Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines

This looks good... free excerpt. :)

Ex-Heroes


3/2/2012 - update I finally had a chance to read the excerpt and the 1st 15 pages are good. Add another one to the list... there is just never enough time to read everything...

Quarantine: The Loners by Lex Thomas

Quarantine: The Loners by Lex Thomas is dark yet captivating novel. Thomas locks readers inside a school where kids don’t fight to be popular, they fight to stay alive. Think Lord of the Files with a modern twist.

The novel begins with the first day of school at McKinley High—until a massive explosion devastated the school. Truth be told, the disaster scenario, is a bit unrealistic. And the love triangle between David Thorpe, his brother Will and Lucy is a bit cliché. With that said, I really did enjoy this book. “If there was anything to be said for McKinely high, it was that, with enough time, it revealed the truth about everyone.” I think this quote sums up the book nicely. And the many mini-cliffhangers keep the book fun and interesting.

It is not for the faint of heart. There were more than a few times where I had to put the put down because the death and/or mutilation of a student was just enough graphic and senseless that I needed a break. Thomas does a great job of showing how ordinary students in a desperate situation will do extraordinary things. As one kid puts it “yeah, well, none of us are like we used to be, are we?”

“Lucy had assumed that Violent grew up someplace rough, like an evil orphanage or some war-torn foreign country. Maybe in a jungle. But not Hillcreast. It was one town over from Pale Ridge. It was full of yogurt shops and gold clubs and had wide black roads that were repaved every two years. People from Hillcrest weren’t tough.”

I’ve read other reviews of Quarantine where they complain that the scenario of kids being left in a high school to fend for themselves is unbelievable and somehow hurt the credibility of the book. It’s a Sci-Fi fantasy novel. It’s not important whether or not it can or cannot happen in the ‘real’ world. It’s important that the author can sell this idea in the story, which Lex Thomas does and does it well. I can honestly say that I was so engrossed in what was happening in McKinely High that I forgot about the outside world. While reading the book, never once did I think about the ‘adults’ or the outside world because I was too busy dealing with all the stuff happening inside the high school. Thomas does a great job of selling the idea that “graduation was the most important event in a McKinely student’s life. You’d made it through. You’d earned your freedom.” Yet, I have a feeling that freedom isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be in this universe and we will get to see what the outside world is like in book 2.

Scarlet Book Tour

I had the pleasure of attending an event at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck, NY. :)

Marissa Meyer was there to promote Scarlet, the 2^nd book in the Lunar Chronicals. Jean Feiwel is the Senior Vice President and Publisher of Feiwel and Friends was there as well as Liz Szabla, Editor-in-Chief of Feiwel and Friends.

The conversation was as much about making books as it was about Cinder and Scarlet, the 1^st two books in the Lunar Chronicles. It was an interesting discussion.  Here are a few highlights. Cinder is the 1st book that Meyer finished. She has written about 7 novels that never went anywhere and are not complete. She mentioned how she never gets writers block because she had detailed outlines and really develops the characters and their personalities way before she ever starts writing. She said that she was inspired by an Anime that I never heard of and Firefly. :))))) Yeah, sorry, she said Firefly and I tuned other stuff out. lol Feiwel and Friends got the book proposal on Friday and Monday they made an offer. Meyer mentioned that she got 3 offers in total but that 1 of the offers was to write each book as a standalone, which she said wasn't an option for her. She knew from the start that it was a 4 book series and Mrs. Feiwel mentioned that Meyer's proposal was so well done, with 50 pages or so of Scarlet submitted and a detailed outline of book 3 and 4 that everyone at Feiwel had no doubt she could keep the series going for 4 books.

Mrs. Feiwel recommended Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein.

Liz Szabla recommended The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate.

And Meyers recommended the 2nd book of The Grisha series, Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo.

Oblong Books 

Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

sigh.... .... .... ....

I liked 30% of Beautiful Darkness. I loved the 'Sisters,' they are funny. Crazy, old ladies at their best. I loved the cat. The other 70% was pretty much bad. While reading parts of it, I found myself thinking 'you cannot be so stupid Ethan Wade'. :| Then why did I finish it? Well, I kept hoping that it would turn around, that it would get better. Uh not so much. And then by the end, I realized that I couldn't stop reading it because I wanted to get my money's worth. I mean I bought the book and everything.

