Travel Reading Part 3

For the last two months, I've been gone on a backpacking trip to Europe. My cell phone was the only internet access I had, and the reception was often spotty. Plus I was just super busy. So TONS of reading, but no posts. There were too many books, and I read them too long ago to make individual posts for each one. So I'm dividing them up into a couple posts, and just writing a couple sentences for each. Here goes the third set:

"Strangelets" by Michelle Gagnon
Grade: 2 1/2 stars
Reminded me a bit of the Gone series by Michael Grant: bunch of ethnically diverse teenagers wake up having no idea where they are. Struggle with each other and with the weird, dangerous place they've discovered themselves in. Lots of people die. Not as gripping as Gone, though, but good enough if you like that genre.



"A Corner of White" by Jaclyn Moriarty
Grade: 3 1/2 stars
Great, original story by the author of many great books such as The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie, The Ghosts of Ashbury High, and more. Unusual girl (maybe in a slightly Manic Pixie Dream Girl way--maybe?) from our world and a boy from the Kingdom of Cello somehow manage to send letters across to each other's worlds. Awesome characters (as always, my favourite part of Moriarty's books), but also great world building, and good writing (I loved all the stuff about colours). Really, really liked this one. Left some plot unattended to, so I hope to goodness a sequel comes out shortly.

"You Can Understand the Bible" by Peter Kreeft
Grade: 3 1/2 stars
Short look at every book in the Bible, and its purpose and meaning. For me, it wasn't as informative as I would have liked, as I've gone through a class that was partly based on this book, and put on by a really awesome priest. This class went more in depth, and was much cooler (we watched "The Twilight Zone"!). But it would be great to give to someone as an introduction.



"Another Pan" by Daniel Nayeri and Dina Nayeri
Grade: 2 1/2 stars
Sequel, of sorts, to Another Faust. Retelling of the Peter Pan story (sort of...) set in the same snooty New York high school as Another Faust. I actually can hardly remember anything about this one, which isn't really a good sign. I remember liking it well enough, though. The two authors do creepy temptation very well.




"Kiki Strike: The Darkness Dwellers" by Kirsten Miller
Grade: 2 1/2 stars
Sequel to Kiki Strike Inside the Shadow City and Kiki Strike: The Empress's Tomb. The girls pursue evil royals and meet cute French boys with a fascination with underground cities and try to defeat a horrid finishing school. Fun, though I seem to remember enjoying the previous books slightly more. Kiki's still an awesome character, though.

Travel Reading Part 2

For the last two months, I've been gone on a backpacking trip to Europe. My cell phone was the only internet access I had, and the reception was often spotty. Plus I was just super busy. So TONS of reading, but no posts. There were too many books, and I read them too long ago to make individual posts for each one. So I'm dividing them up into a couple posts, and just writing a couple sentences for each. Here goes the second set:

"Scarlet" by A. C. Gaughen
Grade: 1 1/2 stars (maybe 2 stars...it was that bad, I just didn't enjoy it)
Retelling of Robin Hood, but with Will Scarlet as a girl dressed up as a boy. The central love triangle annoyed me quite a bit, unfortunately. Also (this is totally unfair on the book and definitely my fault), I happen to be a big fan of Little John in all retellings. He was quite interesting in this one, so if there's a sequel about him I might read it, but he was also really annoying. Robin was rather boring (maybe I just missed something there because I was too caught up in how annoyed I was at the love triangle?), and Much wasn't in it nearly enough.


"Slice of Cherry" by Dia Reeves
Grade: 1 star
Creeeepy. In a bad way. At least for me. This is about two girls whose father was a serial killer, and they sort of take after him. There are a bunch of stories about serial killers (or those tempted to that sort of thing) that I like (like say Dexter or I Hunt Killers), but this one was just weird and unpleasant. There was a strange fantasy element incorporated as well that just made it all weirder.




"Juniper Berry" by M. P. Kozlowsky
Grade: 2 1/2 stars
Good story about a lonely girl whose parents are famous actors with a secret. A bit young for me, but the illustrations were awesome. Like the above, there was a fair amount of creepiness, but I liked this creepiness quite a bit.






"Stray" by Andrea K. Höst
Grade: 3 1/2 stars
First of a young adult sci-fi trilogy, followed by Lab Rat One and Caszandra. The three books are very interconnected--the first ends very unresolved, and it would be really hard to read the second or the third without the first. It's really just one book divided into three sections. That being said, I did like the first "section" best out of the three. An Aussie girl, Cassandra, is suddenly somewhere else. She has to survive for a few days, until she's found by some people, and realizes she's not on Earth any more. The world building was intriguing here, and I was pleased to note that the diary format of the book is very true to life. In other words, Cassandra doesn't spend a lot of time explaining things that she wouldn't have written in her diary. Keeping track of all the various people's names can be quite confusing because of this, but it's worth it for the realism.

"Lab Rat One" by Andrea K. Höst
Grade: 3 1/2 stars
Follow up to Stray. Basically see my thoughts for the first one. This one is slightly less exciting because everything is less new, but there starts to be some interesting plot developments (as opposed to simply exploring and discovering a new civilization).

"Caszandra" by Andrea K. Höst
Grade: 3 stars
Follow up to Stray and Lab Rat One. Good final section, although perhaps my least favourite of the three. It can be very difficult to properly write about someone who is settling down after having found their mate and home and all that. I'm not sure if Höst quite succeeds, at least for me. It was still interesting--I did like her children and her partner and the plot developments. It just wasn't quite as interesting as the previous two.

Travel Reading Part 1

For the last two months, I've been gone on a backpacking trip to Europe. My cell phone was the only internet access I had, and the reception was often spotty. Plus I was just super busy. So TONS of reading, but no posts. There were too many books, and I read them too long ago to make individual posts for each one. So I'm dividing them up into a couple posts, and just writing a couple sentences for each.
Here goes:

"Burning Blue" by Paul Griffin
Grade: 3 stars
Girl gets her face burned by acid and she and this hacker guy try to find out who did it. Kind of cool. I like the romance and the plot line. But my expectations were a bit too high going into this one. (It's about a hacker. It could have been really cool and computery.)





"Guy Langman: Crime Scene Procrastinator" by Josh Berk
Grade: 3 stars
Again, I liked this one less than the expectations I had. Maybe it was something to do with starting off a huge trip as opposed the actual books I was reading? (Mr. Was below had the same issue, and even Ender's World was a little less interesting than I expected.) This one is mostly recommended because it's quite funny--I can't actually remember the mystery story line anymore.




"The Spark" by Susan J. Bigelow
Grade: 3 stars
Good sequel to Broken and Fly into Fire, with Deirdre as the main character this time. The plot and the world were as detailed and interesting as the first two books. Bigelow's characters often don't appeal to me a lot, and this one was slightly less good in that regard than even the first two. But there is also a level of realism,  I think, in both the characters and the world-building, that makes this series decidedly worth reading.



"Mr. Was" by Pete Hautman
Grade: 1 star
I suspect the right person would really love it, and I don't think it was badly written, but I didn't like it at all. Partly, like Burning Blue and Guy Langman, it was my previous expectations. I heard it was a weird time travel story--which it was... But it was also mostly the story of a boy whose father beat his mother, and then eventually killed her.




"Ender's World: Fresh Perspectives on the SF Classic Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card
Grade: 4 stars
Really interesting collection of essays all about Ender's Game. One of my favourite essays was "Ender Wiggin, USMC" by an actual marine named John F. Schmitt. Quite fascinating look at how Ender's Game was used and loved by group of US Marines. Lots of other cool essays too.