Variant #1

While I was not a huge fan when I started reading Variant, I loved it by the end. Many of the things that I didn’t like in the beginning were cleared up as the novel progressed, and character choices that seemed inorganic started to make sense the more I read the novel.

Benson Fisher has bounced from foster home to foster home for as long as he can remember, holding down meager jobs and friendless, after all, how can you make friends when every few months he has to move and can’t afford a cell phone or a laptop to keep in touch. But Benson has hope, he just was accepted into the prestigious Maxfield Academy on a full scholarship. The school has a full-ride program for orphaned and foster homed children and Benson was the candidate that they chose. Benson believes that this is the answer to his prayers, a permanent place to stay until he graduates, a good college, and friends. He has never been more wrong about something in his entire life.

Once at the school he finds that there are no adults; rather cameras and monitors, and a video every morning from a strange man telling them what to do. Everyday it is different, different classes that they have to teach themselves, crazy and violent paintball matches, weird PE classes, and that is just the beginning. Sometimes the doors lock on the students, forcing them to sleep outside in the cold with only a handful of sleeping bags for the entire populous. Other nights. Other times the man tells them to punish each other and send specific students to detention, no one has ever come back from detention. Anyone who has ever tried to run away has been killed, and it seems to Benson that no one even wants to try and escape the strange prison they are all being held in.

Every student was like Benson when they arrived, no family or friends to miss them, and the school knew it. Benson is determined to figure out what the purpose of the school is and escape, but talking about such things has put students in detention never to be seen again. The school is divided into gangs, and a few of them are tired of Benson poking his nose into business that isn’t his and decide to take him and his girlfriend out, even if it isn’t sanctioned by the school. That’s when things go from bad to worse.

Benson can barely walk after the beating his received, but Jane isn’t breathing. Benson is trying to get up and run for help when Jane suddenly sits up and starts making her way to a secret bunker near the school. Benson hobbles after her yelling to stop, but she doesn’t hear them. Once inside the bunker Jane does something crazy, she pulls off her ear and plugs a cord into it. Jane is a robot, and Benson watches as she downloads herself into a computer, 1s and 0s about him and the rest of the students at the school.

Now Benson doesn’t know what to do. Who would believe him about Jane, and more importantly who else is a robot. After all, Jane can’t be the only robot among them. Benson starts to make lists of when the students arrived, who has the most connection with the strange man in the videos, but if Jane who wanted to get out of the school, seemed to bleed when hurt, and who’s “heart” raced when they kissed, Benson doesn’t want to trust anybody. He needs to escape now more than ever, but to do so he has to have help, and he has to figure out who the robot spies are among them.

I really like this book by the end, things that didn’t always make sense in the beginning got cleared up and the story moved forward with excitement. I cannot wait to read the sequels!

TRUST NO ONE!

Timebound by Rysa Walker

            Kate had never really had a relationship with her grandmother. It wasn’t really her fault, but

ever since her Aunt Prudence went missing years ago the family dynamics had been strained. Which is why Kate was so shocked to get word from Grandmother Katherine. Despite her mother’s warning Kate started to develop a relationship with her grandmother, she was dying of cancer and Kate didn’t want her to feel like she was alone. Of course, there was more to Katherine’s visit than simply waned to reconnect before her death.

            Turns out that their family has a history of time travel, and Grandma Katherine is from hundreds of years in the future. She got stuck as a young woman in the 1950s after a scysm in the time travel department, CHRONOS. A group lead by Katherine’s ex-boyfriend had convinced many members that they should start altering history for their own personal gain. Time travelers were stranded throughout history, starting families and mixing genetics from time, creating new time travelers like Kate. Kate doesn’t need man of the technologies of the future to time travel, she is born with abilities no one ever though possible.

            She isn’t the only one though. Children from the time travelers are picking sides, and an all out time manipulation war is at hand. Different memories collide every time something is changed, even many of Kate’s. She has to decide what she is willing to give up, and what memories should be changed and forgotten for good.

I thought this book was… okay. I went back and forth about it to be honest. There were times I wanted to just put it down and never pick it up again. I has some good ideas, but the main characters who are trying to preserve the current timeline are hypocritical. It isn’t the original timeline after all, things have been changed before Kate got involved. Rather than deal with that, the author just glosses over hypocrisy and inconsistency of the story.

Uninvited (book 1) by Sophie Jordan

Science has isolated the kill gene. Slowly but surly the United State is rolling out mandatory testing for HTS, Homicidal Tendency Syndrome. People found to have the gene for HTS are being separated in society and marked. Cities are being locked down and quarantined, images on TV show murder and destruction always at the hands of those that have tested positive for HTS.

