Travel Reading: BC Summer

It is far too difficult to write up proper reviews when I've been away from regular internet access for extended periods of time. Thus I started this Travel Reading series, where I simply write a couple sentences about each book read, and leave it at that. So from a trip home to my family and friends in BC comes the following:

"Owl in Love" by Patrice Kindl
Grade: 3 stars
Strange little book, which seems to be Kindl's style. I like her best in fairy tale land, where strangeness doesn't seem unusual (Goose Chase made me very happy). But this one was surprisingly entertaining. The strangeness was less disconcerting than in The Woman in the Wall. Owl's voice is unique, even from Kindl's other heroines; her inhuman-ness was treated well. And I still want to read every one of the rest of her books, if only for curiosity's sake. 2 1/2 stars because I think it was a little young for me, but then an extra 1/2 star for the fact that I couldn't really stop reading it.



"A Coalition of Lions" by Elizabeth Wein
Grade: 3 stars
A sequel to the Arthurian retelling The Winter Prince, but not nearly as heart-wrenching and impactful. I still enjoyed it, especially in the enormous potential for a favourite new character that was young Telemakos (the future books follow him as a protagonist). The setting and politics were cool as well. But it felt too short, and like some of the relationships (especially Priamos and Goewin) and characters needed more background and build up.





"Port Eternity" by C. J. Cherryh
Grade: 2 1/2 stars
Not as good as the other Cherryh I read (Cuckoo's Egg) but that was expected. I'd read reviews beforehand that indicated this. I only read it as my next Cherryh because it was an Arthurian retelling of sorts, and I've been on a bit of an Arthurian kick recently (see A Coalition of Lions above and the Top Ten (Or So): Arthurian Retellings list). I think I would have preferred even more character development, though maybe that wouldn't be possible with the kind of characters these "people" were. Or maybe what I wanted was more action... It happened at the end, but there seemed to be a big, slow build up to some large character explosion, and that never happened as much as I expected. The mythic, idyllic ending seemd to suit more conflict and events than actually happened.



"The Curse of Chalion" by Lois McMaster Bujold
Grade: 3 1/2 stars
It was a little slow to start out with, but once I got far enough through, the Bujold-ness showed up, especially with the main character, Cazaril. The interaction between gods and men was great. There are certain elements of theism that Bujold seems to understand much better than most people (this also showed up in the Vorkosigan saga with Cordelia's beliefs).
Note: everything about this edition (the back cover text, the inside cover picture) indicates there's a cliched main romance, which there isn't. Just putting that out there because it turned me off for a while.



"Tomorrow When the War Began" by John Marsden
Grade: 3 1/2 stars
I appreciated the realism of this YA post-apocalyptic Australian survival story. The teens seemed to me to act and think much like real teens. There was even a religious (not just "spiritual") girl who wasn't stupid or puritanical! That was hugely refreshing. The Australian element also gave it a bit of exciting exoticism for me as a Canadian. I think I'd like to read the sequels, once I come back from my travels and adventures and start a normal life again. It won't be that high on my list, since I didn't become passionate about any particular element. But it was a great and exciting and highly readable start to a series, and I'd recommend it to people who were mature enough for the small amount of sexual content.

The Hunt

by Andrew Fukuda

Story summary: He is a lone human in a society run by vampires. Barely managing to escape notice (and a gory death) through a series of rigorous personal rules, he lives a quiet, lonely life without love or friendship. Until the worst happens, and he's thrown into the spotlight of the event of the century... a human hunt.

Why You Will Like This Book:

• Everything's inverted! It's the vampires that are just called "people" while humans are strange creatures hunted for their blood!
• It's gripping! How's our protagonist going to survive when every time he sweats or bleed or shows any emotion whatsoever, he will be ripped to shreds and eaten?

And Why You Might Not:

• It's a pretty standard YA dystopian. Other than the central twist, there's not really anything new or exciting.
• I found the characters pretty uninteresting.

The Scorch Trials

by James Dashner

Story summary: Thomas and the gang of boys that survived the Maze have been brought to safety with the mysterious WICKED group. Except--surprise! Turns out there's another part to this horrible experiment, and instead of being sent to a maze full of monsters, they're sent to a scorching desert full of crazy people and lightning. So that's... great.
Sequel to The Maze Runner.

Why You Will Like This Book:

• Like The Maze Runner, the primary appeal of this book is finding out what the heck is going on. Reminds me a bit of the days of watching LOST.
• It's fast-paced and exciting. Not surprising they're making a series of movies out of these books.

And Why You Might Not:

• It was really light, lacking in character development or interesting ideas.
• There is an annoying love triangle.

The Road

by Cormac McCarthy

Story summary: A man and his young boy are travelling through the dead and dreary post-apocalyptic America, barely surviving and slowly dying.

