This is going to be a shorter review than is typical for me, mainly because I don't have much to say about The Humans. I went into it with too high exThis is going to be a shorter review than is typical for me, mainly because I don't have much to say about The Humans. I went into it with too high expectations based on my first read of Matt Haig's work, The Radleys (which I loved), and by the blurbs littering the cover with gushing praise. And I should say that yes, I liked the story. But do I think it is "Wonderfully funny, gripping, and inventive"? No. Would I call it "Hilarious"? No. Would I describe it as "A laugh-and-cry book"? No. (I also wouldn't call it that because ugh, hyphen abuse.) What I would call it is "Somewhat adequate."
Putting it simply, The Humans is a retread of just about every "going native" story I've ever read or seen as a film. It's the same as the many stories of tourists visiting another country and being bewildered by culture shock, only to eventually fall in love with the people (usually first with just one person) and coming to terms with their unusual habits. It's Dances with Wolves, and Avatar, and any other number of examples across multiple genres.
The narrator for this book is an unnamed alien sent to Earth to erase evidence of a mathematical breakthrough that might somehow evolve the human race to the point of space travel. Why? Well because even if the claim is made many times that the whole race feels no emotions, they clearly fear the humans. I'm not even going to argue with their reasoning, because just look at what we've done with the internet and smartphones, and it's clear that we do indeed have a problem with our technology advancing far too fast for us to catch up culturally and socially. So even if it seems illogical that the aliens who feel no emotions should fear humans, I can't fault their desire to keep us constrained to one planet until we've had the chance to mature beyond our territorial pissing contest mentality.
The narrator initially shows up so confused about human customs that he makes himself an online celebrity with a nude walk across the Cambridge campus. Everything humans do is revolting to him, and nothing in the world makes sense. Yet he comes to love his family, and through them, he begins to feel empathy for the whole human race.
And, that's the story, minus some spoilery bits. It's kind of cute, and there were several lines clever enough that I felt the need to read them aloud to hubby. But there were no laugh out loud moments, no tear jerking scenes requiring a trip to the tissue box before I could continue. Even the wittier observations feel like retreads of comments made in Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett novels. So if I were to sum this book up, it's a casserole. The ingredients are all familiar and maybe a bit near their expiration dates, and combined as a whole they make something satisfying. But at the end of the day, a casserole is still just a casserole, and it's not something I would call "extraordinary."
That's why I'm giving The Humans 3 stars. It's a fine light read for fans of sci-fi, even if most of the story wanders the same path of many other tales before it. Just don't go in with expectations as high as mine were and you should have a good time with this. ...more
**spoiler alert** I want to begin this review with two disclaimers and a side comment before getting into the book itself. The first is a warning that**spoiler alert** I want to begin this review with two disclaimers and a side comment before getting into the book itself. The first is a warning that this review will contain spoilers. I don't think it's so much of a big deal because some of what I want to talk about is so garishly signposted early on in the book that within the first few chapters, I set the book down and gave predictions of what was to come to my husband. Nothing I said was wrong, and there were absolutely no surprises or twists to this tale. But if you want to read this without knowing what it's all about, I'd suggest you look elsewhere for impressions because to explain my feelings, I need to dig into the spoilery guts of this book.
The second disclaimer is that even if I talk about the story and its characters in a negative way, I really did enjoy the story. I've spent several nights staying up reading under the spell of "just one more chapter" until fatigue was making the letters go crawling over the pages in a distracting manner. But this isn't a happy story, nor are the characters entirely likeable. The setting is dark, and the conclusion is grim. That doesn't make it a bad story, unless you just need all your fiction to be cheerful with happily ever afters. I don't, but I realize I need to say right at the start, no matter what else I say, this is a good book.
