Book Review: When Dragonwoofs Sleep and the Fading Creeps

                                                                                   BOOK INFORMATION:                                                                  

A normal eighth-grader by day, thirteen-year-old Ben awakens one night in a fantastical dream world where snow burns, the sun disappears and reappears without warning, and magic is addictive.

But the mysterious realm of Meridia is disappearing, eaten by a phenomena called the Fading. Joined by Avery, Marcus, and three dog-like dragonwoofs, Ben journeys across monster-infested oceans and sun-scorched mountains to retrieve the sphinx's head, the key to saving the world and every astonishing creature that inhabits it.

But not everyone wants them to succeed. Soon, they find themselves pursued by the Sovereign and his generals, whose armies will stop at nothing to perpetuate the Fading and its consumption of the land. 

                                                                        MY THOUGHTS ON THE BOOK                                                              

Where Dragonwoofs Sleep and the Fading Creeps is a novel unlike I have ever read before. It was the gripping story of Ben who is 13 years old. He is such an adorable character. He awakes one day in a forest with a broken watch in his hand. This forest isn't just any book, it is magical. The forest is red, the snow in the forest is warm, and a mysterious girl believes he is an assains. This book has some interesting characters, a boy named Marcus who I enjoyed to read about. It also has something novel, translucent elves, I had never heard that one before. There are also fairies. I mean what more could you want in a book.

The story alternates between two states.  One the dream world with the forest, and the reality of Ben an Marcus as school kids. There are so many ups and downs that happen to him during his time at school. I found that very interesting as a concept.

This book was strange and wonderful at the same time. It is well written, and a clean read. It is targeted to young adult but parts of it felt a bit middle grade. I felt the pacing was great until the end. I found the last few to be long and drawn out.

If I say anymore it will ruin it for you. This a really fun mysterious book that you really should check out. 

Book Review: Primordial Threat

                                                                                   BOOK INFORMATION:                                                                  

The year is 2066 and the world is oblivious to the threat it faces.

The fate of humanity lies on the shoulders of Burt Radcliffe, the new head of NASA's Near Earth Object program.

He's been rushing the completion of DefenseNet, a ring of satellites that are both part of an early-warning system as well as the means to eliminate incoming threats.

Yet Burt knows that despite the world's best efforts, nothing can be done about the alert he's just received.

Coming out of deep space is a danger that's been approaching since the dawn of time. A black hole. An unstoppable threat that promises death for all in its wake. 

Dave Holmes was a modern-day Einstein. As the original architect of DefenseNet, he'd had visions of this Primordial Threat before he disappeared, yet he'd left behind no details on how the problem might be solved.

Can Holmes be found, and if so, will his solution even work?

The world has less than a year to find out.

                                                                        MY THOUGHTS ON THE BOOK                                                              

I found Primordial Threat to be a wonderful book that was rather entertaining to read. This is a great story that revolves around the possibility that a black hole has entered our solar system and is on a collision course with the Earth and the Sun. This would be an extinction event that seems inevitable until our protagonist comes up with a clever solution. Will it be too late? Will humanity survive? These are all questions I asked while reading this book. This book is such a page-turner. I could barely put it down to complete my homework. 

The main characters in this novel are so interesting. They are enjoyable and have an extreme dimension to them that you don't see very often. I really appreciated them. They added so much depth to the storyline. This really made the book for me. I felt at the end as I knew the characters personally and they weren't just living on the page. 

The story and plot were just fantastic. There wasn't a ton of plot holes and the story had a great consistency. The book has a great conclusion that answers your questions but still has the opening for a sequel which I would really enjoy to read. 

All in all, I can't wait to read more by this author. I found it to be a great accessible science fiction novel. 

Book Review: The 18th Shadow (boxset)

                                                                                   BOOK INFORMATION:                                                                  

The Graphene Prairie - 2082. The North American Union comprises all of Mexico, Canada and the antique United States. 93% of citizens live with a nano computer consensually embedded in their skull. Alcohol is banned, cannabis is mainstream. Holograms fill our eyes, drones float above the city hovstreets and the Office of the Architect watches everything and everyone. Everyone, that is, except for a particular group of shiners, hand-picked outlaws protected by canine war cyborgs and a charismatic and mysterious telepath named Daxane Julius Abner. Mr. Abner has a purpose. That purpose is freedom. He and his shiners make America's black market vodka. And they are the only heroes left.