Thoughts: This was fairly tough to get through. It was bleak and relentless, and took me a very long time to read compared to most books. In some ways, there seemed very little point to reading a book like this. And yet... there are enough threads of hope throughout the story, that by the end (and especially because of the end), I could have a new perspective on the bleakness and suffering of the rest of the book.

Grade: 3 1/2 stars

The Maze Runner

by James Dashner

Story summary: Thomas wakes up in an dark box, with absolutely no memory of his life at at all. The box is opened, and he discovers himself in a small community of male teenagers, surviving in a enclosed area, outside of which is a huge, inescapable maze full of monsters.

Thoughts: This reminded me a lot of what I liked best about LOST: you start knowing absolutely nothing about anything, and slowly gather bits of information, although that doesn't help you much since everything is so strange and weird, and every new clue reveals a whole new set of questions. There were also a lot of similarities to the Gone series by Michael Grant, with teenagers struggling to survive on their own (and mostly failing). However, it was quite a bit lighter than both of those in some ways. Mostly just light and fun (despite the somewhat gruesome deaths) and full of intriguing mysteries. I didn't become attached to any of the characters, and there wasn't exactly much depth. I'd like to continue the series some time to get more answers (hopefully--unless it's too much like LOST), but I'm not rushing out to get them immediately.

Grade: 3 stars

The Testing

by Joelle Charbonneau

Story Summary: In a world recovering from a horrible, civilization-destroying war, Cia is one of the top students in her class, and is chosen to participate in the highly sought after Testing process, to see if she's suitable for the University. But there's more going on in the Testing than she thought, and she's thrown into death and danger and survival.

Thoughts: I thought this was quite derivative of The Hunger Games and other such YA dystopias. There was the post-disaster North America, divided into small areas which each focused on a separate societal task (called Colonies this time round instead of Districts). Then a bunch of teenagers get called into a series of game-type challenges where most of them die, and many of them kill each other. Plus, of course, there's the underlying issue of a very shady government trying to be evil under the guise of helping the nation survive.
It was a gripping, easy read, though. So there's that. And I enjoyed the first bunch of tests which involved intelligence related testing. Some day I'm going to come across a well-written book which actually delves into that sort of stuff in more detail.
I haven't yet decided whether I'm going to read the sequel, which came out recently. I think I might not, unless I hear really good things about it. Although I was interested in the Michal character, and I might want to see what happens to him. (He seems like the Cinna equivalent from THG, and Cinna was always one of my favourite characters from that series.)

Grade: 2 1/2 stars

The Giver

by Lois Lowry

Grade: 3 1/2 stars
Story summary: Jonas is approaching his twelfth birthday, when children of the Community are given their life's work. And when the day comes, he is given an Assignment unlike any of the Twelves he's seen before. And...I don't want to give too much more away, because part of the enjoyment of this book for me was discovering details about the world as I read.


Thoughts: For ages I judged this book by this cover, even though there's a handy dandy proverb that tells us not to do that. Once I finished the book, I realized that it was more suitable than I had originally thought, and significantly better than some of the other covers out there. Still, it does not look that much like what it is: a dystopian novel, somewhat along the lines of 1984 or Brave New World, except for a younger audience.

Full of intriguing ideas and--as mentioned in the story summary above--great world-building details. I was a little unsure of my satisfaction with how everything concluded, until I realized how it could be interpreted with quite a different meaning than is obvious upon superficial reading. Perhaps one of my few criticisms is that I wish it had been slightly more fleshed out, especially near the end. Perhaps that would have ruined the impact of it, though.

I actually rather wish I had read it when I was a bit younger. Not that I didn't like it now, but I think it could have become one of my favourites that I re-read over the years. It didn't have quite the same impact at my highly advanced* age.

P.S. Apparently there are two companion novels, which I am debating about reading. If anyone has read them, would you recommend them?

*Yeah, not actually that advanced... but more than a decade older than the main character.

This Is Not a Test

by Courtney Summers

Grade: 2 stars
Story: It's the zombie apocalypse. Six teenagers have managed to seek refuge in an abandoned school.

Thoughts: Really not my kind of book.

1. Zombies. I don't like them. I don't like the characters that seem to show up in books about them. I don't particularly like the plots that generally surround them. Even the epic show-down between zombies and unicorns, Zombies vs. Unicorns, edited by Justine Larbalestier and Holly Black, couldn't bring any love of zombie fiction into my heart.

2. Teenagers. Stuck together. At the end of the world. Making out and drinking games ensue. Not really my cup of tea.

3. Seriously, it's really depressing. Now here's where I actually liked one aspect: the central character, Sloane, is abused and suicidal, and it goes into her thought processes a fair bit. This was really interesting and (along with the well-done suspense) raised it to 2 stars, but when you add tons of death and gross dead people walking around to an abused and suicidal main character, the results are not particularly pleasant.