Star Wars- The Phantom of Menace

School has officially begun for me (a while ago actually) so that means more reading and less frequent reviews. With my schedule, it's not often that I get two whole hours break to write something. I'd better use this opportunity to my advantage! Even still, I have some things planned for this review and the next, so stay tuned to my Facebook page or keep checking back within the next few weeks.

If you're looking at the title of the post and telling me, "Astana, it's supposed to be The Phantom Menace!" then could you please shut up and let me finish? This book that I'm reviewing isn't exactly the actual book but more like a parody. Some parodies are funny and some are just plain annoying but this one actually helps you see the storyline from a completely different angle. It's Star Wars written in Shakespearean English.
My point is that having the classic story written like this makes you examine the plot differently. It helps you understand the way things would be different if this was adapted into a stage play instead of a movie. And not just any stage play, one from many centuries ago which seems like ancient history to those of today's age.

The cover-

My Thoughts-
(I'm going to skip right ahead because I'm sure all of you know or are familiar with the story of the first movie)

Through the small amount of Shakespeare I've read in school I can probably say that the language isn't too difficult to understand. I was able to make sense of what the characters are saying, but not so much of the implied meanings hidden in the text. What makes reading this easier is that I am much more familiar with Star Wars than I am with Elizabethan culture. However, usually I had to go read a few lines before in order to fully understand some of the things you'd be expected to know. There were a few changes in the storyline too that I thought would be helpful to know.
I don't remember if the movie explains this or not but the character of Jar Jar Binks is kind of evolved from him just being a simple idiot to him being a little bit more thoughtful. He makes it known early on in the story that he was banished for his stupidity, but he has thoughts about his society and the rest of the Republic that he keeps to himself.  At least once or twice in the book he has these short thought monologues where he thinks to himself it'd be better if he didn't express his opinions on the subjects of politics because he might end up angering the Queen. I didn't think that the clumsy Gungan whom we all know actually had more thought than how tasty the bug next to him looks.

Since in my English class we had been discussing the differences between reading a play script and watching a movie, I realized that the same holds true in this case. When you watch the movie, you do not just get a sense of what the characters are thinking and saying, but also of the atmosphere of the setting (especially if it's set up on another planet). In a play script you just have the characters with very vague descriptions of what else is going on. For a specific example, at the end of the book where Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Darth Maul fight, there is barely any indication that they're parrying and thrusting laser swords at each other while spitting out complicated lines that would take a lot more breath than regular sentences.
Keeping the same example I noticed that there are just small stage notes telling what the characters are doing. Literally all that it says during the big battle at the end of the something along the lines of "Darth Maul, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn fight." That's good enough description for a play director to know what is supposed to happen once those particular lines are delivered. Knowing the basic storyline I did have an idea of when the "play" was moving on to the next major plot point, but I think it would be difficult to understand just from the dialogue and small stage notes what was going on if you had no background knowledge of the Star Wars Saga. There's so much of the feeling of the story that you lose when you're just reading what the characters say. You kind of have to go back and imagine what kind of emotions the characters would be speaking with if they were to say that particular thing.

After reading this book I realized that the one thing that makes reading Shakespeare so hard for people of this age is that there are so many hidden references that are completely lost on us because we aren't from that time period and the things that were considered pop culture at that time are not relevant to us now. The English isn't that hard to understand, but it does require a significantly higher amount of thought than the common talk that we do with our friends and colleagues. Through a storyline that I'm familiar with I was able to enjoy the "play" the way people from Shakespeare's time were able to enjoy his plays and develop a way to get the most out of Shakespeare plays that I read in the future.

((Thanks for sticking around! I've got another two reviews on the way, one from a book I read a while ago and one I finished just recently. All of my updates are also posted on my newly inducted Facebook Page, "Books from the Dragon's Mouth" if it's too troublesome to keep coming back. Happy Reading!))

Fangirl

I don't even need to explain myself for where I've been for the last almost three months. Let's just say that my interest in reading dropped substantially for a while and I'm working my way back into it. It's going to be slow and I don't even know how long it'll be until my next review, so let's just be happy with what we've got here.

This book is kind of an insight into the fangirl/boy subculture that is seen as a horrible thing in the media. It's actually more common than you think. Look around you and I promise that you'll find them everywhere... (Slowly steps backwards into the darkness.) Though I can tell you from experience that most of them are nice! Usually shy and introverted, but once you get them talking, they won't stop! I mean it, they don't stop.

The cover-

Cath thought college would be easy. She thought that her twin sister would be beside her the whole time and everything would go as planned. Well, she was in for a surprise. Wren decided to stay in another dorm to leave Cath with an opinionated, headstrong junior named Reagan.

Cath believes that their friendship could actually work until she gets to know Reagan's funny and always smiling boyfriend Levi. Cath finds that she actually hangs out more with Levi than she does with Reagan as Levi's smiles and cheeriness charms its way into her heart and eventually becomes romance.

Cath struggles to keep the balance between her fanfictions and her schoolwork, slowly feeling saddened that Wren has decided to leave her completely in favor of a wilder and more exciting life. Cath finally understands that no matter what happens, in the end she just has to Carry On.

My thoughts-

When I read this book, I felt like there was finally a book written by an understanding adult who completely gets it. They get that fangirls exist and that they aren't all following the crowd. Some of them actually love what they do and do it because they love it, not because it's trendy. No, it's not because they're part of a cult or something. It's not a cult, but a way to make new friends who have the same interests as you.

Can I just say that when I read this, I was still a lot depressed from the ending of Tamar, so I didn't really enjoy the book as much in the beginning. I actually just held back my tears, put the book aside and picked up this one. Even though it's a funny slice of life romantic comedy I wasn't feeling better. So I put the book aside for several days and came back to it when I had gotten over my grief period. 

Otherwise, this book is a really funny romantic comedy that combines coming of age and the morality of growing out of things. It's a really good read for adults and teens alike!

Age Rating- 14+

The characters often express their ideas in very explicit ways, swearing frequently and hinting at things that might be inappropriate for younger readers. That was my only turn off as far as the characters go. Cath doesn't swear at all, but really only Wren and Reagan are the danger zones. Specifically Reagan. 

The other main issue is the fact that when the book gets more serious, (about halfway through) characters start to very directly discuss their intimate experiences. Once Cath actually starts to consider that she has feelings for Levi, she confronts Reagan about it who tells her how close they once were before they realized that they were better off as friends than partners. The romance content is pretty tame for a book with characters of this age. 

((Please check out this book! It's one of the better romantic comedies out there that I actually enjoyed. And with the pace I'm going at, the next review should be out in about a week. I'm actually not going to procrastinate this time! I promise!))

Tamar

I apologize greatly for not being active on writing more reviews, but I went to New York City for a few days (and where I live, it's about 3 hours away so I got a ton of reading done.) and our computer unexpectedly broke and I hate typing on my phone. So I was waiting (and reading) until our computer would be fixed. So I have a backlist and a lot of reviews to type.
You NEED to read this one. It's a Carnegie Medal winner! I'm kind of out of touch with which ones win every year, but I do know from experience that they are always the best. I hope that one day I write a book that gets the Carnegie Medal. It'd be my dream come true.


