Review: Maybe Tonight?

Maybe Tonight?
Snap Decision, Book 1

Author: Bridie Clark
Pages: 224
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Publication Date: August 6, 2013
Read: July 29, 2013
Source: ARC from publisher

Description from Goodreads:
Maybe Tonight? opens as the reader is getting ready for the most exciting party of the year—Midwinter’s Night Dream, set in the frosty woods just off campus—with her roommates and best friends Annabel Snow, Spider Harris, and Libby Monroe. Choices unfold quickly and the reader must decide which risks to take in pursuit of social status, adventure, success, and love.

First Sentence: "Congratulations!"

Review:

Oh, the reviewer's dilemma: if you want to read something but it's going to be difficult to review, should you request it? While I could not resist requesting a choose your own adventure book, I find myself unsure how best to review it. Am I duty-bound to read through every possible path to correctly analyze it? Well, I hope not, because I didn't. I completed a couple of the myriad branches, enough to determine that Maybe Tonight? does offer the choose your own adventure fun, but leans a bit too heavily on the morals.

As a kid, I refused to read any Goosebumps books that weren't Choose Your Own Adventure. I would, inevitably choose the route that ended in my death, every time, then backtracking to try again. I delight in getting to be a part of the story, though I have to say I may be a bit old for them now, since they just do not seem to have the same charm that they once did for me.

The basic premise of Maybe Tonight? is that you are an incoming freshman at an exclusive boarding school. You're a motivated, brilliant scholarship student, and a bit envious of your beautiful roommate, who has tons of money, a generous heart, and the hottest boyfriend, how you wish was yours instead. Despite your book smarts, you're a bit vain and money-conscious. Depending on which route you take, you navigate one or a couple of days at school.

Now, if you're like me, and you choose the safe options (not letting a girl cut you with a knife, not drinking when you might lose your scholarship, not ignoring a friend because he's not popular), the story ends really quickly. My first path ended in like three choices, which was a bit anticlimactic. I wish there was a bit more doubling back and interconnection, but I think that once you make a choice, you can only move linearly through the book and they actually all come to an end fairly quickly. I'm not sure if it's meant to be for reluctant readers or if the audience is intended to read through all of the possible outcomes.

The choices are often leading, completely not subtly lecturing the reader on proper behavior. For example, "ratting out the party is social suicide, no question about it, but it's still better than expulsion." Rather than just letting the chips fall where they may and teens to soak in lessons therefrom, the questions are basically telling you what your options are. In this case, rat out the party or get expelled. The moral element is just too heavy-handed, and I'm not sure how much fun that will be for a teen reader.

While I definitely enjoyed the nice quick read in my busy schedule, I'm not all that impressed with Maybe Tonight? and won't be continuing with the series. If you enjoy choose your own adventure and have the perseverance to flip through every possible outcome, it might be more your speed.

Rating: 1.5/5

Review: The Neverending Story

The Neverending Story

Author: Michael Ende
Narrator: Gerard Doyle
Duration: 13 hrs, 38 mins
Publisher: Tantor Media
Source: Library

Description from Goodreads:
In this classic fantasy novel from author Michael Ende, small and insignificant Bastian Balthazar Bux is nobody's idea of a hero, least of all his own. Then, through the pages of an ancient, mysterious book, he discovers the enchanted world of Fantastica, and only Bastian himself can save the fairy people who live there. Shy, awkward Bastian is amazed to discover that he has become a character in the mysterious book he is reading and that he has an important mission to fulfill.

Review:

I probably should have seen this book's title for what it is: a warning. This audiobook really did feel like it would never ever end. Though I pretty much hated it from the beginning, I felt so strongly that this story is one that I ought to like that I just had to push through. My friends' average rating on GR is a 4.36, and I have friends with standards as high or higher than mine. This may fall into the category of things that don't have charm if you didn't first discover it in childhood.

So far as the story goes, the only part I liked was the frame story. In this part, Bastian, a fat, bullied boy, runs away from school and hides from his tormenters in a book shop. This is Bastian at his most sympathetic. Once in the bookshop, he interacts with the child-hating bookseller. When the shop owner goes to answer the phone, Bastian shoplifts a mysterious, fancy old book, and absconds to school with it, where he proceeds to shut himself up in the attic to read. These sections couched firmly in the real world highlight the power of a story to carry one away, and the strength of imagination. These are great themes. I only wish the others were not so upsetting.

Set up in the attic, Bastian begins to read the story of Fantastica. He learns about the Nothing, eating away at this world, and that the Childlike Empress is sick. She needs a new name or she will die, and Fantastica with her. Atreyu is enlisted to go on a quest for the person that can give her a new name. Along the way, his horse Artax dies in the Swamp of Sadness and he meets Falcor, the luck dragon. The quest is, however, unsuccessful, so he and Falcor go to the Childlike Empress to apologize for failing and dooming her to death. At which point, she tells them that they didn't and the human who will name her has been watching all along, effectively meaning that she doomed Artax for no reason whatsoever. At this juncture, I decide that the Childlike Empress is a bitch.

Because you killed my horse, bitch.

In the movie, at least when I was a child, I remember Atreyu's journey being so much more epic, and him being a much stronger figure. In the book, he seems completely unimportant to pretty much anything that's happening, a mere placeholder for Bastian. Oh, also, the wolf that haunted my dreams as a child is not nearly as intimidating.

The terrible effects just make him scarier.

The book then proceeds into a meta-fiction spiral, because Bastian will not say her new name out loud, even though he knows what it is. The Childlike Empress goes to some guy who is writing The Neverending Story as it happens, the same book Bastian is reading. She orders him to begin reading the story, thus dooming them, and the unfortunate reader, to an eternal cycle of the same events over and over until Bastian names her. At this point, more of the story is repeated than I deem acceptable, considering it wasn't even interesting the first time.