And finally, here's my aside: my first Ishiguro book was The Buried Giant, and I read that because it was supposedly a huge departure from his previous works. Having now read a second story from him, I'm not feeling that complaint. So one is fantasy, and the other is sci-fi. Both are speculative fiction, and both end somewhat grimly. I'd say they both have his signature writing style, even if they take place in vastly different time periods. So if you liked Never Let Me Go, but hated The Buried Giant because it had a dragon in it, I'd say the fault is more with your very narrowly defined comfort zone and not with the writing of an extremely talented author.
With those thoughts out of the way, I can begin my proper review. Never Let Me Go is narrated by Kathy, who within the first few pages makes it clear that she's working as a carer for people whose organs are "donated" for transplants. It didn't take long for me to gather that Kathy's memories of the Hailsham boarding school speak of clones kept away from other people, and almost immediately, this led me to wonder, "How could people afford this level of upbringing for what are in essence portable body parts bags?" There is an answer to that question much later on, and to me it's grimly realistic.
But before we get to that point the story is primarily about Kathy's relationship with two people, Ruth and Tommy. Ruth has the bulk of the story focused on her, and this is because she's a narcissistic sociopath. Kathy, her perpetual victim, is always ready to make excuses for her behavior, but Ruth has no compunctions about lying to make herself seem more special than her fellow classmates. She invents conspiracies and secrets to make herself seem more interesting, and when Kathy grows wise to these and confronts Ruth, she instantly becomes hostile and cuts Kathy down in front of their peers. It's classically abusive behavior, and yet even after Ruth has repeatedly attacked Kathy, Kathy just keeps forgiving her and returning for more abuse. I think this is mainly because Kathy feels like there is no one else for her in this isolated school environment.
As the three characters age, Ruth takes on Tommy as a romantic partner, and she casts him off easily when he gets tired of her games. However, as soon as another classmate suggests that Kathy is the proper successor for Tommy's affections, Ruth asks Kathy to make Tommy come back to her instead. Even later still, when she knows their relationship is a sham, she still has to twist a metaphorical blade to make sure Tommy and Kathy are never a couple. There is literally no point in the tale when she doesn't come across as petty and self-centered.
While this final twist of the emotional blade is enough to send Kathy away for a time, she still ends up volunteering to be a carer for Ruth as she enters service to have her organs harvested. Kathy confesses her misdeeds and suggests that Tommy and Kathy might have a shot at something deeper, something she could never have with him. But by this point it's far too late, and all of Kathy's delusional schemes instead bring heartache and misery instead of closure. It's a short life these clones live, and the time that should have been Tommy and Kathy's to really live, Ruth jealously stole to keep herself the center of attention. But of course they both forgive her, having been her victims for so long that they are incapable of understanding the abuse they suffered.
The end of the book diverts into a tangent that answers some of the most pressing questions I had throughout the book. Hailsham was unique in many ways, and even though the guardians of the boarding home fought tirelessly to gain some sense of recognition for the clones' humanity, the world at large chose to revert back to seeing them as disposable and less than human. This fleeting, "idyllic" life that Kathy and her classmates led is nothing at all like the previous and future generations of clones will have, and the deplorable conditions that clones are raised in are only hinted at as being much, much worse. As I said at the start, I find this view to be grimly realistic, knowing how in our own time many people are willing to dehumanize others to justify their actions. So I can easily imagine what it would be like to be considered only a tool to lengthen someone else's life, an inconvenient truth that people ignore because their own greedy needs come before any moral or ethical considerations.
So the ending leaves me feeling somewhat disquieted and upset even though I know it couldn't have gone any other way. Indeed, the book ends exactly as I predicted it would. These clones are so helplessly entrenched in their circumstances that they never even consider running away or fighting the human machine that waits to carve them up. It's simply what they were made for, and they go to their fates with quiet desperation and little else.
