“But all lives are important, all people are important, because everyone is a book.” -Tanith Lee
After our mixed thoughts on the first of the Chaos Walking books, The Knife of Never Letting Go, Mum and I finished our buddy read of the series last month. I wanted to share some quick thoughts with you, though this could easily turn into a ranting review if I had the energy.
Continue reading “Mini(bot) Reviews: The Ask and the Answer & Monsters of Men”
Mira and Murk live in a world where people can drink their shadows and get high. Shadow sipping grants strange powers, but only temporarily – like any drug, it creates addicts who are always after more. Everyone must protect their own shadow, for once yours is stolen you won’t be able to sleep unless you drink the shadows of others. Mira’s left tending to her shadowless mother – she must “hunt” shadows and bring them home for her restless mother. While some inhabit the wilds like Mira and her mother, eking out a living, others have retreated to the protection of domes. Bale was one such person, until he made a mistake that got him kicked out of the relatively safe dome life. When he meets Mira and Murk, a shadow addict, the three of them will set out to try to find a cure for the shadow sickness so many suffer from.
This is a hard book to blurb – it’s unlike any I’ve ever read and if you want to understand what’s going on in the world Carr created, I suggest you just read it!
I’m going to make the assumption that most of you know what Fahrenheit 451 is about – if you don’t, well, the short version is that in this world, firemen cause fires rather than put them out. And what they’re setting on fire are books and the homes of those who dare to own them.
There was a charity book sale at my workplace recently and I nabbed a second copy of Fahrenheit 451 because I liked the cover and figured I’d have a go at annotating. I knew it had been years since I first read it and I recalled being blown away by Bradbury’s skill at predicting the future. I wanted to see if my amazement held up.
I received this book for free from Penguin’s First to Read program in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. All opinions in this post are my own.
From Amazon: The American Southwest has been decimated by drought. Nevada and Arizona skirmish over dwindling shares of the Colorado River, while California watches, deciding if it should just take the whole river all for itself. Into the fray steps Las Vegas water knife Angel Velasquez. Detective, assassin, and spy, Angel “cuts” water for the Southern Nevada Water Authority and its boss, Catherine Case, ensuring that her lush, luxurious arcology developments can bloom in the desert and that anyone who challenges her is left in the gutted-suburban dust. When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in Phoenix, Angel is sent to investigate. There, Angel encounters Lucy Monroe, a hardened journalist, who knows far more about Phoenix’s water secrets than she admits, and Maria Villarosa, a young Texas migrant, who dreams of escaping north to those places where water still falls from the sky. With Phoenix teetering on the verge of collapse and time running out for Angel, Lucy, and Maria, their only hope for survival rests in one another’s hands.
From the back of the book: His wife taken. His people enslaved. Driven by a longing for justice and the memory of lost love, Darrow will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies…even if he must become one of them to do so. For the first time, Red will rise.
From the back of the book: When a man escapes from a biological testing facility, he sets in motion a deadly domino effect, spreading a mutated strain of the flu that will wipe out 99% of humanity within a few weeks. The survivors who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge – Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the nefarious “Dark Man,” who delights in chaos and violence.
Where to I begin? I first read this book back in high school (before I started keeping track of what books I read, so I’m really not sure when it was) and I remember that I really enjoyed it.
Blurb from the back of the book: We live across the thousand dunes with grit in our teeth and sand in our homes. No one will come for us. No one will save us. This is our life, diving for remnants of the old world so that we may build what the wind destroys. No one is looking down on us. Those constellations in the night sky? Those are the backs of the gods we see.
The Kill Order is the prequel to the Maze Runner trilogy and it touches on the aftermath of the sun flares, and the beginning of the virus that became known as The Flare. Mark and Trina survived the deadly flares, but when their small community is attacked, a deadly virus breaks out and now the must survive that while searching for answers.
What I liked:
This book is short and easy to read. Unfortunately, those are the only merits I found.
Considering that I’m really not going to discuss the details of the plot here to avoid spoilers for anyone who hasn’t read the first two books, The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials, I figured I’d just do a mini review. The Death Cure is the finale to the series and starts right up where book two leaves off. As usual, I enjoy Dashner’s cliffhanger chapters, as they help propel me through the book.
This is the second book in the Maze Runner series (my review of book one here). I don’t really want to go into the plot for the sake of avoiding spoilers – but I’ll say that it starts where book one left off and Thomas and his crew are put through further torturous trials and we’re left with another cliffhanger to propel us into book three.
Milliebot Reads 