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!))