It's a lot to take in and absorb, and it's deeply troubling in a way that I doubt will leave me any time soon. That's why I'm giving Never Let Me Go 5 stars, and I'd recommend it to sci-fi fans looking for something exploring the darker side of our technological advances in medicine....more
By a strange coincidence, I started playing The Wolf Among Us after I began reading Scarlet, the second of the Lunar Chronicles trilogy, so I ended upBy a strange coincidence, I started playing The Wolf Among Us after I began reading Scarlet, the second of the Lunar Chronicles trilogy, so I ended up being entertained by two modernized interpretations of the big bad wolf. In The Wolf Among Us, Red only gets a passing mention, while in Scarlet, she's one of the stars. I think because of that, Scarlet ends up being the stronger of the two interpretations.
Scarlet builds on Cinder, and so chapters bounce between Linh Cinder and the new characters. While Cinder tries to keep ahead of the police and the military with the help of a new ally, Captain Thorne, a space pilot who deserted and stole a gigantic cargo ship, Scarlet Benoit is just starting on her own journey to locate her missing grandmother Michelle, who is also a former military pilot, and who vanishes only a few weeks before the start of the story. Already the police have given up the case, but Scarlet finds a possible lead in a street fighter named Wolf. He agrees to help her, and they set off with several Lunar agents on their tails.
Eventually all these characters meet up, but in between, Scarlet learns several things about Wolf that make it hard to trust him. Despite this, she also feels drawn to him, just as he is drawn to her. This was for me the best part of the story, the conflict and tension between Scarlet and Wolf. Cinder's journey with Captain Thorne is certainly entertaining, but at times their chapters almost feel like padding between Scarlet and Wolf's. I'd reach a point where the narration switched characters and felt frustrated because it was getting away from the good stuff.
If there's any weak points in this book, it's in Emperor Kaito, formerly Prince Kai in the previous book. In the last book, his ascension to the throne was immediately followed by the growth of a backbone, leading him to stand up to Lunar supervillain Queen Levanna twice. But in this book, he mostly wrings his hands and whines "What can I possibly do?" to his advisers. He isn't smart enough to connect the dots to who Cinder really is, or why Levanna wants her, and he's fairly wishy-washy in his few chapters. He comes off as a damsel in distress, and lacks any personality or inner thoughts to make him more than a cardboard cut-out. In a cast full of interesting characters, he's just given a few lines to remind you he's there.
My other complaint is more minor, in that this plot reminds me of The Lord of the Rings. There's an easy, obvious way this whole thing could have been resolved in one book. But instead we're taking the long path because this way the writer can make up a world where Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Rapunzel can all meet and fight Maleficent. It can't be an epic save the world tale unless everyone involved agrees to not bring up the obvious, something that had been mentioned in the first book as common knowledge. I can't elaborate further without spoilers, but it does seem kind of silly to me that Kaito could talk about this very thing in book one, and still not put two and two together in book two. It's even sillier that Cinder didn't just use the common knowledge to her advantage instead of going on this lengthy "road trip".
Anywho, it's not a bad story, and I'm looking forward to reading the third entry, Cress. So I'll give Scarlet 4 stars and recommend it to fans of fairy tales and sci-fi....more
Going into this story, I knew it would be hard to read, and that it would have a heavy impact on me. I knew it would bring back some memories that I pGoing into this story, I knew it would be hard to read, and that it would have a heavy impact on me. I knew it would bring back some memories that I prefer leaving buried. I was never a slave in the conventional sense, but I've dealt with blackmail as a child, and had been forced to do things that continue to haunt me. I've dealt with violence and been told that I deserved it so often that eventually, I even came to believe it myself. I was never a slave, but I know what it means to be forced to act a certain way to keep others happy. Because of that oppressive experience, I knew this would be one of the hardest books I'd try to read.
I was right. Kindred is the story of Dana, a writer living a fairly normal life in California in 1976 before she is pulled under mysterious circumstances to Maryland in the 1800s and rescues a boy drowning in a river. This begins a series of hops back and forth through time, and while time in the "present" barely passes from one hop to the next, Dana spends progressively longer amounts of time living with the boy she saved, Rufus Weylin, and his slave owning father Tom. What makes each of these time traveling episodes dangerous to Dana is, she's black, an educated black talking like white people in a time when such behavior is deadly.