Anyway, he finally says her name, giving in to the repeated non-subtle entreaties that got Destiny's Child firmly stuck in my head for days. So, then, Bastian comes into the book and the Childlike Empress is all "take this bling as a reward." That may not be a direct quote. Maybe. She gives him the amulet, Auryn, and it will grant his wishes. What he doesn't know is that every time he makes a wish, he loses memories and becomes less human. Way to warn him, Childlike Empress. See what I said about her being a bitch? I'm supposed to be worried for his fate, but instead I just wanted Bastian to die a slow, painful death.

Every time Bastian didn't die.

However, don't feel too bad for chunky Bastian, because he doesn't exist anymore. He immediately wishes himself fit and begins to lord over all of the residents of Fantastica. His adventures are basically a study in subjugation. You might think that the fact that he was bullied might make him more sympathetic to people, but he just wants to be adored and pampered. Everyone he meets, he feels infinitely superior to, including Atreyu and Falcor, even though they're the only ones that know what's up. Even worse, most of the Fantasticans are THRILLED to be his doormat. He's Robinson Crusoe to their Friday, and it's creepy as hell. The whole thing sends terrible messages about humans being the best creatures and entitled to dominion over everyone and everything on the earth.

What really kills the story is not the insufferable main character or the questionable messages it's sending to a young audience. No, the big problem is that it's boring. Neither Atreyu nor Bastian ever has any agency. Throughout the whole book, they never learn anything for themselves or accomplish anything on their ow. Everything they do, they're told to do by some adult along the road. The Childlike Empress tells Atreyu where to look, he goes there and finds a creature who tells him where to go next, so he does that, and on it goes. The same is true of Bastian. This story doesn't empower children and lacks any real momentum since everything they're doing feels so arbitrary and staged.

On top of that, the storytelling is very detail-oriented, going for a classic style, only the details are repetitive and needless. He gives information to make the book look fancier, but it doesn't matter at all. For example, there's one scene where Bastian sees some ex-humans playing a mindless game with letter blocks where they write down the letters that come up. Anyway, the narrator was reading out random letters for at least a full minute. Sure that would be less obnoxious in print, but this had no freaking impact on the plot of the book, so why the fuck did it even happen? Stop wasting my time, Ende. Readers only want their story to be neverending if it's actually good.

The only reason I'm giving this book 1.5 stars is the narration. All of those go to him for making this slightly more tolerable than it would have been. He does a great job, managing to keep the humongous cast of pointless characters distinct with ease. So, good job, Gerard Doyle. I hope when we meet again you're reading a book I actually like.

Rating: 1.5/5

Review: The Prey

The Prey
The Hunt, Book 2

Author: Andrew Fukuda
Pages: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Source: YA Books Central

Description from Goodreads:
For Gene and the remaining humans—or hepers—death is just a heartbeat away. On the run and hunted by society, they must find a way to survive in The Vast... and avoid the hungry predators tracking them in the dark. But they’re not the only things following Gene. He’s haunted by the girl he left behind and his burgeoning feelings for Sissy, the human girl at his side.

When they discover a refuge of exiled humans living high in the mountains, Gene and his friends think they’re finally safe. Led by a group of intensely secretive elders, the civilisation begins to raise more questions than answers. A strict code of behaviour is the rule, harsh punishments are meted out, young men are nowhere to be found—and Gene begins to wonder if the world they’ve entered is just as evil as the one they left behind. As life at the refuge grows more perilous, he and Sissy only grow closer. In an increasingly violent world, all they have is each other... if they can only stay alive.

Prior Books in Series:
1: The Hunt (Review|Goodreads)

First Sentence: "We thought we were finally free of them but we were wrong."

Review:

**Be forewarned: this review will include major spoilers for The Hunt and some spoilers for The Prey.**

I always hope that, where I've enjoyed the first book in a series, the rest will prove to be at least as good. Andrew Fukuda's debut novel, The Hunt, while not a favorite was an enjoyable action read, a nice change of pace from my more contemplative reads. In reading The Prey, I really hoped to find more of the same, but instead it alternated between wtfery and completely predictable plot twists.

Since I like to give credit where credit is due, there are two things that I did like about The Prey. First, Fukuda writes well, doing a much better job with his syntax and diction than is typical in more action-based stories. Second, he does give the world an origin story in this installment. Where The Hunt suffered from a lack of world building, Fukuda attempts to explain how the creatures came to rule the earth. While I'm not exactly sold on the reasoning and it could have been better done than in a villain's infodumping speech, I appreciate that Fukuda did put thought into this, and I'd like to see more dystopian/post-apocalytpic novels that tackle this aspect.

As I mentioned previously, the most solid aspect of The Hunt, what kept me flipping pages despite the nonsensical world building, was the non-stop action. The Prey starts off slowly and continues to chug along at that slow pace most of the novel. The hepers (aka humans) have escaped down the river on a boat, searching for the promised land, The Land of Milk and Honey. (Insert eyeroll here.) There's a brief interlude of excitement with an attack by the creatures, duskers as they're called in this book, but otherwise the first half is to set up some new romantic tension, which I will get back to later.

Mostly, this slow portion gave me time to really focus on the little details, like the character names. These poor characters have some of the very worst names I have ever encountered. To be fair, there is a reason behind the names, though some of it is unfortunate and Epap (the most nonsensical name) never is explained. What really bothers me is that both female love interests, easily the strongest characters in the series, have been saddled with the most absurdly weak sounding names: Ashley June and Sissy. Why couldn't she just be Ashley or June? Why Ashley June, a name which makes her sound like a country western singer or a girl getting ready for her Super Sweet Sixteen? Of course, if she does start some sort of country western show, Sissy and the Hepers can open for her.