The cover-

 

Tamar is a spy for the British army sent to the Netherlands on a top secret mission. All throughout the Netherlands, there have been small cells of rebels sabotaging Nazi camps, known today as the Dutch Resistance. They are scattered and "lack the one thing that makes them a considerable threat... unity." (I didn't quote from the book, I quoted from a television series that is also about rebellion, but in a fictional world. Star Wars Rebels if you must know.)

Tamar and his friend Dart have the mission to unite as many of the cells together as they can before the Germans suspect something is wrong. Their base is at the home of the beautiful Marijke who is Tamar's lover. She sheltered him on a previous mission to the Netherlands, so she could be trusted. Tamar naturally stays with her, but Dart is sent to an asylum where he has to pose as the apprentice of a doctor.

Everyone is tense with the war going on and the fact that both men are on secret missions doesn't make them feel any better. Tamar is having no luck with unifying the resistance cells and winter is slowly creeping up on the small farmhouse and its inhabitants. Paranoia is settling and both Tamar and Dart are going insane. The Nazis are onto them after a skirmish that ended up killing two German soldiers. 

A former ally has suddenly become an enemy when Dart decides to shelter him in the asylum to keep him out of the eye of the Nazis and even Tamar. Dart is faced with a difficult decision and he doesn't know whether to protect Tamar and the rest of his new friends in Holland or watch them all die at the salvation of his own life. Everything seems to be in a haze as no one knows who to trust and who is going to be by their side for the final battle.

Tamar is also the name of a girl living fifty years later in Great Britain. One night her grandfather suddenly commits suicide and leaves her a box filled with various diaries and passports and identity papers. She takes it upon herself to find out the meaning of all this and finally understand her namesake. With her cousin Johannes (Yoyo) she decides to take a roadtrip and understand what her grandfather was never able to tell her.

My thoughts-

It's an intense book that makes you feel all sorts of emotions! There's mystery in the beginning, a little bit of festivity and slight happiness in the middle and utter depression and anguish at the end. I love the way the two stories are paired together. They seem to wind around each other, making sense and then suddenly pulling away in opposite directions. The clues had been hidden around both main characters but they couldn't make sense of them until the end of the book.

Just now while writing this review I put my earbuds in my ears to listen to some music. The first song that came up was Hero by Skillet and as I was thinking about the lyrics, I realized that it describes the meaning of this book very well. I advise you all to listen to it partially because it's a good song anyways and also after you have read the book because it all just seems to come together. It describes the utter helplessness of being caught in a war and just fulfilling your service so you don't need to see any more of the pain.

Currently my mother is reading this and her first comment to me was "Do you seriously like intense war books? That does not seem like you." I can understand her surprise because I am a person who prefers light books and some darker ones, but none that come close to the intensity of this one. Yes, I enjoyed it. After our study of World War I, World War II and even also the Korean and Vietnam wars at school, I've found a new liking for wartime literature. I know I will never go through the same things these people went through in their struggles to make the world a better place, but I like to hear it from another person's voice.

The only thing I will tell about the ending of this book is that it makes you feel like lead. I got a headache and put the book aside as soon as I finished it. It's kind of like a feeling where you know the world is going to end but you can't do anything about it. You just sit there and let death come to you. I have never felt like this towards any book. Usually I'm apathetic and move on to the next book but I wasn't able to read for several days after this. I was secretly mourning for the loss of the main characters who had died and I had come to love.

Fahrenheit 451- The Temperature At Which Paper Burns

I have returned to the all too familiar realm of science fiction which I love dearly but cannot write for some reason. This time with a classic that I think lovers of apocalyptic stories will enjoy. Ray Bradbury was a well-known science fiction author from the 1950's who has written many stories about the future of the human race. Either from alien attacks or self-extermination, he has many ideas about the future and how we will be able to cope with our changing environments.
This is one of his rather well-known novels that I had been dying to read for a long time based off a suggestion from a good friend. She also steered me into requesting Animal Farm by George Orwell, another classic science fiction novel which should arrive within the next few days.

The cover-

In the dystopian world of Guy Montag, firemen do not fight fires, rather start them. The firemen in this world burn books. Why? Because books are dangerous and education is forbidden. People sit in their family rooms all day long watching television and being with their fake families.
Montag is a fireman. Every day he gets up, burns books and comes home. Not once did he question the logic of this in the many years he has been in that occupation. After all, no one ever goes against the orders of Captain Beatty. As long as Montag gets his salary, he is happy with whatever he does.
Only when he meets Clarisse, the girl who moves into the house next to him does he realize that books do have value and that humans need to preserve their history in order to advance their species.
When Clarisse is taken away to a mental institution, Montag starts secretly hoarding books and eventually becoming a fugitive to show people that books aren't nearly as evil as they are said to be and that censorship is not the way to a successful society.

My thoughts-

It's a very thoughtful story that really does tell the truth. With our government becoming more and more protective of who sees what, it may not be long until a world like this happens. Books tell so much more than just stories. They tell life lessons and give education, sometimes on subjects that we never want to say out loud. I feel that even though I am taking a formal education to get a good life later on, but most of my (in)formal education has been through books. I learned a lot more through books than I ever did in the classroom.
I believe that Guy Montag's story is one to bring the world back to what it used to be. Bring humans back together and help them live the way they used to. His cause was a noble one. It was a search to show people the truth. Even if they couldn't see it, he is happy that he did all he could.
This is one of those books that when you finish it, you just feel heavy and broken. It's a terrible feeling but only once in a while do I find books that make me feel like this.

((More library books to read! I also bought all of the book versions of the Star Wars episodes so I can't wait to read those once I finish all of my pending library books... Happy Reading everyone!))

The Tyrant's Daughter

This is a rather interesting historical fiction book that I came to like recently. Because of my exams screwing up my schedule and my laziness in general, I read this book a lot more slowly than other ones. In some ways that helped and in certain ways it didn't.
I think it is an interesting idea to write a story about the issues going on in the world today, rather than about something that happened a hundred years ago. I feel that it made this book seem a lot more real because we have experience and knowledge about these events and they are in our recent history. It could be related to by many people and it showed how hard things are in places of unrest.

The cover-

Laila grew up believing she was a princess. Her father was a king, her mother a queen and her brother a prince. And that was how it seemed until the day her father was shot and killed in a riot and her family was forced to flee their country and hide in the United States where they could stay until it was safe to return.
Watching her family in this unfamiliar situation, Laila is horrified by the sudden changes her mother and younger brother go through. Their mother starts working for a shady man who promises that they can help her and has cast off all ties to her life back in the Middle East. The only thing that Laila can do is let go too and make the best of their unfortunate situation. But not if there is something for her to learn out of all of this and make sense of the lies that she had been fed for so long.