Early on in the book, Dana had confidently told her husband that she had seen violence on TV and knew how to handle herself. I didn't know how to take that, because experience long ago taught me that seeing violence and experiencing it are two very different things. So I wasn't sure if this was false bravado or a mistake in the writing. It's bravado, and as Dana is forced to endure the miserable life of a slave, she fares no better against the Weylins than any black person born in that time had. This is the grim reality of the science fantasy the story is offering. Of course every modern person would say, "If they tried that on me, I'd..." But the truth is, once someone is stuck in the grip of systemic oppression with no hope of escape, what they'd really do is acclimate and struggle to survive. Which is what Dana does, even though she feels repulsed by her acceptance of this reduced way of life.
During another time hop, Dana's white husband Kevin is pulled into the past, but even his presence cannot prevent the abuses that Dana is made to suffer. Worse, he ends up trapped in the past for a great deal of time. When he finally returns to his own time, he is almost as scarred and disillusioned as Dana. His time in the past is only touched on briefly, but he makes the right choice by trying to help free as many slaves as he can before eventually being exposed as a sympathizer.
Even after Kevin is safely returned to his time, Dana is repeatedly called back to Maryland to save Rufus from himself. I think that, like Dana, I had some naive hope that her modern sensibilities could be transferred to Rufus and prevent him from becoming as awful a man as his father Tom. But with each hop in time, Dana meets an older and crueler Rufus, and she suffers more abuse and indignity at his hands. And still, in spite of these crimes, she struggles to forgive him and push him toward reform. When it becomes clear that he cannot and will not get better, and that he is willing to sink even lower in his abuse, Dana is forced to make a decision that finally sends her back to her proper time period for good, though she is both physically and emotionally scarred by the experience.
As I said before, I knew Kindred would be hard to read, but I'm glad I made the effort to get outside my comfort zone, and I would recommend the book to anyone willing to do the same. I give Kindred 5 stars, and I know it's going to stick with me for a very long time....more
I went into Cinder with some misgivings because I'm not really fond of fairy tale reboots. Even so, the blurb intrigued me, and I decided to give it aI went into Cinder with some misgivings because I'm not really fond of fairy tale reboots. Even so, the blurb intrigued me, and I decided to give it a chance. About 25% I had to stop and put down the book because it had hit on two of my bigger triggers. Cinder Linh-mei, being a cyborg, is turned over to the government by her wretched step-mother Adri and is pinned to a table against her will while the scientists experiment on her. I have a huge problem with characters being bound, or of not having any rights. Making a long story short, it all ties back to my crappy childhood, and while I knew the story would move on, I had to take time to decompress.
While I was waiting, I thought about the story up to that point and realized I knew what the ending was already. So I returned to reading and finished the rest of the book. And after that one rough bit, the story played out pretty much exactly like I thought it would. It's not hard to figure out because all the clues are loaded right there in the first quarter, and the rest of the story is really just characters avoiding saying the obvious until the last ten pages. So, that's 25% clues, 70% percent delaying tactics, and 5% "AHA, I knew it!"
I can't say Cinder is a bad story, because it does what it sets out to accomplish pretty well. It presents the familiar story of Cinderella in a future world gripped in the midst of a deadly plague. It adds a subplot about the elf-like queen of the moon, Levana, who is pursuing a marriage to Prince Kaito in order to give her a legitimate rule on Earth. The Lunars are certainly fae-like, being cruel and fickle, and they have the ability to cast glamours and control Earthen people.
Most of the plot centers around Kai pursuing Cinder and asking her to attend the annual ball so he can avoid Levana. But Cinder can't accept because she's a cyborg, and she just knows he'll hate her if he finds out because everyone hates cyborgs. They're a lower class race that have no legal standing in the Commonwealth, and Cinder is just a slave to her step-mother, a mere mechanic who she feels has no right to be thinking about the handsome prince.