After sailing down the river, crashing down a waterfall, and climbing up a cave, they find a village of humans. Le shock! They're not the only ones still alive! (Insert my incredibly-surprised face right here.) They're immediately served up a feast of delicious food by beautiful girls, albeit ones with funny walks. Clearly this is is The Land of Milk and Honey! But, oh no! It turns out that all is not well in Creepytown! (Insert gasp here.)

Let's just talk about this town, shall we? This town consists of nubile young women, many of them pregnant, and middle-aged, obese men who call themselves elders. That's about it. The fact that it takes the characters any amount of time to determine that something's amiss boggles my mind. Anyway, not only is this town evil, because, hey, that's how things roll in dystopian novels, but it's freaking crazypants. For example, these young women all have such tiny, fucked up feet that they walk in a really weird gait. Yup, this town practices footbinding. Why, you might ask? Well, here are some quotes from the townspeople on women's feet:

"'See, that's the thing with girls with big man-sized feet,' Krugman says from behind us, his voice a slithering coo. 'When their feet haven't been beautified, when the foot glands haven't been broken. Left undestroyed, these glands secrete male hormones into a girl. Turn her from a princess into an opinionated ox. One who fails to understand her place in society, who mistakenly things she can walk like a male, talk like a male, have opinions like a male. Say no to a male. "Like a gold ring in a pig's snout is a girl with big feet."'" (165)

"'They made me a gopher. I'd go down two times a week with medicine, supplies. That's why they didn't bind my feet but let them grow into man feet—so I'd be able to walk the many miles, climb the cabled ladder. I hated it, in the beginning, mostly because of how my feet got so big and ugly. The other girls were merciless with their taunts. Man feet, man feet, man feet,' she grimaces from the memory." (224)

In case you're wondering, yes, that did just really happen. What really bothers me about this is that it seems to solely be a device to make the book more dramatic and terrifying. Having the women around as breeders for disgusting old fat men isn't enough? They have to have their feet bound too? REALLY?

It gets better, though. Not only do they get their feet bound and be impregnated by these men, but they also are issued either merits or rewards based on how obedient they are. A merit can be earned by doing good things, like birthing a baby. A demerit is earned any time a woman steps out of line, like by doing something alone. Each time a woman earns one or the other, the skin of her arm is marked: a branded X for a demerit and a smiley face tattoo for good behavior. I really, really wish I were joking. Apparently this society was created by a demented child.

Running through this absurd landscape of offensive horrors is a cast of flat characters. Gene has all the girls wanting him, and all of the guys jealous of him. The good guys are all obviously good, and the bad guys obviously bad. Women, with the exception of Sissy and Ashley June, are weak. Gene is the most important person, intended to be saved from harm, even at the loss of everyone else's life, which turns out to be incredibly laughable and illogical after you learn the final plot twist.

The romance, though thankfully kept to the backburner, is saccharine and unconvincing, perhaps because of the entire lack of development in the characters. Days after leaving Ashley June to a certain horrible fate with the duskers, Gene and Sissy are having special moments of staring, complete with added tension due to Epap's jealousy. Gene and Sissy have not a bit of sexual tension, nor do they have any sort of real bond. They're good at helping each other survive, so hanging together and hooking up is cool (not that they do), but that does not excuse all the syrupy language used for their every interaction.

The two of them pretty much made me want to throw up whenever they looked at one another, especially when he nearly drowns, she gives him mouth to mouth, and he thinks this: "Then velvet lips on mine, dewy and sweet. Soft on soft, the lips alive and encompassing. Then becoming fiercer, the grip ironclad" (249). Ugh, dude, this is not the freaking Sandlot. You have no oxygen in your lungs; you are dying. Now is not the time to rhapsodize about the softness of her lips. Now, I haven't ever experienced mouth to mouth resuscitation, but I'm pretty sure that the only thing I would be thinking about would be BREATHING. If you're feeling horny while your lungs are full of water, you really should sort out your damn priorities.

This book is nothing like The Hunger Games, though the first one had some elements thereof, so please do not get sucked into that marketing. What it comes down to is, if you're curious or think those things won't bother you, then read it. Other people have read The Prey and enjoyed it. All I can say is that I really, really did not, and that I will not be reading any more of this series.

Rating: 1.5/5

Favorite Quote: "'Don't we all have a death sentence! The very second we're born, aren't we all sentenced to death?'"

Review: Nobody But Us

Nobody But Us

Author: Kristin Halbrook
Pages: 272
Publisher: HarperTeen
Publication Date: January 29, 2013
Source: For review from YA Books Central

Description from Goodreads:
Bonnie and Clyde meets IF I STAY in this addictively heart-wrenching story of two desperate teenagers on the run from their pasts.

They’re young. They’re in love. They’re on the run.

Zoe wants to save Will as much as Will wants to save Zoe. When Will turns eighteen, they decide to run away together. But they never expected their escape to be so fraught with danger....

When the whole world is after you, sometimes it seems like you can’t run fast enough.

Nobody But Us, told in alternating perspectives from Will and Zoe, is an unflinching novel, in turns heartbreaking and hopeful, about survival, choices, and love...and how having love doesn’t always mean that you get a happy ending. Described as “beautiful, heartbreaking, and exhilarating” by Kody Keplinger, author of The DUFF, Nobody But Us will prove irresistible to fans of Nina Lacour, Jenny Han, and Sara Zarr.

First Sentence: "He comes down the road in his Camaro sliding left to right on the freshly oiled gravel and skidding to a stop in front of my house."

Review:
*Warning: This review will contain pretty monstrous spoilers for Nobody But Us, though will not spoil quite everything. To read the spoiler-free version, head over to YA Books Central.*

To be entirely fair, I was not sure if this book would be my thing. The teens on the run aspect didn't really appeal to me, but Nobody But Us was blurbed by two of my favorite authors (Courtney Summers and Kody Keplinger), as well as being compared to If I Stay by Gayle Forman, which I loved. I thought perhaps instead of being melodramatic, Nobody But Us might have the contemplative, deep, emotionally fraught style of If I Stay. Well, I've been wrong before. I really need to stop buying into this marketing that sells you one book by comparing it to another.