My thoughts-

As I was reading this book, I was constantly thinking about the types of stories I have heard on the news regarding the issues in the Middle East. This book is kind of a deeper insight into the things that we hear about and about what is actually going on.
I really found it interesting the way the book was opened. It kind of began the way an old fairy tale would. Laila's father was a king. As was his father and his father and his father. Her mother was a queen. Her brother was a prince and when their father died, he would assume the throne. And this made her a princess. But her life was far from a fairytale. It was a nightmare.
This book has a very dark and serious feeling to it, but there was some comedy to give a break from constantly reading about the horrible things that Laila's family was going through, especially their mother. That was the job of Ian, a reporter for the school newspaper who has a habit of following Laila around and bothering her. I will give away a spoiler that she does fall in love with him, but it is a little limited.
The way Laila acts around him constantly makes me think of fanfictions that I've read for various series where the female love interest just cannot get their act together because they're so confused about what they feel for the male character. That's basically what Laila goes through. One minute she can't let go of Ian and the next she's running away from him every time he approaches her. She knows she wants to love him, but there are certain things that she has to sort out first.
There could've been a possible love triangle with this boy named Amir who is from Laila's home country, but never met her until she came to the United States. She meets him because he lives with the man that her mother is working for. He makes her understand about the truth of her father's regime. He is a man who ruled many others through fear and threats. In fact, in the middle of the school day, Amir's school was bombed. Many of his friends died that day and his sister suffered horrible aftereffects of the poison gas and being stuck in the ruins for so long.
I originally wanted there to be a sort of love triangle between Laila, Ian and Amir, but once I got to the halfway point of the book where it started to make sense why Laila was so drawn to Amir, I realized that it was not a good idea. This book is not a love book to begin with. It is politics from the eyes of a teenager. Laila needed Amir to give her the answers to the questions she had never asked anyone and tell her everything that was hidden from her when she was in her home country. After all, his cold and unforgiving nature will not allow him to love anyone, at least the way the story goes.
This book was a real eye opener for me and I think I now have a much better understanding of the things going on in the Middle East after reading this book. I really do hope that there is a sequel to this book where everything is settled and Laila can go back to her home country. But then again one of the things that Laila repeats over and over throughout the course of the book is that life is not a fairy tale. There is no magical spell that can suddenly make everything better. Happily ever after does not exist in the real world and there is no way to make it exist.

((This review has been pending since the end of June. I for some reason just had no energy to do it until today. I recently bought a book that I am very excited to read! I love big cats, tigers in particular, so I decided to read The Adventures of Jim Corbett- Man Eating Tigers of Kumaon. Jim Corbett was a British hunter who spent many years in India and tells his experiences with tigers. Looks like my (second) non-fiction review! Happy Reading!))

Silver

Before I begin with the craziness of this new review, I would like to thank an author friend for promoting my blog on her Facebook page. Because of my review on Weedflower and now this, I feel more motivated to write reviews and keep it coming all throughout the summer because hopefully people will see my passion for books and that I'm not doing it all for nothing.
This book was my diving back into the realm of science fiction and enjoying what I used to read a whole crazy lot of. It kept reminding me of the small parts that I saw of this show called High School of the Dead where these students get attacked by zombies and they have to fend for themselves against the undead while being restricted to their school. But then again, that was a really weird show with a lot of convenient things going on. In short it was cheesy, but the main idea is the same.

The cover-

At Paul's school, everything is normal. It's a normal academy filled with normal boys and girls. But when a mysterious silver beetle is found and it bites a kid, a dangerous infection spreads through the school and turns students into cyborgs. Their only intent is to kill and turn the refugees into infected humans.
A lockdown is put into place, but the cyborgs keep adapting to every wall they put up and tear through boarded up windows and closed doors. Their only weakness is bright light which paralyzes them and makes them stop moving for a few minutes before they continue their advance.
Paul and some of the other kids at the academy are the only ones left, surviving off of luck and determination that they will make it through the weekend and escape the school once the faculty comes back. There's only one problem. Can the others accept one another and throw away the past to secure that they will be able to live until the next day?

My thoughts-

This book really needed an ending. Like a good, satisfying ending. I was talking with one of my friends who has also read this book and she also agreed with me that the book needed a solid ending. But then again, the idea was such that the kids escaped the school and that was the end. I feel that the power of the infection should have been brought down a little bit so that there was actually a hope of fighting the infection and taking back the human race. The way the book ends, the escaped students are in a helicopter and that's it.
I think this is a hard idea to write a sequel about. I mean, how could this idea end and have a satisfying sequel? The cyborgs take over the world and the last surviving humans are forced to live underground? I wouldn't like that for a book, because where's the fun in that? If the cyborgs keep adapting the way they are, they will eventually find the humans living underground and possibly destroy them all too. And then all of humanity will be gone, so there's no more fun left.
I have to point out the way this book didn't really have a super complex story and stuck to the point the majority of the time. There are some books that I don't like because they tend to stray off into random directions and I can't seem to like that. I liked the simplistic concept and how it was developed throughout the course of the whole story. It was good to change up a little bit from the making my brain hurt because the story is so complex and it has like ten more books in the series to come to something that was like a one time pleasing. I'll read it once, think about it for a few days and then forget all about it until my review.
Even though I said so much about it, this book was pretty good. Not one of the best science fiction books I've ever read, but actually pretty decent.

((Onwards to my next review! It's a historical fiction book about problems we hear about every day. The fighting going on in the Middle East and how everything there is in absolute chaos.))

Weedflower

Summer has begun and I have nothing to do! This is one of the many books from my backlist that I need to review. I will make sure to make time to do all of them and get in at least a good twenty more posts to hopefully reach my goal of 60 posts when school starts.
This is a historical fiction book about the Japanese internment camps in World War II. There was mass hysteria following the attacks on Pearl Harbor, so all of the Japanese immigrants and even second generation Japanese in California were rounded up into large internment camps so that the Americans could make sure there were no spies among them. Many hundreds of thousands were put in those camps, but no one was convicted.
This is the tale of a young, innocent girl caught in a time of hysteria without even knowing what was going on around her.

The cover-

Sumiko loves her life on her family's carnation farm. It's the one place she loves more than anywhere else and wishes she could stay there forever, picking carnations to sell in the market. That is, until her family is sent to an internment camp where it will be made sure that they are not spies gathering information for the Japanese military.

At the internment camp, Sumiko has many new experiences, including horrible weather and conditions, not finding enough food to eat and having to find out what to do in the long hours that they wait as they lay captive in the Arizona camp. The experience of her life is the Native American boy Frank who comes to visit her and constantly complains that the camp was built on his tribe's land.

Throughout the months that she lives through the torture, Sumiko realizes what the real situation is all around her and that in times of hardship, it is always best to forget the bad and cherish the good. You may never know when you'll see it again.

My thoughts-

The way that I would sum it up is that Sumiko is an innocent girl caught in the middle of a crisis she did not want to be a part of. She's just an innocent girl caught in the crosshairs of a panicked country. The way her personality goes, she would have enjoyed living her life with her aunt and uncle on their carnation farm for the rest of her life with Takao, Bull, Ichiro and the rest of her family. 