Cinder uncovers a plot against Kai and decides to attend the annual ball anyway, leading to a confrontation with Levana, and to a slightly different reenactment of Cinderella losing her shoe on the step in her attempt to flee at midnight. Then comes the big plot twist that's not at all surprising, at least not to me. And then the book is over, which will obviously lead to the next episode in the series, Scarlet.
Even if I saw the end coming very early on, I liked the story, and I'm sure I'll be getting the rest of the series. Each one will be introducing other fairy tale characters into this sci-fi world, and the setting is certainly fleshed out enough to keep me interested. So I give Cinder 4 stars, and I recommend it to fans of sci-fi or fairy tales, or both....more
I Can Transform You is made up of two stories, with the first bearing the same name as the book. I Can Transform You starts out very much like a long I Can Transform You is made up of two stories, with the first bearing the same name as the book. I Can Transform You starts out very much like a long familiar trope of a loose cannon PI brought in to consult on a case involving the murder of his former partner. The trappings of a dystopian sci-fi world do little to change this formula during the journey through a well worn path. A suspect is found with an orgy of evidence to implicate them, and the brass are happy to close the case there. But of course there's something else going on, with people in the upper echelons of society pulling the strings to frame a two-bit felon and offer up a neat tidy package for the evening news.
In maybe 75% of the story, you could find the same idea present in any hard-boiled detective story, and the future setting with its trappings of bioengineering and cybernetic officers might be seen as superfluous. But it's in the final quarter that all those little crumb-clues begin adding up to a bigger conspiracy and lead to an explanation for the changes in the world. Then the pieces of world-building become more important in explaining the stakes of this one seemingly open and closed case.
Mac Peterson's washed out PI is balanced by the tight-laced and cybernetically enhanced Ade Walters, and both play a verbal tug of war teasing out bits of character development from each other. Mac's a rebel without a cause who's too afraid of himself to ever let anyone get close to him. He numbs his insecurities with drugs, alcohol or sex; whatever's available to take the edge off. On the other hand, Ade is a man well aware of his past and his pains associated with it, and he chooses work as his addiction. The law is his refuge from a dysfunctional family, but his loyalties are put to the test by this case in particular.
So we have trappings of a buddy cop movie mixed with a strong dose of dystopia, plus one other trope I can't reveal without spoiling the conclusion. It's hard to sell me on dystopias, but this one works by focusing on the struggles of the main characters to the point where the world building is just window dressing to the real point of the story. There's no definite ending to the story, only the implied ideal of a longer battle in which justice must throw off the strangle-grip hold of bureaucratic laws or risk dooming the entire human race to a death of choking apathy. When it comes to dystopias I do like, I prefer this kind of ending, the uncertainty of victory versus the ridiculous ideal of one person overthrowing an entire system of oppression with a few hollow words and meaningless actions. So yeah, the first story worked for me.
The second, not so much. Pimp My Airship is a steampunk story, and I have yet to read any of these from any author that roused my interest. I can understand the aesthetic appeal of alternate technology for some fans, and the historical appeal for others. But I hold no fascination for either of these things, and so most steampunk flies far, far off my radar.
It doesn't help that I know very little about the three characters beyond their struggle and their plans to attack a prison complex. Despite Deaconess Blues and Knowledge Allah speaking in lofty terms, their plan amounts to little more than a suicide mission that will likely do little to change the balance of power in this alternate world. I get their frustration about oppression and remaining slaves despite a supposed emancipation, but these two chastise Sleepy Nixon for being too simplistic, only to turn around and launch a plan that's never been shown to work in our own history of class struggles. Ultimately, all three are doomed, and Sleepy's fate is just delayed to a lingering death through imprisonment.
I will give the story points for presenting a stemapunk world from the viewpoint of the colonized and oppressed, but it is still a steampunk story, and those trappings end up outshining the characters for me.