Tara Dean had a gift. She used it to escape. The vile memory of the behavioral modification hospital was only fifteen kilometers behind her as the EMP projectile detonated and her stolen 2079 Mustang flipped off the hovroad floating 199 kph. Halfway through the first mid-air rotation, charges exploded along crumple junctions in the silver hovcar’s roof and the polyaluminum cabin blew free. Ejected into the sky, away from the disintegrating Ford, Tara Dean's unconscious body was enveloped in an emergency collision sphere. Clear of the wreckage, her shrouded form bounced into a ditch and was immediately surrounded by the pack of waiting Coyotes. The animals began to savage the sphere's elastiframe fabric with their dulled teeth. They had come for a reason. These were the Coyotes of cyborg legend, the vanished products of Darkpool Laboratories, drawn at long last from the darkness by the unique scent of her blood. Welcome to the Dawn of the Courtezan.

William Angevine was a quiet man, some would say a hard man. He was a hunter, born for this life. As the THOR class incursion cyborg stepped from the shadows cast by the vodka still's fractionating columns, the air in the warehouse chilled. He saw the massive creature's blue vidorbs first, then it moved further into the light. The cranial fuselage was aerodynamic, smooth, based on the skull structure of a dire wolf. The skull and chassis itself were made of reinforced, unpolished titanalum the color of slate. The beast was designed to inspire terror on a battlefield. Yet William Angevine felt no terror. A human tether, he alone could hear the cyborg's thoughts. They called to him, like Voices in the Stream.

October 16, 2082. On this day in history, The War of the Dolphin began. Joan, a Maui Hector's dolphin, floated to the surface of the aquarium and placed her head between the electroencephalogram terminals, aligning her consciousness with a quantum supercomputer as she pushed terabytes of dark code across the holostream, searching for the Israeli. The fusion core brightened momentarily from the power draw as contact was made. “It begins today,” the dolphin said. The Israeli's voice responded slowly, deep and resonant, its inhuman timbre filling the aquarium chamber, “Are you afraid to die, dolphin?” “No,” replied Joan flatly. “There is no death. You of all should know this. In the end, there is only Absorption.”

                                                                        MY THOUGHTS ON THE BOOK                                                              

Lately, I have been literally obsessed with science fiction, so when I got the opportunity to check out this book set I was very exciting. I have been reading a ton of classic sci-fi, my favorite right now is Arthur C. Clarke. While this was not nearly that good it was still rather great. 

When looking for a sci-fi novel,  I was looking for something about a dystopian world and this was just the series I needed. I loved the concept of The North American Union.I also loved the description, "That 93% of citizens live with a nanocomputer consensually embedded in their skull. Alcohol is banned, cannabis is mainstream. Holograms fill our eyes, drones float above the city hovstreets and the Office of the Architect watches everything and everyone.". While this isn't a new concept by any means it was done in a rather unique way in this novel. 

The writing was rather excellent in this series. I enjoyed the writing because it seemed like something I could relate to. I was charming and almost endearing to read. I loved almost all the characters in this book. I loved the world that was shaped in the pages of this book. While the books were at times rather predictable the story also kept you on your toes. 

My main issue and the reason this series doesn't get a five star from me is that it jumps around so much. I left the beginning of the first book was rather long, took a while to get interesting and then kept flipping around in a way that was confusing to follow at times. 

Book Review: The Hate List ( Spoilers)

                                                                                   BOOK INFORMATION:                                                                  

Title: Hate List

Author: Jennifer Brown

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Source: Purchased via Amazon

Publisher Date: September 1st 2009

Pages: 405 pages

Rating: 4/5 Ratings

Five months ago, Valerie Leftman's boyfriend, Nick, opened fire on their school cafeteria. Shot trying to stop him, Valerie inadvertently saved the life of a classmate, but was implicated in the shootings because of the list she helped create. A list of people and things she and Nick hated. The list he used to pick his targets.