Starting with the good, Halbrook writes well, creating two different voices for Zoe and Will. They think differently and have wholly different vocabulary. Multiple points of view in first person are tricky, so I applaud her for doing that this well. The writing's a bit simpler than I personally tend to prefer, and includes the occasional odd word choice, like "vessel" to refer to a car, though that seems like something that my be caught before publication.

I would like to propose changing the tagline to "They're young. They're stupid. They're on the run." That pretty much sums up this book for me. Will, eighteen and finally free of the system where he's bounced from home to home and school to school, decides to take his girlfriend Zoe with him away from their shit-hole hometown and her abusive father. Fifteen-year-old Zoe needs a change, no doubt about that. Her father is a drunken monster, and should be in jail, but that does not mean that running away with Will is an awesome plan. In fact, it's pretty much the opposite of an awesome plan.

Still, teens don't necessarily have much wisdom about the way of the world and everything can seem very immediate. They're young and this seems like the best road open to them, so that's what they do. Fine. I will accept that. However, what I have trouble handling is how incredibly stupid they are about everything once they're on the road. How can neither of them ever have seen a crime drama, which would have kept them from doing a lot of the idiotic things they do?

Zoe's choices can be put down to a youthful naivete, I suppose, and a weakness of character that causes her to cling to the first person to offer to take care of her. Will, however, has a better idea of the law, having come up against it before. He knows enough to get her a fake ID that lists her age as eighteen, though they never actually use this once, and to expect that the cops will be looking for them. Yet, somehow, he expects that they will simply be able to disappear in Las Vegas with just her fake ID, where she can enroll in school and they can live together. Really? You KNOW they'll be looking for you, Will, but it doesn't occur to you that you would need a fake identity too? Or that an IDENTITY is more than a doctored license? How are you going to enroll her in school or do anything without records? What about your social security numbers? Birth certificates? Disappearing is not so easy in the modern age, especially when people know your car.

"Christina, stop being so judgmental of them for not knowing all of this stuff; I mean, they're just teens!" Maybe so, imaginary devil's advocate. Some teens might not know those things, so let's give them a pass on that, okay? Shouldn't they at least be bright enough not to draw attention to themselves as they make their escape? Will, especially, since Zoe seems to have no clue what's going on? Yet, every time they stop, they do something incredibly, mind-blowingly stupid. Being a teenager does not necessitate a complete lack of survival skills or self-awareness.

Here are some examples of how Zoe and Will continually do precisely the worst possible thing in every situation:

1. While eating at a diner, some cops come in for food. The teens freak out and basically make it very obvious that they're hiding something as they leave as quickly as they can. At least they don't skip out on the check, making this the high point in their intelligence.
2. Will spots a vehicle behind them on the highway that he believes might be a cop car, so he starts driving as fast as he can. Because the best thing to do when guilty and near cops is to make yourself guilty of something else so that they'll be sure to notice you. Yup. Great idea.
3. They stop at a gas station. Zoe goes in to get food while Will pumps gas. Some assholes start talking to Zoe and one touches her on the ass. Will punches him.
4. Zoe gets her period and, worried about Will's limited finances, decides they cannot afford the $12 box of tampons (Seriously, why are tampons so expensive? I have wondered this before myself.) and decides the best plan is to steal some from the box.
5. When Zoe gets caught stealing tampons and shaken by the irate store owner, Will hits him over the head with a bottle of wine.
6. When Will sees a news broadcast reporting the incident, he and Zoe run out of the dining establishment so fast they leave his wallet behind, causing the waitress and everyone else to look closely enough at them to put two and two together.
7. The list really does go on, but I think you've got the point.

Will and Zoe's relationship also made me seriously uncomfortable. Yet again, we have a girl in love with a guy she's afraid of a good deal of the time, and we're meant to see them as tragic, romantic figures. No, I don't think so. Zoe, physically abused by her father, is terrified every time Will gets into a fight on her behalf. The formula repeated over and over in this book: someone threatens or hits on Zoe, he punches the person, Zoe cries and shrinks away from him, he promises he'll never hurt her and that he'll keep his rage checked, repeat.

Worse, I have no doubt that, given time, he would end up hitting Zoe. Their interactions had warning bells chiming in my head all the way through. He thinks constantly about how much he wants to make her happy, but snaps at her any time she annoys him. He swears at her, even though he knows how much that upsets her. After some guys hit on her, he accuses her of flirting with them, blaming her, though she was only a victim of their rude behavior. When he does things like this, she accuses herself for his unhappiness, for their bad situation, even though she's clearly not at fault for any of it. Their relationship is incredibly unhealthy and I don't feel like Halbrook made her stance on that as a bad thing clear at all.

What I wanted and expected was an emotionally hard-hitting novel about the horrors of abuse, but instead I found a melodramatic mess that romanticizes what I see as an abusive relationship. The whole thing read like a Lifetime original movie. I imagine many people will enjoy this, given how popular books with similar themes have been recently, but I did not.

Rating: 1.5/5

Favorite Quote: "I've never actually owned a swimsuit. I've never set foot in a pool, and I don't know how to swim. I'd probably run screaming if I saw an ocean wave, but that doesn't mean I don't want to go and see what happens. It might be nice to discover something scary in a way I'd never known before. The heart-racing, in-love-with-the-risk kind of scary. Not the hide-away kind."

Review: Prophecy

Prophecy
Prophecy, Book 1

Author: Ellen Oh
Pages: 320
Publisher: HarperTeen
Publication Date: January 2, 2013
Source: For review from YA Books Central

Description from Goodreads:
The greatest warrior in all of the Seven Kingdoms… is a girl with yellow eyes.