I found it interesting that she was able to manage herself so well even when she had almost nothing. Sumiko found an envelope of seeds and brought them with her to possibly grow if she could find a place cool enough to ensure that they survive. Within a few weeks of going there, she found a man who liked gardening as much as she did at their camp and helped him start a vegetable garden where she also began to plant her special "Sumiko Strain" of stock from the envelope.

My thoughts on her character is that Sumiko is an extremely optimistic girl who likes to keep herself busy, whether playing with friends or tending to her plants. She is also extremely versatile like the plants she grows in the way that she pushed her homesickness to the back of her head and tried to enjoy as much as she could knowing that she was going to be stuck in the internment camp for who knew how long.

I think that a person like Sumiko is how we should all strive to be. She always knows what is right and wants what is best for herself and the ones she loves. Sumiko is also able to adjust to new places and make the best out of them. I think even in her time of hardship, she was able to make the most out of everything around her, knowing that she wasn't really wanted anywhere because of her heritage. I think that it would do all of us good to be like Sumiko a little bit. She is the kind of strong girl I know I would want to be. Just like the carnations she cultivates.

((I have new books to review! I hope to update soon now that the summer has begun and there is no more school! I will catch up on reviews too! Happy Reading!))

Inferno

I have absolutely fallen in love with Dan Brown's style of writing. He tells so many details about a very short time frame that makes you think the story took much longer. Inferno is a story that spans about a day, but it takes so long to explain all of the details needed to get the full meaning out of the text. The plot is so complicated it's often suffocating at times, but you'll love it all the same. I think this is just because I'm barely delving into the realm of adult historical fiction. As I mentioned before, I am very new to this concept of reading adult books and I avoided them because I know how crazy they can get.
After reading Da Vinci Code, I felt that I needed more of this type of writing. I found that I like this style of questioning popular belief and writing a fictional story around it.

The cover-

Our returning hero Robert Langdon has woken up in a Florence hospital with no memory of how he got there and of what he did within the last few days. All he knows is that he has retrograde amnesia and that he suffered a bullet wound to the head. He even has stitches to prove it.
When a woman with spiked hair comes to the hospital and murders one of the doctors, Langdon is rushed out by a woman named Sienna Brooks who says she wants to help him.
This Sienna is not an average doctor. She is a young medical prodigy with an exceptionally high IQ. She was known to have a sort of tumor in her brain, but not the extensive multiplying of unwanted cells, but a multiplying of helpful cells that allowed her intellectual capability to be more than that of the average human.
Though everything is not what it seems when Brooks and Langdon find themselves in a race to stop the most dangerous pathogen known to man from spreading around the world. They find that their allies are no longer their friends and their enemies are not who they think they are as the duo try to find the meaning behind a Dante-fanatic scientist's clues and modified paintings into a world they wish they could never see.

My thoughts-

Once again it was very beautifully written. Each twist and turn was so beautifully calculated that it didn't seem like a desperate author trying to end their book. The story flowed very well and throughout the whole book, the story never strayed off track and kept moving with the same kind of energy throughout.
Honestly, I'm going to talk about he biggest spoiler in this book, so please shut this tab and read the book if you don't want to know. You all should know by now that I have a tendency to talk about huge spoilers. Zobrist's "plague" wasn't really a plague in the end. It was a genetic mutation that would render one third of the population sterile. It's actually a pretty good idea that won't harm the current population in way that spreading an almighty virus would and will never be able to kill off the whole population. It will just reduce it to a fairly manageable number so that the population can be kept in check.
Once I read that part, I was wondering about the morality of this idea. Genetic mutations, no matter how simple, can be disastrous if not constructed properly. In fact Sienna makes a very good analogy to a house of cards which I like a lot. She says that the human genome is like a house of cards. One card placed wrong or taken out and the whole thing will fall down. She's not wrong. I feel that if there is some kind of proof that this actually works, then the whole morality thing would die down. It was never detailed if he tested it on animals or not. How does Zobrist know that this is going to work?
Come to think about that, he is correct about the fact that the next step in evolution for humans is us to take control of the way we evolve. We are technically a little bit in control of how we are evolving. Our habits are influencing (a little) the selection process of what traits we need and what traits can be replaced with something new. Who knows... I get this feeling that one day humans will have giant thumbs and our smallest fingers will be gone and our feet will become purely flat. That is my guess by looking at the lifestyle of the human today.
Now I'm just going to go off on a completely different tangent about how confusing the last quarter of this book was. Honestly, the whole thing with Sienna actually betraying Langdon because she is Zobrist's lover and watched him jump off a building was like being hit in the head by a curveball. And then there's the whole thing about how Langdon actually does not have amnesia and was given a drug that is normally given to people who witness traumatic events so he could forget what he did in Florence. It was definitely not at all a nice feeling to realize that everything that the book has put out there so far is actually inside out and backwards. Way to throw something weird at the reader. Though I had no problem with that. Once I got all the allies and enemies straight, then I was good to read the rest. In fact I stopped reading Inferno around that point and let it go for a few days just so I could get everything straight. And when I did, I understood enough to enjoy the end. I recommend leaving the book for a few days and just processing it before you rush into the end of the story.
Otherwise, this was a very thought provoking book that I find quite interesting in the way of predicting the end of the human race. And yes, unless we stand up to it, the human race is killing itself. (In fact, recently I watched the new movie Tomorrowland and I recommend watching that after reading this book. I could find a lot of similarities between both the movie and the book, even though they focus on two completely different theories of the end of the human race.)

((So, I wanted to continue reading more Dan Brown books, but currently my mother is hogging up The Lost Symbol, so I won't be able to read it for a while. And please do expect reviews to be coming in like lightning because I went to a book fair about a month ago and bought a bunch of books that I think are worth reviewing. I need to make up for the fact that I did not review anything during the month of May and my goal was to double the amount of reviews on this blog by December. So far it's June and I'm not even there yet. Anyways, this was a long, rambling Author's note, so please excuse me. Happy Reading my friends!))

I Am The Messenger

Looks like I get to write another review before the spring break ends! Honestly, now I feel like I did something over the break.

This is another book by Markus Zusak, the author of Book Thief. (Which if you haven't read by now, you should check out because I strongly recommend it. The review is under the July 2014 section of my blog) It's been increasingly popular among people in my school and a friend of mine who reads a lot recently told me to read it. I guess I took her word for it and this is where I ended up.

The cover-

Ed Kennedy is a mediocre guy with a pretty mediocre life. He works as a taxi cab driver by day and plays cards with his friends Audrey, Ritchie and Marv by night. Only when he is caught up with a bank robbery and threatened with a gun does his life suddenly change.

After restraining a bank robber and getting the police, Ed starts to find Aces from a deck of cards in his mailbox. They each have different things written on them. Addresses at first. The addresses and names of people in unfortunate situations who very desperately need a hero.