Now, after a summer of seclusion, Val is forced to confront her guilt as she returns to school to complete her senior year. Haunted by the memory of the boyfriend she still loves and navigating rocky relationships with her family, former friends and the girl whose life she saved, Val must come to grips with the tragedy that took place and her role in it, in order to make amends and move on with her life.

                                                                        MY THOUGHTS ON THE BOOK                                                              

“Just like there's always time for pain, there's always time for healing.”

When I first heard about The Hate List.  I was extremely hesitant to pick it up and review it for my blog. This is such a touchy subject these days in a world where school shootings and mass killings seem to happen daily. Eventually, the media and news coverage moves past the shooting, chases the next big news break. The victims and perpetrators are forgotten in some sense. The people affected and the children don't have that luxury. They still hold those memories,  feelings,, and wounds inflicted on that fateful day.  This book challenges those attitudes and dares to examine why the shooter decided to cause such a tragedy. 

I knew to go into The Hate List that it was going to be extremely rough. I also realized quickly that it was going to be a very impactful book as I began to dive into this story. This novel is gritty and heartbreaking. It kept me on such an emotional rollercoaster ride. With that being said it isn't at all graphic or violent. It deals primarily with life after the shooting. This may be a book about shootings, but it is also just about a normal everyday group of teenagers. There are references to things that some teenagers try during highschool, such as drugs and alcohol. Not to an excess point, but enough to let you know that these were experimenters. These kids were bullied, pushed past their breaking point, and for one he decided to take things into his own hands. His own sense of justice (in his mind) if you will. 

The Hate List isn't about the plot though, it is about the characters and the people they portray. While this book I don't believe is based on any one school, or one shooting, it oddly resonates with a lot of schools today. The bullying, the isolation, and the thoughts these kids had, often affect so many high schoolers today. I was blown away while reading this book at the sheer reality in the words contained in this novel. When the main character describes hating high school and the girl that taunts her so often, I could really relate to that. 

Let's talk about the main characters for a bit. The narrator is named Valerie, she is a typical high school kid. She has a boyfriend named Nick, who ends up being the school shooter. He has past away, and she is forced to pick up the pieces. Nick and Valerie weren't exactly popular in school, they were the outcasts and the underdogs. Valerie made the "hate list", and Nick encouraged it.  It was a list that contained the names of everyone they blamed for their pain and ultimate suffering. Mostly it just had people that bullied them. They wrote on and on about who they hated. Eventually one day Nick decides he is going to put an end to all of this. He decides he is going to shot several people on the "list". The hate inside him seemed to spiral out of control and it came to a terrifying head. It is important to mention that Valerie never intended to have any person on the "hate list" killed.

 She didn't want to kill anyone. Although the morning of the shooting her bully broke her MP3 player. She went to her boyfriend Nick and made an off-hand comment about wanting to "kill" her. While she didn't mean it and it was just a phrase, Nick decided to take action on that comment. This plot point made me ponder several things. I had to put the book down for a bit. I never realized how many times in everyday life we use phrases about death, "killing someone", or violence of any kind. Sure we don't mean it but it really makes you think about the words or perhaps choices that we end up making. When stepping back and examining a novel at this magnitude it really shows you the power your words have on other people. 

I really can not say enough good things about the characters in this book. They are just so real and jump off the page. The dynamics between them were so real and genuine it really allowed me as a reader to immerse myself into the book, feel the uncomfortableness and pain the characters felt. Sometimes the sorrow of moments just poured off the pages of this novel.  

The Hate List had such a profounding emotional impact on me. I rarely cry when reading and I lost track of how many times I cried reading this novel. This needs to be required reading in schools. Kids need to see the potential consequences of their actions. I wasn't expecting so much beauty to come out of such a hard-hitting book. This is where the young adult genre needs to be, it needs to be impactful to read about. This is a hauntingly familiar tale. While it is the story of tragedy, it is also the story of bravery, betrayal, and forgiveness. This book will probably stay with me for the rest of my life. I honestly cannot imagine forgetting such a memorable book.