I have to give two separate scores rather than grade this as a whole. So the score for I Can Transform You is 4 stars, while Pimp My Airship gets 3 stars. I think both are worth reader's time, but the second tale is in a genre that doesn't float my boat, and shouldn't be taken as a knock to the author....more
I picked up The Host about a month before the movie came out, and I watched the movie first. This was probably a good choice because had it been the oI picked up The Host about a month before the movie came out, and I watched the movie first. This was probably a good choice because had it been the other way around, I might not have enjoyed the movie for all the changes made to the story.
I started reading the book in my usual way, taking one chapter at a time between other books, but within a few days, I was skipping my other books to read several chapters at a time. I got about a third of the way through and I could not stop. I read the other 440 pages in one night, finishing around 7 AM with burning eyes and a sore back. And it was totally worth the discomfort. If I have any complaints it would be something like, "Why isn't Meyer working on a new book by now?" Seriously, I don't care what she chose to write next. She could do a western and I'd give it a shot.
The Host is the story of Wanderer, a planet-hopping alien with a proud history among her people as an explorer of new worlds occupied by the souls. (Not the proper word for their race, but their terminologies change from planet to planet depending on the language of their current hosts.) Wanderer is placed in the body of Melanie Stryder, but quickly discovers that her host is still aware and fighting against her attempts to access Melanie's memories. Wanderer is meant to turn these memories over to the seekers, the soldiers of her race, so that any remaining humans she knows can be located and converted.
This is an alien invasion story in the final stages of the war, and the souls have mostly secured the entire population by this point. What I like is how the story takes place from the perspective of the enemy coming to understand that their "peaceful" invasions are a nightmare for the hosts they occupy. There's also an intriguing glimpse into alien societies due to Wanderer's long life of planet-hopping. Among her people, she is revered because she's been to eight other planets and lived one life cycle on each. So she works as a teacher to her people, many of whom have never traveled to more than one planet.
But with Melanie always in her head, Wanderer finds herself falling in love with the people her host cares about most of all, her brother Jamie, and her lover, Jared. Wanderer leaves on a road trip to Tucson to consult with a Healer about leaving her host, but during the trip, Melanie convinces her to take a detour that leads them back to Jamie, Jared, and Melanie's aunt and uncle, who have created a small community of humans hiding in the middle of nowhere.
The humans are understandably not happy to see an enemy in their midst, but Melanie's uncle, Jeb, is insistent that they not only keep her alive, but slowly come to accept her as a part of their group. Not everyone is so hot on this plan, and several times, Wanderer is almost killed. But Jeb's plans bring around some of the refugees, and soon Wanderer finds herself returning to her calling as a teacher.
Another thing I like is the take on romantic triangles. Wanderer loves Jared because of Melanie's memories, but Jared has hardened his heart to her. Another refugee, Ian, who tried to kill Wanderer upon her arrival, has a change of heart that begins with guilt and turns into something deeper. But herein lies the problem. Melanie is still inside Wanderer, and she still loves Jared. She loathes Ian for his interest in Wanderer, and this makes romance somewhat difficult when one's chaperone is directly inside one's head. The issue is further complicated when Jared realizes Melanie is alive inside Wanderer, now called Wanda as a nickname. Melanie doesn't like his affection toward Wanda either, because Jared is Melanie's man, not Wanda's. So poor Wanda is stuck between loving two men, and not being able to have either because of Melanie.
Wanda's love for her refugees leads to her returning to civilization to gather supplies for them, and upon returning to the compound, she learns that one of the seekers tracking her has been captured after killing a human. Wanderer has no love lost for this seeker, but she cannot embrace the humans' need for revenge, and she must find a solution that will save one of her people while still keeping her new family safe.