With each card, Ed finds that he can love himself a bit more and embrace the life that he's got, knowing that he's been doing only good things for people. Each new card makes Ed rethink the relationships he has with the people around him and wonder how he can deepen them.

First with his mother and how she always hated him for being like his no-good-always-drunk father. Not in the way that he's going to end up like an alcoholic, but in the way that they were both pretty mediocre and tried to get out of it. Ed's father ended up with an alcohol addiction and Ed isn't really going anywhere. It really seems like he's going nowhere only because his younger brother is on his way to becoming a lawyer and is finishing up his degree in university when Ed barely graduated high school. Obviously his mother is more proud of his brother than him.

Throughout the book, Ed learns that he shouldn't be happy with his mediocrity and should try to get past it to make his mark on the people he cares about.

My thoughts-

The book was so interesting that I read it all in two nights. Well, I stayed up pretty late on both nights, but it was completely worth it. When I got to one page, I had to see the next because Ed's character was developed so realistically that he seemed like a real live person and that I could care about him. The experiences he has can also be related to. The relationship he has with his younger brother Tommy is pretty close to the relationship I have with my brother. Basically, whatever Ed does, Tommy can do much better. My brother is also younger than me and whatever I do, he can always do it and impress people. It makes me also very angry sometimes that even though I am the older one, he can do a lot of things better than me and show that he's really smart or strong or whatever.

This also plays into his relationship with his mother who favors Tommy a lot more than Ed. She finds Ed as a really lazy kid when Tommy is actually "making something of himself". No, actually Ed isn't lazy. It's just in his nature that he won't do that. And whenever he does things for his mother, she never acknowledges him even though it is him who did it and she didn't have to drag Tommy from his high university. Only when he finds out that she despises him for being like their father does their relationship show signs of hope.Yeah sure. And she doesn't hate her older daughter who got pregnant at seventeen years of age? I'd surely hate my kid for that.

The one backstory out of all of Ed's friends that I found the most touching was Marv's. He had got himself a girlfriend a long time ago and at one point, he had gotten her pregnant. When her very conservative father found out, he suddenly packed up their bags and moved his daughter far away from the city, vowing that she would never see Marv again. So Ed finds where Marv's girlfriend is now living and he pushes Marv to stand up to her father and say that he is taking full responsibility for the child. The father reacts badly and beats Marv, breaking his nose and bloodying his face. When Ed stands up on Marv's behalf, he gets the same reaction, but without the violence.

Some days later, Marv's girlfriend gets in Ed's taxi and asks him to pick up Marv so they can go somewhere together. They end up going to the city park where the child asks Marv to play with her. For once, Marv says he feels like a father. He feels like he didn't actually make the wrong choice and that he, Sharon and his daughter Melinda will all live together like a happy family one day.

All throughout, this book was filled with intense feeling. It was either happiness or crushing sadness or something in between, but at every moment in the book you could feel for the characters. Because a book like this could never become the "epitome of mediocrity". It standrs out amongst the other books I have read of the realistic fiction genre because it features very believable characters who want to do good for the people they love and care about. And it shows that good always prevails in the end. No matter how much sorrow, how much suffering you have to go through, happiness always prevails.

((Next up is Inferno! Right after reading Da Vinci Code, I had to read a book for a school project that I'd been putting off for quite a while because I didn't want to leave Langdon and Sophie halfway and start another book. I guess I'll review that one too. There's no rule that says you can't review a book for a school project. Usually I don't like the books chosen for our English projects, but this one stands out.))

Da Vinci Code

Spring break is coming to a close and I wanted to review something during that time. Just so I don't feel like I did nothing during the whole week off from school. And I basically did nothing all throughout the week. Kind of. Just a lot of reading and writing and a lot less substantial stuff that will actually be seen.
My mother was bothering me to watch the movie adaption of this book. She said it's really good and I said I'd watch it if I ever came across in on television or in a store.
In October, during an event at my brother's school, I decided to check out a used book sale that they were having. There was nothing I recognized. Mostly there were adult books and I'm not really interested in that kind of stuff. I am, but adult romance is different from young adult romance and adult action is different from young adult action. Then I remembered this title and decided to get it because I was recommended it.
So, let's just say that stuff happened and I got really busy and I wasn't able to read this book until about two weeks ago when I started it. And I still have not seen the movie, so if it's good, please tell me.

The cover-

When Professor Robert Langdon is in Paris for a lecture, he is woken up and taken to the Louvre museum one night. His escort says nothing about what's going on and he's forced to wonder why he's being taken there.

Langdon sees the body of the murdered Louvre curator Jacques Sauniere and realizes that he is being interrogated as a prime suspect for the murder. Surely he was going to meet with Sauniere to discuss his upcoming novel about the history of pagan worship and the sacred feminine, but never kill him. However, in a note drawn in invisible ink, Sauniere has written "P.S. Find Robert Langdon" which the authorities are interpreting as a clue that this is the murderer.

Langdon is innocent, but no one wants to believe it. That is, until the brilliant cryptographer Sophie comes in with a possible explanation for this. She helps Langdon break out of the thick security of the Louvre and get on the run to find the clues that will help them find out who murdered Sauniere.

After a few stops which involve using the note to break into a Swiss bank and eventually ending up at the doorstep of a good friend of Langdon's, Robert and Sophie realize that they are not just looking for the murderer, but for the one thing that the Church has hidden from the whole world for centuries. And they have to beat a deranged monk and his "Teacher" to the punchline or else the whole world will be left in chaos.

My thoughts-

The whole book was extremely interesting. I slowed down a little bit halfway through because I wanted to process what was going on before I got to the next part. This book tells religion the way it's really supposed to be told and makes light of the little details that the Church always told us to overlook.
But first, let me make one thing clear. I am not of the Christian faith, so I had little to no knowledge of the things that Langdon was describing. They were still interesting in themselves. The hidden symbolism inside each of the paintings we know made me see them in an altogether different way. In fact, I think if I go to Paris now, I'll see things a whole lot differently than I did two years ago.
And also there's the whole matter of the Holy Grail. This is probably the driving force of the book. Sophie and Langdon are in a race with Silas (their enemy they meet later on in the book when he tries to kill them, but they end up tying and gagging him up) and his "Teacher" to get to the Grail and unlock its true power.
I just wonder how long it took to write this book. And how much research it must have taken in order to get all the facts right. Because if there's even one mistake, the Church has a valid reason to challenge him. But I'm no expert on this, so it was all new information to me. I took in everything with wide eyes,
It also made me see the ways that people will go so far as to torture themselves to please God. Even the pain that Silas always felt wearing is cilice (discipline) belt was too much for me. He once described that once his wounds from the barbs had healed, the belt always made his skin feel raw. Any shift in movement sent blood dripping down his legs. I personally am very squeamish when it comes to torture, pain or even blood in general, so I was really bothered by this.
Really, this book exposes the truth about Christianity to the world through a very interesting fictional adventure. It opened my eyes to the things around me and how the Church has tried to erase their mistakes, but has never been quite able to get rid of the evidence completely.