Kira’s the only female in the king’s army, and the prince’s bodyguard. She’s a demon slayer and an outcast, hated by nearly everyone in her home city of Hansong. And, she’s their only hope…

Murdered kings and discovered traitors point to a demon invasion, sending Kira on the run with the young prince. He may be the savior predicted in the Dragon King Prophecy, but the missing treasure of myth may be the true key. With only the guidance of the cryptic prophecy, Kira must battle demon soldiers, evil shaman, and the Demon Lord himself to find what was once lost and raise a prince into a king.

Intrigue and mystery, ancient lore and action-packed fantasy come together in this heart-stopping first book in a trilogy.

First Sentence: "People feared Kira."

Review:
Writing this review gives me no pleasure. I've been eagerly anticipating Prophecy for months, ever since I heard the comparison to Graceling. On top of that, Ellen Oh totally rocks and I've loved conversing with her on Twitter. Even more excitement stemmed from the Korean setting; I'm completely obsessed with kdrama, and Korea as a result of that. Perhaps I should stop adding books compared to Kristin Cashore to my reading list, as I think three out of three have been monumental failures for me.

Much as I wanted to love this, Prophecy just is not good, especially not as a book for older teens or adult crossover readers. Oh's simple writing might better suit younger readers, just transitioning to fantasy. Those readers, too, might be less familiar with fantasy tropes and thus less aware of where the plot was going from page one. 

Kira sounded like my kind of heroine from the blurb. There are so many books that I have loved that centered on a female with major butt-kicking powers, including Graceling. While Kira does successfully kick and punch and smite a lot of bad guys, she never does manage to develop any sort of a personality. When not killing things, she has no clue what to do with herself, bumbling along in a naive awkwardness. She has no interests aside from fighting and thinks about nothing but that and her family. She is single-minded to the point of unreality. Worse still, Kira whines constantly, misunderstood by everyone in her kingdom. In theory, I should have her back; I mean, I've been friendless and it's incredibly awful, and certainly being the only woman in the army cannot be easy either. Because of the aforementioned lack of personality, I couldn't muster any feelings but annoyance. She also read much younger to me.

Everyone calls her Demon Slayer, and loathes her, thinking her a murderer of humans, unaware that she is actually slaying demons, who secretly wander the kingdom in human guise. Anyone else see the problem in there? If the populace doesn't know demons exist, why would they be calling her Demon Slayer? Kira has increased strength, yellow eyes, and a powerful sense of smell to aid in her demon smiting. She mentions that the stench of unwashed people in a public house can give her a powerful headache, yet she wanders through several fetid sewer tunnels throughout the course of the novel without any ill effects. These plot holes irritated me greatly.

Sadly, none of the other characters really have any more meat on their fictional bones. Taejo, crown prince of Hansong, has to be one of the most irritating child characters I have ever encountered in fiction. What a freaking useless brat! He has all of the fighting skills of the chick in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which is to say none; he exists solely for yelling, getting kidnapped, and needing to be rescued. Despite his inability to do much of anything, every one in the world is convinced that he will be the Demon Musado of prophecy, meant to slay the evil doer, and that he will be the king to unite everyone. All of his decisions are impulsive and cause more trouble, but no one seems to notice how incredibly awful he is or that, should they not start training him soon, he would be the worst king in the entire universe. Instead, everyone indulges his temper tantrums and does what he says.

The only characters I found remotely interesting were Kira's two love interests, though nothing much has been done with them yet, since Kira is too obliviously unaware to get involved in a romance. For some reason, both are attracted to her, despite her inability to hold conversations for longer than five minutes. Both guys have a bit more depth and show some glimmer of promise.

What really killed me, though, was how boring the action scenes were. If only the action had been great, the book could have been saved just a little bit. Unfortunately, everything happened too easily. Battles end in about a page and a half. People attack, Kira slices, Taejo gets grabbed, Kira chases and slices, and the battle is over. This formula plays out time and again. There's no sense of suspense. The style is very telling, and just does not give a good sense of what's actually happening or make me care at all.

The best part of Prophecy was that I made it into a kdrama in my head. This little movie got me through the book much more quickly. Also, even though I clearly didn't love the book, if they made this into a kdrama, I would watch it in a heartbeat. They should definitely do that. It could be my first historical!

A predictable plot, flat characters, and mediocre writing made Prophecy one of my biggest disappointments this year. Some may enjoy this, but it really was not for me. Hardcore fantasy fans will likely not be thrilled with Prophecy.

Rating: 1.5/5

Favorite Quote: "'That sheep-faced, son of a leper whore.'"

Maybe Sprout Wings - The Mountain Goats

Above

Author: Leah Bobet
Pages: 368
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
Publication Date: April 1, 2012
Source: Library

Description from Goodreads:
Matthew has loved Ariel from the moment he found her in the tunnels, her bee’s wings falling away. They live in Safe, an underground refuge for those fleeing the city Above—like Whisper, who speaks to ghosts, and Jack Flash, who can shoot lightning from his fingers.

But one terrifying night, an old enemy invades Safe with an army of shadows, and only Matthew, Ariel, and a few friends escape Above. As Matthew unravels the mystery of Safe’s history and the shadows’ attack, he realizes he must find a way to remake his home—not just for himself, but for Ariel, who needs him more than ever before.

First Sentence: "My last supply duty before Sanctuary Night, I get home and Atticus is waiting."

Review:
What on this crazy, polluted planet did I just read? Seriously, I just finished reading this and I have no freaking clue. If this book were a person, it would likely end up in a straitjacket, trapped in the sorts of institutions many of its characters have been at one point or another. Mix together One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Dust Girl, and I think you've got something that roughly approximates Above.

