Golden Son

February 6, 2017 / / 2 Comments
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Del Ray

Warning: There are some mild spoilers in this, so proceed at your own risk!

Over the past few years, I’ve developed a bad habit as a reader – I skim ahead. I don’t do it all the time, but I do it often enough that I consciously avoided the impulse to skip forward while reading Pierce Brown’s Red Rising. I was really enjoying the book and didn’t want anything to be spoiled!

The sequel, Golden Son, was a different story. While reading that, when I finished a chapter, I thumbed through the next few pages A LOT. Read More

Red Rising

January 30, 2017 / / No Comments
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Del Ray

Warning: There are some mild spoilers in this, so proceed at your own risk!

I follow a number of book-centric accounts on Instagram, many of which seem to be focused on young adult novels, so I’ve seen my fair share of artistic photographs highlighting the books in Pierce Brown’s Red Rising trilogy over the years. I had never really looked into his books though, 1) because I am super partial to Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games series and 2) the last time I read something that was hailed as “the next Hunger Games,” I was sorely disappointed.

Then, in December, shortly after my feeds exploded with excitement over Brown’s cover reveal for his next book (the first in a new Red Rising trilogy), I overheard a couple of coworkers talking about their latest reads. Read More

The Dystopia Project

January 23, 2017 / / No Comments

As just about everyone in the world is aware, the last several months have been a bit strange here in the United States. A billionaire businessman with no government experience is now the leader of the free world. The country’s venerable intelligence agencies have posited that foreign operatives worked to help put him into office. And now, just days after his inauguration, his team – in its ongoing fight with the national media – is arguing that easily disprovable statements aren’t lies but “alternative facts.” Up does certainly seem to be down.  Read More

The 5th Wave (The Book)

January 28, 2016 / / 3 Comments
Penguin

Penguin

Well, in nearly three years of blogging, this is a first: I read a book in preparation for its film adaptation, and now I’m actually afraid to see the movie because I’m not sure it can live up to the original!

For the most part, I’ve always been eager to see a favorite story brought to life on the big screen – hello Hunger Games! – and while I haven’t been a fan of some casting choices (e.g., Helena Bonham-Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter series), I’ve never really regretted seeing anything in theaters. So to feel so hesitant to see the film version of Rick Yancey’s The 5th Wave is a bit weird for me, but I like to think that it’s a credit to Yancey’s writing!  Read More

Afterworlds

January 12, 2015 / / No Comments
Regina Flath

Regina Flath

Several years ago, I devoured Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series. It was around the time that I first became aware of dystopian YA novels, and the premise – civilization destroyed by a bug that eats oil and oil-based products, and enforced plastic surgery as a rite of passage – intrigued me. I loved the books, reading the original three (I’ve never read Extras) in fairly quick succession, and wanted to check out some of Westerfeld’s other work, but – as so often happens with good intentions – got caught up in other things.

A couple of months ago, I noticed Westerfeld’s latest novel, Afterworlds, and decided it was high time I reacquainted myself with him as an author. Like Uglies, the novel’s conceit was interesting as it is essentially a book within a book, with chapters alternating between Darcy Patel, the real-world protagonist, and Lizzie Scofield, the main character in Darcy’s first novel, also titled Afterworlds.  Read More