((I'm off to read a book I need to finish for a school project, but I may write a review on it sometime soon. And I've got Inferno, another of Langdon's adventures now in Florence, Italy. I absolutely can't wait to read it! Since the next two weeks are exam weeks, there won't be much schoolwork to take care of and I can read when I get home every day! I suddenly feel like I am the only person who gets excited for exam weeks. Surely the exams are long and boring, but still, our classes get shortened to twenty minutes and the day seems to go by much faster than usual.))

The Scorpio Races

No updates in a while and I'm sorry because there was much to do with me getting busy and then going to Japan and having to make up school work. ((That was the worst part)) And then I had a bunch of concerts and extra rehearsals and missed a lot more school than I wanted to.
I've been trying to finish this book since before I went to Japan in the beginning of March, but after we came back, I've been sleeping at midnight or later ((It's all been studies. I'm never going on a week long trip in high school!)), so there's always no time to read. ((Because I get super grumpy when I'm tired and sleep deprived.)) But now that things have cleared up a little bit, I feel better and now I was able to finish it.

The cover-

It's almost November and the horses are coming out of the water again. The pull of the sea is stronger than ever and every man who will enter the race can feel it. Control the beast or be eaten by your vessel.
Puck Connolly is your average girl in a not so average place. Ever since her parents died, she and her brothers have been desperately trying to feed themselves, knowing that one day the little money their eldest brother earns will be used up. When Mr. Malvern, a monopolizing businessman brings her the grave news that she and her brothers haven't been able to pay their tax money, Puck takes it on herself to join the Scorpio Races in hopes that she can pay off the owed money. But the only problem is that she is the first girl to ever join a sport that was "made for men". And her mount is a land pony that was originally her mother's.
Sean Kendrick is the head trainer at the Malvern Yard, where he trains the horses that give Mr. Malvern his power and wealth. Every year he has ridden on his water horse, Corr and succeeded in winning the races and the ultimate prize money. But he has grown sick of Malvern and his son's taunts and wants more than anything to leave the yard and be forever with Corr.
Unforeseen circumstances bring Puck and Sean together where they have to fight for what they love and have to give up everything just to get it back. But they have until November. And that's when the races begin and everything changes.

My thoughts-

It's a very interesting plot. I'd never heard of the water horses in legends before. But then again, Maggie Stiefvater has also written Shiver, which was praised for its very unorthodox portrayal of the werewolf love story that has become a fad in young adult literature. This is definitely one of the lesser popular legends that she brought to light in a very intriguing way.
I honestly pictured the races the way we have the World Cup and those kinds of tournaments. Where a few racers would go against each other at a time and then the best would all be compiled into tournament rounds where only two would remain. But this format was the way traditional horse racing is, just a little less controlled because they're riding wild beasts that will eat their jockeys if they feel threatened.
I have to say something about the horrible things that Mutt Malvern did at the end of the book. I hate animal cruelty and what he did was worse than cruelty. He sliced a water horse's legs so that it could never run again. And then he was going to do the same thing to Corr. Thank god Sean got there just in time to stop him. He would've been heartbroken if Corr could never run again. It sent shivers down my back because I am very much against animal cruelty and hate to see examples of it in literature. If I were in that book, I'd have given him a beating so that he could never walk again. Maybe slice his hamstrings or something really painful and cruel like that (cue maniacal laughter). And I'm not even that big into horses. If you do anything horrible to a cat, you're going to die a very slow and painful death at my hands.
One thing I found awfully weird was that throughout the book, there was no sense of what day it was. The book starts in September and ends when the Scorpio Races do, but it wasn't long before it was the day before the race. Because I had this World Cup format in mind and when I realized that the races were all the way at the end, it took a while for it to register in my brain. I thought that there were going to be preliminary races and then the finals would be the actual Scorpio Races. It would've been helpful to know what day it was, or at least what month. There were brief mentions of it, but I found myself losing track of the time there was until the race.

Recommended for ages 12-14
Some disturbing scenes and some violence, although no too graphic. Mentions of animal abuse.

((I'm now reading Da Vinci Code and it's such a good book! I've barely gotten quarter way through it and I'm hooked. Review of it soon when I get the time to write it.))

Hitler's Secret

I missed my original blog’s anniversary last week only because I was feeling extremely lazy and didn’t want to do anything except go on Netflix and watch TV (Which are essentially the same exact thing). I didn’t even want to walk to the computer in the next room except to play minecraft. This is the story of why I did not do a happy anniversary post when I desperately wanted to.

My blog technically has two anniversaries. One for my original blog which was on my other email address that got deleted. And then there’s one in May for my new blog that was created after I did a lot of messing around with my old email address and created a new one.

The cover-

A boy and a girl were hired by the British government for a very special project called Wolfsangel. Their mission, capture the one person that could bring the fall of the Nazi Empire. They don’t know anything about each other. They come from two completely different places, but within Germany. But the question is, why them?

Told to masquerade as brother and sister, the boy and girl are Otto and Leni, traveling children from Salzburg. Their mission is so dangerous it may cost their lives to complete it. And failing results in war between Great Britain and Germany. They have to rescue a girl named Angelika from the convent where she is held prisoner. And escort her to the Swiss border so she can be taken safely back to England by plane.

Both children aren’t so sure about this, but they take the challenge, knowing it will help them save their mother land before it is swallowed up by Hitler’s ideas.

Along the way, Otto and Leni question everything. How real the danger is and how they will complete the mission in the time they are allowed. If the hatred of Jews that Hitler proposed was really necessary. If they can still live a normal life after this. And most of all, who is this Angelika girl and how important this child is to the problems in the world around them.

In this new world, no one can be trusted and some are just to be kept a wary eye on because you never know if they’ll backstab you. With a mission this hard, they are unafraid to kill and will do absolutely anything to make sure that Angelika gets to Switzerland. Even at the cost of becoming fugitives and an enemy to the nation.

My thoughts- (CONTAINS THE MAJOR SPOILER THAT REALLY RUINS THE BOOK SO I SUGGEST NOT TO READ THIS BEFORE YOU READ THE BOOK. REMEMBER THAT I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOU NOT WANTING TO READ THE BOOK BECAUSE YOU KNOW THE MAJOR TRUTH! GOT IT? GOOD. NOW READ IT THREE MORE TIMES SO YOU DON’T BLAME ME!)

It was a very good book. I really admired the way that the whole plot was written. He never lost track of his world and everything was in place. It’s hard to believe that Angelika was Hitler’s daughter.

There is a historical note at the end of the book clarifying that Angelika is indeed a fictional person and there is no evidence that Hitler ever fathered a child. Also Otto and Leni are fictional characters, but there were thousands of displaced children from the countries that suffered most that came to live in Great Britain.

I was really surprised to find out that MacPherson was also a fictional character. He seemed so real and I thought that he was real.

Angelika died at the end of the book when she tried to save Otto. How sad. I really felt bad because I’d come to like her throughout the course of the book. She was an innocent nine year old who didn’t really know much about the world, but was happy enough with what she had. Which was Otto and Leni.

