her father has masterfully spun.

Review:

(Book provided by the author through ARR #118 in the We ♥ YA Books! group, in exchange for an honest review.)

A solid 3.5 stars for this one.

It took me a few pages to get used to Siena’s voice; however, it quickly grew on me, and soon I found myself quite appreciating it. She sounds authentic, with a unique voice, and her own way of viewing the world, even though she’s struggling here against beliefs hammered into her since childhood.

The world depicted by David Estes is frightening in itself. It immediately conjured in my mind pictures of a burning sun, of deserts, of tribes trying to scrape a living with few resources in the little time they had (thirty, thirty-five years, maybe fourty at the very most?). In that regard, the role of women as Bearers—or, rather, as “breeders”—totally made sense, although it’s a concept that scares me personnally. I really wouldn’t want to find myself in such a situation, having to face such prospects.

The plot is woven progressively, from day-to-day life to discoveries and challenges, in a coming-of-age story interspersed with hints of darker secrets. I also appreciated that there was no love triangle here—those are becoming so common, and for no reason except “it sells”, in way too many YA novels these days! The budding love between Siena and Circ, growing from “childhood friends” to “souls calling to each other, but forbidden to meet”, felt completely natural, and this was great.

On the other hand, it may be because the book is the only first one in the series, and more will be explained later on, but I kept having a feeling of “pocket universe”. I admit I’m still not sure whether the Fire Country is made up of several tribes scattered in several villages, or of one, big village that, considering the amount of people involved, would actually be more of a large town. This was a bit confusing, as if there were at once too many people and not enough.

I was a bit perplexed at the overall picture, too. Why did Roan act the way he did? We may never know if it was out of selfish desire, or if he had other schemes in mind, but couldn’t bear them to fruition nor tell anyone about them. I wondered also what was the whole deal with the Ice Country as well as the Glassies. The Fire Country people were described as quite backwards, like a tribe with very basic tools and weapons, and I didn’t understand what kind of interest the Glassies may have in them. (Having read the Dwellers saga, I feel safe in my knowledge of who *they* are, and perhaps this is why I couldn’t really understand?) Knowing the author’s skills in weaving his stories over several volumes, I suspect answers will be brought sooner or later. Yet I still think this may be perceived as a weakness by other readers.

Conclusion: Definitely a good beginning to a series, but I hope the following books bring more answers.

Yzabel / June 25, 2012

Review: Feed (Newsflesh #1)

Feed by Mira Grant

My rating: [rating=5]

I read this book one year ago, but never wrote a review, for want of time to do so. Then, a couple of months ago, I posted one on Goodreads. Since it’s a book I really liked, and whose next installments I definitely plan on reading, I now find it appropriate to leave my review here as well.

I’m no fan of ‘regular’ zombie flicks or stories. If it’s only about gore and killing zombies, it usually doesn’t keep my interest up for long. I am more entertained already when there is something else in it. In this book, I found something that I hadn’t thought of at first, but loved reading about: the analysis of how society would go on. How it would get organized. Security matters. Limiting gatherings. Making sure you’re not contaminated. The developing role of internet and blogging to spread the ‘real’ news. Politics. How the virus was born and got to spread—no mad scientist, no ugly plan to kill the whole human race: merely an accident, and unfortunate circumstances.

For me, this book was an exercise in world building. It could’ve been boring, as many works of that type are (unfortunately). It wasn’t at all. Not only the depiction of society got me hooked, but I found the main characters really enjoyable. Their strength, their selflessness, the way they go about their business, their relationships—all of those made me feel close to them (so close that while I saw the end approaching for Buffy and George, I couldn’t bear it). The book also has just the right amount of ‘politics’ for me: I am mildly interested in it, but not too much, and I found the balance just right enough for me.

Granted, the story has its flaws. I was a little disappointed at the ‘villain’, for instance. And some information seems more like info-dumping, and could probably have been introduced differently; however, the “blogging approach” makes it somehow quite logical, and it wasn’t jarring in my opinion.

I admit I’m far, very far from having read a lot of “zombie stories”, so maybe my advice would be more qualified if I had more reading experience in that domain. As of now, the book does deserve my personal 5-stars rating. I enjoyed thoroughly, it entertained me for long hours, and all in all, it’s really what I ask from such a novel.