The book deals with Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes recovering from the events from the last book. The authors introduce new characters, Olivia "Liv" Durand, who befriends Ethan quickly and the mysterious John Breed, who tries to separate Lena and Ethan. Liv was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise dull plot.

The book ends with questions about where all the characters go from here. No, I won't be purchasing the next book in the series. I might borrow the 3rd book from the library. What can I say, I am a sucker. The story has so much potential to be a good book/series. The authors have created a new and interesting mythology of magic, sadly they just take in a very predictable direction. :/

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Advertising is evil. This is nothing new. And the ads for the movie Beautiful Creatures made me want to check out the book. I mean the cast and the director, etc are amazing in their own right, so yeah how could my interest not be piqued? I was not expecting Hunger Games good but something to keep me entertained while the world was coming to an end outside (aka Blizzard 2013).

Truth be told, I had never heard of Beautiful Creatures until the movie previews. I had no clue what the book or series was about. The book is set in fictional Gatlin, South Carolina. It is told by protagonist Ethan Wate, who lives with his writer father and housekeeper Amma. The story begins on the first day of Ethan’s sophomore year when he wakes up from a recurring dream he has been having about a girl he does not know. Shocker, the girl in his dreams turns out to be the new girl in school, Lena Duchannes, who happens to be the nice of Macon Melchizedek Ravenwood, the town shut-in.

I’m sad to say that the book was, for the most part, predicable. That does not mean I did not enjoy it because I did. I finished it in about a day and half, so I was entertained enough to where I did not put the book down. But I think that I want to prove to myself that I was right about how it would end rather than I MUST know how this ends because I have no clue. However, I did enjoy all the references to classical novels and stories, as well as all the quotes. Dr. Marian Ashcroft, the town’s librarian, is awesome, and how can anyone not like a book where the librarian is awesome? 

Beautiful Creatures has one or two unexpected twists at the end, as well as a few unanswered questions. I’m curious enough to want to find out how Garcia and Stohl move the series along that I’ve already purchased the 2^nd book in the series, Beautiful Darkness.

Buy Local Works

ABA Link - Buy Local Works

The Prey by Andrew Fukuda

The cover of The Prey by Andrew Fukuda has a quote on it. It says "think The Hunger Games with vampires". The Prey is the 2nd book in a 3 book series. Just like in The Hunt, the 1st book, while reading The Prey you can image a boardroom full of book executives and marketing people thinking of a way to write The Hunger Games. I'm sure there was a list of some sorts, like we will need this and that, etc. With that said, Fukuda does such a bloody good job that really you don't care he is 'following' a recipe of sorts. He adds enough of his own ingredients that makes these books worth wild and addictive and fun.

While The Hunt was a bit slow with the set up of this world where vampires are humans and humans are viewed as vile creatures. The Prey quickly picks ups where The Hunt ends and basically never lets you go. Side note, The Hunt end is probably one of the best, never saw THAT coming, cliffhanger. The Prey takes us to another world / community filled with humans and 'free' of the vampires or dusters as they are called. But everything is not what it seems. The Scientist had a plan for Gene, one of the main characters, and Gene struggles to discover this plan in this world and whether or not he can accept it.

A very entertaining book and thus far series. I think the better way to describe the book would be to say The Hunger Games meets The Passage. I don't want to go into too many details of the book because I don't want to spoil all the fun.

The Song of The Quarkbeast by Jasper Fforde

I'm not sure if a YA book can be eloquently written but that's the word that comes to mind when I think of this book. I absolutely LOVED the 1st book in this series, The Last Dragon Slayer, and I could no longer take the wait for the 2nd book to come out in the U.S. So, I ordered it from the U.K.  Best $28 I've spent on a paperback.

Fforde has invented a world that is 100% fantasy and 10000% believable. While both The Last Dragon Slayer and The Song of the Quarkbeast are 'simple' stories they are so eloquently written and so laugh out loud funny, that for me, they have become the standard of which I judge other books by.

The Song of the Quarkbeast picks ups 2 months after the end of The Last Dragon Slayer.  Jennifer Strange is a sixteen-year-old foundling and acting manager of Kazam, the employment agency for sorcerers and soothsayers. For the past two months "it was very much business as usual: hiring out sorcerers to conduct low-level, mundane and very practical magic. You know the sort of thing: plumbing and rewiring, wallpapering and loft conversions." But things are about to change. Magical power is on the rise and the king wants control, for he who controls magic controls everything.