Recommended for ages 12-14
Some violence and historical context.

((There’s a sequel called Hitler’s Angel. I wonder what Otto and Leni’s next adventure is!))

The 5th Wave (The 5th Wave Trilogy Book #1)

As I said in my previous review, I did decide to curl up with a good science fiction book. Which wasn't that bad of an idea.

This is a book that's been coming up a lot in the hands of a lot of people I know. So I decided to check it out and see if it was actually worth it or just a fad that would disappear soon.

Something exciting will be happening two weeks from now! It'll be the first anniversary of this blog. I know that if you go far enough back or on my blogger profile, it'll say member since May 2014. I had to delete my original blog for various reasons, but that one was activated during the February break last year.

The cover-

The first wave was an EMP, knocking out all the electricity and transportation all over the world. Anything that flies or drives all over the world is stuck. Next was the disease. Taking over people's brains and making them zombie-like. Except the worst thing is that you can't tell someone who is infested apart from someone who isn't.
Many say there won't be a fifth wave, but Cassie isn't so sure. She's one of the lucky ones that made it through the four before. Living off her instincts, she's like a wild animal. A wild animal with a promise to fulfill. That she'd save her brother before the evil aliens took him away from her forever.
Everything seems to be going just fine until she was thrust into a close encounter with death when she was shot in the leg by an unknown person.
Suddenly, she wakes up in the home of Evan, a loner who has taken a liking to her. He nurses her back to health and they eventually fall in love. Evan has a dark secret he doesn't want Cassie knowing about. And he will do anything to make sure that she doesn't find anything wrong with him.

Zombie is a child soldier recruited as the last hope against the Outsiders. He can't find anything wrong with his monotonous life as a soldier, not until the mysterious Ringer is put into his group. She plants new ideas in his head about what the society is actually doing to them. That they aren't soldiers. They're slaves to the Outsiders. And that they'll be used to destroy all the remaining humans.

Cassie and Zombie receive a blast from the past and find that there really was hope that the human race could come back. And the fate lies in their hands.

My thoughts-

It's definitely better than I thought it would be. I honestly thought that it would be a boring book about the world ending (don't I just love books about the world ending?), but I was way off. Sadly, I had to return the book before I finished it, but I was at the very end. Maybe one day I'll read the end. ((You know what, I'll ask my friend for her copy and find out.))
I liked that the drama between Cassie and Evan was kept to a minimum. The one joke that I enjoyed was when Cassie realized that Evan liked to watch her sleep (not in a creepy way. Just to make sure she was alright). So she kept her door locked and devised a system for them. One knock if he was standing outside her door and making sure that she was sleeping or two knocks if he wanted to come inside.
There was a lot of dark comedy to break the sad theme of the book. Even though it was dark, it was still much needed comedy. I found myself laughing sarcastically to their sarcastic jokes about life. Though if I was thrown into a post-apocalyptic world like that, I'd feel the exact same way.
It's awfully thought provoking and makes you realize that you never know how much you need something until you lose it.

Recommended for ages 14-16
Violence. Some graphic scenes. Dark humor. Some mature themes and strong language.

((I found out that on January 26, 2016, there will be a movie for the 5th Wave. I can't wait. Actually, I can. From the skull on the cover poster, I know that I'm too big of a coward to watch it.))

Becoming Animal

I myself never really had the gift of understanding nature. I use it for familiarity, but beyond age ten or so, I didn't really bother. This book significantly brought me closer to the great outdoors and closer to finding out, what is it that makes us human? And how are we connected to all the other animals? Why is it that we are so close to and yet so different from all of the life forms around us?
Nor did I like non-fiction that much. It was just a ton of facts and statistics that I wouldn't really need. Or so I thought.
What's in this book can really be applied to everyday life. It's not uncommon to hear a thrush singing in your backyard and wonder if you can ever understand it or think about what makes your pet attracted to you. So it's not really a bunch of boring statistics as you find in a stereotypical non-fiction book.

The cover-

My thoughts-

I think it's got an extreme amount of content (in a good way) and that you really won't understand it unless you are really into this kind of study. You'd have to be extremely passionate about anthropology (like me), sociology or ecology in order to understand the logic behind the complex theories and ideas he presents.
And honestly, the way the content is ordered seems a little off. The chapters on one topic are a bit spaced apart. The parts on materialism were broken up by parts on language. It's an interesting way of ordering chapters, but it got awfully confusing at certain parts.
To anyone who normally doesn't read very intense non fiction books, you'll probably have to sit there with a dictionary. I wrote down the vocabulary words I didn't understand and looked them up whenever I got the chance in order to get the full meaning of the text.
There are a lot of jumps in ideas. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you can just make the logic jumps and understand what he means when he references to something else, you'll be just fine.

What really made me want to read it more was that the author connects bits of the book to events in his own life that are relateable to anyone. There were two such moments that really brought the idea that what he was saying was applicable to anyone.
The first was when he detailed how lonely the house was when his daughter went to Belgium to meet her grandparents. He said that he missed her more than ever because even though it was subtle, everything in the house had her fingerprint on it. Like the house was much more alive when his daughter was there. And that those ten days without her were like agony because the house seemed so dead.
The second moment that really made me think was when he discussed one of his kayaking trips where it was just him and the wilderness. Seeing a bunch of sea lions sitting lazily on a rock, he began to whistle loudly to get their attention. When all eyes were on him, he swayed his hands back and forth in a rhythm. They just stared at him for a while, but soon the sea lions were swaying their heads to the beat of his arms as if they understood that he was just playing with him. Soon the sea lions started to get in the water and follow his kayak because they were curious about him.

Now that I think about it, I had a similar moment of connection with an animal during one of my trips to India. My connection was with a crow as I was getting down from the terrace on the house in the morning. I watched it fight with another crow over an eggshell and was debating whether it was worth or not to swing my legs over the railing on the stairs and climb on an overhang of the roof to see it closer. We just exchanged eye contact, but it regarded me as some sort of friend and flew closer, perching on the neighbor's terrace slightly out of my reach. And for a moment, I thought I could actually connect with it. I actually thought that the fact that I was a human and it was a crow were just inconveniences and that we could become companions. But then it flew away, distracted by something else and I was left alone.

These kinds of memories are priceless things that we can relate to when we see that others have similar experiences. I can definitely think of many more moments like this throughout my life that have inspired me in small ways. They all have made me look myself in the face and say "See that? That was priceless!" Even writing this review, I'm being flooded by memories that I want to write about, but then my conscious mind tells me that I don't want to bore the reader. And okay, I will listen to my conscious mind and shut up soon.

Honestly, you don't need to be a hardcore non-fiction buff in order to pull something out of this. The wording can get a bit complicated at times and some of the links he makes require a little bit of research, but almost everyone can learn something from this. That's why I recommend that you go check it out! My excuse to keep reading non-fiction! Happy Reading!