And, I have to say, I really like the solution Wanda comes up with. Meyer's got a gift for coming up with pacifist solutions to her conflicts, and I felt the same way about the conclusion of Breaking Dawn. I also like how the ending doesn't conclude like the movie does. In the movie, everything is tied up so neatly with a few minutes of epilogue, and there's this balance struck between the souls and the humans. The problem with this ending is that it's a lot to happen in a few months, especially when one considers how almost the entire planet, a population of billions, is occupied. Also, the movie suggests that all humans would just come back to their senses after the removal of the souls, while the book makes clear that some humans cannot ever recover themselves from this invasion. The resolution in the book only hints at a possible peaceful future without pushing for a happily ever after. It's clear that there will still be hard times ahead. But Wanderer has love, and so does Melanie, and they both have hope in a better future. I love this kind of ending, and definitely prefer it over the ubiquitous happily ever after.
I give The Host five stars, and I'd recommend it to most fans of sci-fi, with the possible exception of people who only like "hard" sci-fi. There's certainly a lot of devices and concepts familiar to the genre, but the souls' terminology for all their technologies are bound to simpler human words, and fans of hard sci-fi might not like the lack of techno-jargon. But I think most everyone else will enjoy this as a refreshing take on the alien invasion trope....more
Absolutely hated this book. Despite the flaws in the world building in the first book, I really enjoyed Tris Prior's character and the tense writing sAbsolutely hated this book. Despite the flaws in the world building in the first book, I really enjoyed Tris Prior's character and the tense writing style. It was so interesting that I had to finish the book in a few days. By comparison, I've had to force myself to keep reading this book for several months, hoping it might get back to that same intensity. It never does, and the additional information about the divergent added here actually makes the flaws in the first book more apparent.
I'm going to leave this review short, because airing all my complaints would be one long stream of spoilers interspersed by cuss words. I'm severely disappointed by the direction the writer chose to take with Tris in this book, and between her, the lousy world-building, and the constant dragging pace, I feel like I've wasted my time....more
Divergent faced an uphill battle to capture my interest because I’m not usually big on dystopias. The setting of the book didn’t quite grab me, but I Divergent faced an uphill battle to capture my interest because I’m not usually big on dystopias. The setting of the book didn’t quite grab me, but I liked the main character Beatrice, and decided to see where the story led. In this decayed future, a city of people have divided up into the factions that they see as being most virtuous. This leads to people being factionless too, and already this perfect world is straining with political problems because only one faction governs. Obviously, not everyone is going to be happy with that setup.
When the children from each faction turn sixteen, they are given a “simulation serum” that is supposed to assess which faction they belong with. Beatrice’s results are inconclusive, and she is told she is divergent, and that this is something she must keep secret. She is also told she must decide which faction she will go to, because her test results are inconclusive.
Beatrice chooses to leave her family and join the Dauntless faction, who prize bravery, but Beatrice also remains selfless as she was raised to be in the Abnegation faction. The book mainly follows her initiation into her faction, and Tris has to deal with bullies, and at one point with the betrayal of a friend. As her training progresses, she also begins to learn more about the connections between the Dauntless and Erudite factions, and she finds out why being divergent is so dangerous to the scheming faction leaders.
Beatrice’s story was so intense that I swept through the last 300 pages in one day. I like that she’s gifted but not totally unique. There are others like her, and while she is gifted, she isn’t super special either. I liked the cast around Beatrice, including her romantic interest Tobias, AKA: Four. Dauntless initiation is shown as a grim and terrifying ordeal, with failures becoming factionless. With failure not being an option, every test and rite of passage is tense, and the book hums along at wild pace.
The ending is a bit of a shock, and for once a dystopia doesn’t have my eye twitching over unlikely rescues, because lots of people didn’t get rescued. It’s kind of an ugly ending, but one that fits in with the rest of the story. It does set up well for the next book, and I’ll be looking to pick up Insurgent soon.
I give Divergent 4 stars, and recommend it to fans of dystopia YA. It’s not often that I drop everything to spend a full day and night reading, and while this wasn’t “the best book ever” it certainly kept me guessing to the end. The pages flew by fast, and I kept going, “Okay, just one more chapter.” Definitely qualified as a page-turner, and I can’t wait to read the rest of the series....more
Okay, yes, I re-read my own book. I ran across a glowing review that made me go, "Hey, I need to read that again!" I fell in love with the book all ovOkay, yes, I re-read my own book. I ran across a glowing review that made me go, "Hey, I need to read that again!" I fell in love with the book all over again, but as it's my story, I won't give it a rating.