The world depicted herein does have interesting features. For example, there are people with powers, like Jack and his lightning hands. Others are part animal, like Matthew and his scales. Some of these Freaks, those that aren't normal, have formed a community, hidden beneath the earth in tunnels, safe from the doctors and the institutions. They call their community Safe, and Atticus is their leader.

This basic premise could have made an outstanding book, but it didn't. The lack of explanation caused me to get stuck in questioning mode, unable to suspend disbelief. So far as I noticed, there was never once any sort of description of HOW society came to be this way. People don't just suddenly get born with lion feet for no reason. I'm not even asking for much. Just give me something! Really, I would have been a bit more positive towards the book had their been just a sentence telling me that these changes were the result of drugs, chemicals in the food, pollution, SOMETHING.

The character of Ariel, pictured on the book's cover, proved to be another insurmountable obstacle for me as a reader. While I can easily accept some of the curses (or so they call them) that the people of Safe possess, like wielding lightning or speaking with ghosts, I had major difficulty with the animal hybrids. Still, I could accept to some degree at least Atticus' claw hands and Matthew's dad's lion feet. Fine. Ariel, though, I could not fathom. You see, she is not precisely as pictured. She looks completely normal sometimes, entirely human. However, she can TURN INTO A BEE. Her ability differs from everyone else's greatly, and I couldn't deal with the whole conservation of matter issues. Sure, I've read books where I wasn't bothered by things like that (Harry Potter, for example), but this aspect just seemed out of place within Bobet's own world. Why was Ariel so unique?

Matthew is a meh main character, which is unfortunate, especially considering that I still found him to be the most interesting character. Everyone feels flat and I don't get a sense of any real emotion anywhere, even in the scenes that I know were meant to be gut-wrenching. Perhaps this stems from the way Bobet chose to tell the story, as Matthew's autobiography, thus creating a sense of removal from those moments?

Matthew has a momentous crush on Ariel, although it's never put into those terms. I will give the romance credit for not being remotely like any other YA romances. However, that does not make me ship them any more. Again, it's hard to root for them when I have no sense of who they really are. Ariel, especially, does not seem to much care for anyone and would probably be best off alone.

The writing teetered on the edge of dialect but, except for one brief section, remained normal enough that I didn't want to stab my eyes out with one of my stiletto heels. Her long (mostly about forty pages) chapters made my eyes cross. I was constantly flipping ahead to see how many pages of the chapter remained, and the answer was usually too many. Additionally, I did not care for the Tales told at the end of each chapter, a brief story of how some of the key characters came to be in Safe. The characters chosen seemed entirely arbitrary, with some important ones having been skipped and some we never even meet getting a section. Many of these didn't add to the book for me at all. I feel like it would have been stronger to integrate them into the rest of the text.

There were some ideas in Above that I really liked, some shining possibility from amidst the weirdness. I really wish that Bobet hadn't made this a paranormal. As an issues book set in a dystopian future with a crackdown on crazy people (like The Glimpse), this could have been so powerful. The paranormal elements detracted from the serious themes, like the abuse Ariel has suffered and the inhumane treatments perpetrated by the Whitecoats.

About all I can say having finished Above is that I didn't completely hate it. However, I have so little positive to say that I cannot even rate it a meh. Some readers surely exist who can appreciate Bobet's vision, but I am not that reader.

Favorite Quote:

"Jimmy was big and broad; all the better for keeping her papa away. Jimmy was seldom smiling; well, it mattered more when he smiled just for her. And Jimmy had a place down in the city, lock and key secure between her and the world, and nobody looking in or telling where she'd gone.
   This is the way the Tale goes, that it's good for a while. That there's someone to hold you at dusk and a quiet space to stay, someone to careful, careful drag you back from the nightmares and glittering cut-sharp edges of your smashed-up broken nerve.
   It good short of forever.
   It gets real bad. It gets bad in ways you know on you skin, and this time you picked it. You didn't look close enough, so this time it's just you to blame. So it's bad on back and shoes in hand to tiptoe late-night out the door, and no time for somewhere to run to; no time to wait for the real thing. There's only time to go.
   There's running and running 'til you can't outrun your skin."

"I thought of old friends
the one's who'd gone missing
Said all their names three times
Phantoms in the early dark
Canaries in the mines

Ghosts and clouds
And nameless things
Squint your eyes and hope real hard
Maybe sprout wings"

Remember: Every comment on a post during Dystopian August is an entry to win one of fourteen dystopian/post-apocalyptic novels IF you've filled out the form from this post.

Everything's Not Lost - Coldplay

Possess

Author: Gretchen McNeil
Pages: 379
Publisher: Balzer + Bray

Description from Goodreads:
Rule #1: Do not show fear.
Rule #2: Do not show pity.
Rule #3: Do not engage.
Rule #4: Do not let your guard down.
Rule #5: They lie.

Fifteen-year-old Bridget Liu just wants to be left alone: by her mom, by the cute son of a local police sergeant, and by the eerie voices she can suddenly and inexplicably hear. Unfortunately for Bridget, it turns out the voices are demons – and Bridget has the rare ability to banish them back to whatever hell they came from.

Terrified to tell people about her new power, Bridget confides in a local priest who enlists her help in increasingly dangerous cases of demonic possession. But just as she is starting to come to terms with her new power, Bridget receives a startling message from one of the demons. Now Bridget must unlock the secret to the demons' plan before someone close to her winds up dead – or worse, the human vessel of a demon king.

First Sentence: "Bridget stared at the clock on the wall and cursed its painfully slow progression toward three fifteen."

Review:
Bridget Liu is a whiner. Seriously. She's one of those heroine's that's all 'waaah, I have a special power, but I just want to be normal.' Just get over it! I mean, yeah, of all the powers out there being able to exorcize people wouldn't exactly be my power of choice, but you've got it, so you might as well deal with it instead of complaining about it.