((Finally, my first non-fiction review. It wasn't too different from any of my other ones, so that's a relief. It came out much better than I thought it would. And if anyone likes this, I have yet to read his other book, Spell of the Sensuous. It covers the language portions of this book in much greater detail. When I do get it, I'll write a review ASAP! Now to read a good science fiction book and cool down from my intense rant mode.))

The Angel Factory

I never do back to back reviews because I usually have something or the other going on that same day or the next day. But I finished my homework early, practiced my instrument and currently have nothing to do. So why not write another review? It's better than many of the other things I would've done.
This book reminds me of a movie I started to watch (but stopped because it was getting too weird and too hard to understand) a week or so ago. It's a drama about an alien coming to Earth from outer space to observe humans. He finds it very hard to get accustomed to his new life of being human because it's so different from his regular life. But it is his job to report back to his planet whether this race of beings is worth becoming friends with or not. And his observations are so much like what a child would think that everyone thinks that he's insane. That's immediately what I thought of while reading this.

The cover-

Thomas Wisdom is one of the normal kids. He gets good grades at school, is pretty popular and has a loving and supportive family. What could ever go wrong with his life?

When he and his best friend Gip find a suspicious looking file on Thomas' father's computer and send it away to their deranged math teacher to decode, Thomas learns about things that he would never have known any other way.

He's actually an adopted son and his mother is still alive. This sends him out on a quest to find her and understand who he really is.

But at home, things are getting tense. When Thomas follows his parents to a strange building to see where they work, he gets thrown the weirdest curveball ever. His parents and many others in his community are "Angels", humanoid robots designed to help keep humanity on the path to peace and justice for all. They adopted him because it was their duty to acquire a human child and teach him how to be a good person.

Now the choice has come to Thomas. Should he play along with the Project like a good boy or rebel and get the life he wanted?

My thoughts-

This book did a very good job of actually making me like the unexpected plot twist. Usually I've had problems with books that throw the weird plot twist in. That's just because it makes a lot less sense once you and the main character are caught up with everything. 

Once Thomas found out where his mother was and that he was adopted, it was only natural that he'd try to find her. And also, he wasn't sure whether to believe that his "parents" were aliens or not. It took him half of the book to make up his mind on whether he would follow Gip and become his true self or follow the Project and help the weird aliens in making sure that no more humans fight.

What I found weird was that there was no clear cut ending. It just ended with Thomas seeing Gip deactivate himself (because he actually was an angel used as the demon on his shoulder) and feeling depressed because he lost his best friend. And then Thomas just moved on. The End.

He also didn't really make a clear cut decision on whether he was going to join the Project or not. He kind of wavered in both directions. For a time he said he'd join it and then later he said that he was never going to join it even if they forced him to.

But the story was very interesting and Thomas was an incredibly likeable  main character because we've all felt like he has. That the grass is always greener on the other side when we just ignore all the things that we have good that we take for granted.

((Next up will be my first ever non-fiction review! I've never done it before, so don't blame me if the style is bad and a little confusing. But I'm taking new strides and that's awesome! Happy Reading!))

Partials (Partials Sequence Book #1)

It's finally here! The New Year has begun! I guess this is my first review of the new year then! As I said in the previous one, I'll be updating a lot more frequently so you guys don't think I went off and hibernated for the winter. Although I wish I could because I don't want to go to school. Just me and my books forever and ever.
As you all now know about me, I somehow read a lot of books about the world ending. I don't know why. It just happens. Because of my now best friend introducing me to Ender's Game and the rest of that series, I began to love science fiction with a crazy passion.
And that's how I got here, reviewing a lot of science fiction stuff just because I like the themes in it and the recurring problems and solutions.

The cover-

During the Isolation Wars, a company called ParaGen provided both sides with the ultimate weapon called the Partials. They were virtually indestructible humanoid robots that only do their master's bidding. They could be outfitted with any human weapon and learn to use it in seconds. Give it a gun and enough bullets and a team of them could kill everyone in a whole city.
But as a side effect of being exposed to them, the Partials supposedly released a deadly virus called RM. It mostly affects newborn babies, taking over their bodies and killing them within days of birth. So the Senate passed the Hope Act. A law where any woman over the age of twenty and still in her child-bearing years had to become pregnant as frequently as possible. And the age limit has slowly been dropping. All in hope that one day, a child will be born immune to RM.

Kira is an apprentice to a doctor at her settlement's only hospital. She's sick and tired of just watching little babies die because they can't handle the disease. There are books and books filled with the names of babies that all have the same outcome. They die between the first day to first week. It's like they're all going nowhere in the battle against RM.
Kira has this very dangerously crazy idea that the Partials are the only hope against RM. Maybe there's something in them that can help in finding a cure. She wants to catch a Partial so she can study it and if not find the cure, learn something new about how to deal with this epidemic.
So she chooses the finest and most trustworthy team- her adopted sister Xochi and her best friend Marcus to come with her to Manhattan Island to capture a Partial and bring it back to Long Island to study.

But there is a force that has been halting their journey and it's not even on the side of the Partials.
There have been the systematic destruction of water towers, power plants and other vital resources that can only be attributed to a mysterious organization called the Voice. They want to scare the settlements into believing that the Partials aren't to blame for RM. And they couldn't be more correct.

When Kira, Xochi and Marcus bring back a live Partial, within a few days he begins to tell Kira that his species is dying too. Partials were programmed sterile, so they can't reproduce. And they were each given an expiration date. Each Partial was to live for exactly twenty years after its birth. This means that the ones programmed at the beginning of the war have already died and the others have probably five or less years to live. This makes her even more determined to find out what is the connection between RM, the Partials and humans. Whatever RM is, it's killing everything.

But once the Senate finds out that she is housing a Partial in the hospital, they give her a hard choice. Either they kill the Partial and she destroys her research or the Partial is kept in custody and they return to the way things used to be. Neither option seems particularly nice, so Kira breaks the rules and goes at it her own way.

Movie Rating- PG-13 for violence, brief bouts of strong language, some disturbing scenes

My thoughts-

The layout is very interesting. I couldn't stop reading it because this is the kind of thing I have thought about time and again. "What would humanity do if faced with extinction?" The Hope Act seems like a very logical choice, but I also would've gone about it Kira's way. Even though Samm (the Partial) would've killed them right away, he was fortunately understanding enough to help her keep both species alive.
It also shows the pros and cons of creating these kinds of super weapons. On one side, it may help win the war, but with something like RM, it could also jeopardize the entire human race.
I had gotten this book for a school thing and within the first night, I had read three quarters of the way through it. Just because the concept was so interesting.
I'm going to try and break away from this particular idea now, just because I want to expose myself to new things and not get hung up on only one idea. And I think I should have left this statement to my next review which is about a book that has a similar idea but a very different approach. And the funny thing is that I didn't even know about it when I picked up the book. I guess our minds always look for familiar things when selecting new books.

((There are two more books in the series. Ruins and Fragments.  There is also a parallel novel called Isolation which I would also like to read.))