But I liked it, yes. This is probably my happiest, lightest story, which may explain why I spent so much time giggling on the reread. I would recommend this to sci-fi fans who like stories about androids....more
I bought all three books in the Cassandra Kresnov series a couple years back in Amsterdam, but kind of lost track of the books until this summer, whenI bought all three books in the Cassandra Kresnov series a couple years back in Amsterdam, but kind of lost track of the books until this summer, when hubby read Crossover and the two sequels in the series back-to-back and declared them to be "really good." I think that for a great many of the "target market" males, nothing will seem off about the character Sandy Kresnov.
Except, she's a dude. In every aspect of her personality, the main character struck me as a male, and turning them and the other main characters into women didn't change the fact that they all thought like dudes. I got what the writer was trying to say about artificial people not being sexually selective, but then later "character development" reveals that Sandy's hyper-sexuality is unique even among her people. And...her sexuality is male. Possibly gay male, but really, given how poorly the author writes a sex scene, I would argue that this story might have been improved without making the heroine a "nymphomaniac."
There are sex scenes in this book that I wanted to end. Me, Miss "I love porn" was instead begging, "Please, make the bad sex scene stop." But it gets worse. The author cannot write a decent chase scene without messing it up. The author spends many, many pages on political lectures, and the biggest "plot twists" in the book are political plays. This book is so, so boring. This writer could make a blow job during a gunfight boring. There's really no help for someone who thinks they're writing "cool" and they are in fact ice cold and killing their story with way, way too many tangential details.
Feeling something for the "heroine's" starting predicament of being violently dismembered, I stuck with this in the hope that maybe there would be some fast-paced payoff for all this slow buildup, but there is nothing this writer touches here that they don't blow badly. This is not to say there aren't some neat ideas in the premise. There are. But when you start a book by ripping the heroine into little pieces, and then insist that she'll get over that a few days later, you've confused a man from an 80s action movie for a woman. In fact, if the main character were a dude in an 80s sci-fi movie, I'd be more likely to believe this ridiculous and contrived plot.
I'm sorry to get harpy, but this is my main point of complaint. Sandy is an artificial person with a human personality imprinted on an artificial brain. The story claims that she has a human sexuality because her brain is a copy of an organic human brain. BUT, Sandy's internal line of reasoning, her method of coping with stress, her hypersexuality and indiscreet need for physical contact; it's all male. Adding breasts, blonde hair, and blue eyes doesn't change this conflict of her character. I don't see a butch woman. I see a character made female simple to satisfy the writer's need for some lame sexual fantasy. After all, Sandy is the ultimate badass, AND she's indiscriminate with who she sleeps with. Dudes in the target audience are sure to love this combination. But to me, Sandy comes across as hugely fake, and I'd be willing to give back a star in my rating if Sandy had been Andrew instead. Because then the character would have been more realistic.
The same is true of the head of SWAT, Vannessa Rice, a character who's "short" "cute," and "considered fluffy" among her troops. This is all strictly male fantasies, and the women don't really behave like women except at very rare moments near the end of the book. The rest of the time, they act like men. So for me, the story just wasn't very believable.
There really wasn't much I liked about this story, and I find Sandy's reaction to trauma to be the first of many bad character development choices. It's strictly a by-the-numbers formula, and it never rises above a man's fantasy of how awesome women would be, if they only acted more like men.
I give Crossover two stars, and I'm sorely tempted to drop that to one. I can't say that I'd really recommend it to anyone, but as hubby liked it, I'll guess fans of military sci-will think it's "super." Mostly, I was bored to tears, and it's going to be a long time before I bother reading the other books in this series....more