That's the thing, though, Bridget's pretty unhappy with pretty much everything in her life, and she whines about it constantly. However, she makes little to no effort to change any of these things. She doesn't want to help people with her powers, but she comes running to help whenever the priests ask her too. She doesn't like her mom dating so soon after her dad's death, but instead of calmly discussing it with her she ignores it and then throws temper tantrums. She claims to dislike Matt Quinn, who I am affectionately calling 'Hottie Stalker,' yet she continues to agree to hang out with him, all the while bemoaning the circumstances that brought her there (namely, her choosing to be there with him), in between fits of swooning mentally about how hot he is.

Even worse than her perpetual plaintive protestations, though, is the fact that they all take place next to her thoughts about what a badass she is. If you just heard her internal monologue, except for the part where she melts into a puddle of goo when super sexy Matt does anything, you might think this heroine was a tough, take no prisoners, straight up biatch. Seriously, she even called herself a badass in her thoughts, only a few pages after she congratulated herself on having strong Matt to protect her now. UGH!

You may be wondering about my moniker for Matt that I mentioned earlier. He is constantly showing up where she is, inquiring about where she's been, and talking to her mom (both in person and on the phone). They may have been childhood friends, and they may sort of be close now, but that's weird. In addition to Hottie Stalker, there's also Awkward Stalker. Bad luck, right? She has two freaking stalkers. The other one is one of her two best friends, Peter Kim. Peter's been obsessed with her for years, and, apparently, despite being friends for so long, she can't talk to him about anything because he'll interrupt her to repeatedly say how much he loves her. He's constantly getting jealous about her relationship with Matt and seems to know things about her he shouldn't. Yet, they are still friends.

The Peter Kim thing bothered me from the very beginning. He has the most pathetic crush on Bridget, which is fine, except that this apparently has to mean he becomes a creepy stalker. Part of the problem could be how wishy-washy Bridget is, although I think he still should have figured it out by now, but, in real life, most guys would just hide their crush. Plus, the third person in their friend group, sassy gay friend Hector, just makes everything worse. He constantly forces the conversation back to the Bridget-Peter drama. Who does that? These people just did not feel at all like real friends, or real people really.

The fantasy elements were a bit off-putting to me as well. Here's the things: the book came across as very religious. I mean, obviously that's a danger with a topic like demons/angels, but it can be done less heavy-handedly than this. Of the angel/demon books I've read, this one definitely seemed to be the most religion-oriented, which may be because of the creepy priests telling her what to do all of the time or who knows what. Maybe it's just me. I also found the plot trite and predictable; the writing weak.

Obviously, I did not care for this one. However, I do intend to give McNeil's new novel Ten a try, because the plot sounds very And Then There Were None. Anyway, I do think people who enjoy the novels of Kimberly Derting and Courtney Alison Moulton, both who offered blurbs for the back cover of the book, might enjoy Possess.

Rating: 1.5/5

"When I'm counting up my demons.
Saw there was one for every day.
With the good ones on my shoulder,
I drove the other ones away.

If you ever feel neglected,
If you think all is lost,
I'll be counting up my demons, yeah,
Hoping everything's not lost.
When you thought that it was over,
You could feel it all around,
Everybody's out to get you,
Don't you let it drag you down.
Cos if you ever feel neglected,
If you think that all is lost,
I'll be counting up my demons, yeah.
Hoping everything's not lost"

I'm a Long Way from Home - Shooter Jennings

After the Snow

Author: S. D. Crockett
Pages: 290
ARC Acquired from: Feiwel & Friends via NetGalley

Description from Goodreads:
Fifteen-year-old Willo was out hunting when the trucks came and took his family away. Left alone in the snow, Willo becomes determined to find and rescue his family, and he knows just who to talk with to learn where they are. He plans to head across the mountains and make Farmer Geraint tell him where his family has gone.

But on the way across the mountain, he finds Mary, a refugee from the city, whose father is lost and who is starving to death. The smart thing to do would be to leave her alone -- he doesn't have enough supplies for two or the time to take care of a girl -- but Willo just can't do it. However, with the world trapped in an ice age, the odds of them surviving on their own are not good. And even if he does manage to keep Mary safe, what about finding his family?

First Sentence: "I'm gonna sit here in my place on the hill behind the house."

Review:
After the Snow reads like Huck Finn meets dystopia. Unfortunately, I really don't like Huckleberry Finn. Why? Because, even at the very best of times, books written in dialect are a struggle for me. For one thing, dialect tends to equal poor grammar, which always makes me shudder. I did a lot of shuddering in this book. It also slows down my reading, both because I don't like it, and because I'm reading it all out loud to myself in my head (if that makes sense).

The main character, Willo, constantly talks to a dead dog that he has made into clothing. He even thinks it answers him, which is freaking creepy! Not only that, there's a 'mad dog' personality and a 'good dog' personality. Really. Willo, in his head, keeps holding conversations with a dead dog with multiple personalities. What the effin' what?

So yeah, I didn't really like the characters or the writing, but what about the dystopian elements, the world-building? Not so much there either. I don't feel like I really got a handle on what was going on here. I mean, I see that the weather went crazy, and there is a brief comment on how that happens. However, I want to know more about how the society functions and why so many people don't have papers and why everyone's so interested in the mountain men. And what's up with the crazy pseudo-religion, rebellion group? None of this was at all clear, and not in a cool leaving you guessing kind of way.

I really wish book descriptions for books in dialect were written in dialect. If that summary had been written the way the book was, I would not have read this. Well, maybe I would have, but only because it's a dystopia. Still, the description doesn't really give an accurate picture of what you're going to get. This definitely was not for me.

Favorite Quote: "That's the kind of thing people always thinking. They always got to see some sort of scary thing in everything."

Rating: 1.5/5

"I'm a long way from home and so all alone
Homesick like I never thought I'd be
I'm a long way from home, everything is wrong
Someone please watch over me."

Highway to Hell - Glee

Diabolical
Tantalize, Book 4
Author: Cynthia Leitich Smith
Pages: 349
ARC Acquired from: Candlewick via NetGalley
Brief Summary:
Everything's pretty calm at Sanguini's, but that doesn't mean the gang doesn't have a mission. Miranda, watching from above, sends a message to Zachary (via Joshua) that her friend Lucy is in trouble, having signed up for a demonic school in an effort to figure out what the hell happened to Miranda. Of course, Zachary can't go without Quince, which means Kieren's going to. Can they rescue Lucy and emerge with their souls (and lives) intact?

Review:
Installment four in Cynthia Leitich Smith's gothic series returns the reader to the format of book two, which, for those who haven't read it, means that the story is told from multiple points of view. For the first time, Kieren gets to 'speak,' along with Miranda, Zachary and Quincie. Yes, that's right. Miranda, my superfav (hint: this is sarcasm) is back.

The story is just as readable and fantastical as the previous ones. If you enjoyed them, I imagine you'll like this one too, especially since you'll actually get a happy ending. Unfortunately, the story is marred by numerous plot holes. Honestly, I think this would have been better had she ixnayed the happy ending.

So much of what happened here is not believable within the context of her own universe. For example, why is Miranda in heaven? This of course, I knew before, and was not entirely cool with, but mostly accepted. Now, though, she's sitting in the Penultimate, a sort of purgatory for Heaven which I'll talk about more later, surrounded by all of these people she killed. What really made me question Smith's decision here was not so much the evidence that Quincie was a completely freaking awful person/eternal, but the fact that not one of her victims is really mad at her. In every case, she saved them from a terrible fate one way or another. Bull.

Along a similar vein, how does Harrison end up in Heaven? This seems like the equivalent of the belief that, no matter what you've done previously, if you're killed after confessing your sins, you get heaven. Umm, why? The one plus of more Harrison in the book was finding out that he is super gay, which was kind of amusing.

The frame story, where they're going into the school to save Lucy, also continually seemed fabricated. Lucy's a plot point and that's all there is to it. The parts that really didn't make sense were at the end, which means I can't be especially specific. I just want to state for the record that what happened to Kieren and Zachary at the end was completely absurd. Especially Zachary. In what way does that make sense? Argh!

Okay, I want to end my review with something more positive, so I'll go back to the beginning of the book again. As I've already mentioned, Miranda's chilling in the Penultimate, where she can watch over whoever she wants to via a device called the monitor-com until she's ready to pass on to Heaven. (For those who are interested, this is very similar to a vision of the afterlife I wrote about in a short story. Funny that.) The setup is pretty cool, and I do love theories of life after death.

Rating: 1.5/5

"I'm on the highway to hell"

Within You, Without You - The Beatles

A Swiftly Tilting Planet
Time Quintet, Book 3

Author: Madeleine L'Engle
Pages: 278
Publisher: Dell

This series seriously just gets stranger and stranger. In the third book in the series, L'Engle abandons her more scientific approach and goes instead for outright religious references and time travel, but not in a scientific way.

Let me go back. In between A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet, many years have passed. Meg and Calvin have married; Calvin is eminent in his studies, and Meg, having abandoned her excellent mathematical intelligence is pregnant with her first child.

The crisis of the book is brought forward at the opening when Mr. Murry receives a call from the President, asking for his help because a dictator, Mad Dog Branzillo, is threatening nuclear war. Mom O'Keefe, who came for Thanksgiving dinner, remembers a rune (essentially a prayer or phrase imbued with magic powers), which saves them from nasty weather (an over the top metaphor for impending doom). She gives this rune to Charles Wallace, and tells him he needs to stop Mad Dog.

He goes out to the star-watching rock to think about this, kything with Meg the whole time. There he meets a unicorn, whose mission it is to travel with him through time, which unicorns born from eggs can do by the way. They hop around randomly in time, and, at almost every time, Charles Wallace has to go 'within' a person there, which means that he can see things through there eyes and have a small impact on what they're doing. Basically, he just says the rune in all of the important places, so that he can make everything happy again.

Way to make a unicorn lame, Madeleine L'Engle. Also, what is with this rune business? Deus ex rune. Ugh. It is evident that L'Engle believes not in Christianity precisely, or, at least, not in Christianity as it is commonly worshiped. However, it is all bound up in her writing. This whole book is built around a family, who through generations have been reliving Cain and Abel. Lovely, I know.

Actually, that's not quite right. More like, two families who kept doing this, and the end result of their line was this Mad Dog Branzillo character. Of course, maybe that's because these two families kept intermarrying. I think the message I was supposed to get from this book was something about peace and goodness, but all I really got was that incest makes for badness, which I already fully believed.

When I was younger, I remember having loved the first book. I thought Meg and Calvin had this completely epic romance. They were one of the best couples in fiction, I think I thought at one point. Now, I have no idea why. There was only the slightest hint of romance in the first books. Then in book three they're married and pregnant. What the heck is that? Why would you skip the best freaking parts, L'Engle? And why can't Meg use her smarts that you spent the first two books proving she had?

Suffice it to say that I will not be reading Many Waters. It's been kind of fun revisiting these, but they're definitely not what I thought they were, which is another kind of entertaining. So sad when books are not nearly so good when read through the eyes of an adult. I really need to do a top ten list for that. :-P

Rating: 1.5/5

"We were talking
About the love that's gone so cold
And the people who gain the world
And lose their soul
They don't know, they can't see
Are you one of them?

When you've seen beyond yourself
Then you may find
Peace of mind is waiting there
And the time will come
When you see we're all one
And life flows on within you and without you"