Davy never really thought about it though, other than how scary those people on TV were, and knowing to avoid the big cities. Her life is perfect; she has perfect grades and the boyfriend and social calendar to rival a rock star. Not to mention, she is a musical prodigy who received acceptance to Julliard. Everything is going the way it should for a spoiled girl; that is until she arrives home one night to strangers and her parents waiting for her.

Weeks earlier, her private school has tested all the children, and Davy’s test had come up positive. It doesn’t matter that she is sweet and mild mannered, one day she will be a killer. After all, it is written into her DNA, there is no escaping nature. Suddenly Davy finds herself isolated and alone, her boyfriend and friends dump her, her new school is practically a cage where the man in charge takes sexual advantage of the girls, even her parents seem to be scared on her.

The country is becoming worse, riots and fear are fueling hatred and causing the government to push through new legislation against the carries of HTS. After tensions amass to extraordinary heights, causing Davy to stay home for days on end without reprieve, news breaks that every carrier is being rounded up and taken to detention camps. Davy and her family have no choice but to wait, wait for the government to come and collect her.

But that isn’t what happens. There is another program for carriers, a program that only fifty people qualified for. It is a training camp for carriers, carriers who show abilities to be molded into government spies and assassins. Somehow Davy has qualified, and if she survives training and does everything they tell her to she might one day have a life again. A life without an imprint and a life full of purpose, she can be important again. That is only if she can survive and pass the training, and once at the camp, Davy isn’t sure it is something she wants. Turning into a killer isn’t what she wants for her life, its what she is trying to prove she isn’t, but others at the camp really are killers and they don’t want Davy around.

This book is brilliant; it’s a subject that people talk about all the time when bad things happen. If we had the ability to isolate certain genes would it actually be helpful, what is the relationship between nature and nurture. How long can society tell you something about yourself before you start to believe and become it. This novel address’ these issues, and has a main character evolve with the story. I hated what spoiled brat Davy acted like in the beginning, but as her perfect life gets stripped away, she becomes a real person who I can relate to.

Death Sworn (Review) by Leah Cypress

Ileni was trained since birth to be a sorcerous, she was suppose to be the best, strongest, most powerful person on Earth. But Ileni started to lose her magic, she felt it leaving her long before her teachers and friends new, simple spells took to much effort and left her drained. She was becoming of no use to her people, so they sent her away. 

They sent her into the mountains, to teach the assassins with what little was left of her magic. For centuries the assassins left those with magic alone, and helped protect them from the Empire who wished to kill them and take their power. All they asked in return was a teacher to enter the caves and teach it's students basic magic. 

The Elders send Ileni for one purpose, to find out what had happened to the previous two teachers. Both had died under mysterious circumstances, and only two months apart. She could still be of use to her people, using what magic she had left she could find out why all the teachers of the Assassins were dying. Ileni was ready for her mission, the worst thing that could happen to her was that she would die, and death was something she not only could accept, but yearned for in the absence of magic. 

Things are difficult in the mountain, everyone around her could kill her as easily as look at her, she has no friends, and Ileni realized that the previous teachers had been involved in dealings and practices that didn't uphold with the values of their people. Secret meetings, private magic lessons, murder and plans more than twenty years in the making are coming to light as Ileni continues to run out her magic trying to find out what's really going on in the Assassin's Mountain, and nothing she finds is good. 

I thought this book was great. It was a afar and simple read. Leah Cypress wove a beautiful tale with a whole separate world with a rich history. The characters have depth and emotional levels, the descriptions of the different places in the book created a picture that I could see in my head, and scenes that fluidly moved te story forward seamlessly. I would recommend this to anyone who wants a fun fantasy adventure series. 

Alice in Deadland

What started out promising and interesting quickly turned stupid and ill thought out. The concept is a fun one, Alice in Wonderland but with zombies. That's how the book was sold, it's what the goodreads synopsis says, what's on the back of the novel and what the positive reviews write. It couldn't be more wrong. 

It does start out that way though. It's post apocalyptical, Alice has never known any world but the zombie infested or "biter" world than this. She was born shortly after the world fell apart and has trained since her birth to stay alive and shoot "biters" in the head, only way to kill them. 

One day while on gaurd duty she sees a biter with crazy bunny ears jump into a hole and out of site from her rifle. Ignoring all her training and instincts, she follows the bunny eared biter into the hole. See the forced similarity to the original story? It's basically forcing it down the readers throat! Once she is down the hole. She finds herself surrounded by biters, but rather than kill her they being her to their Queen. 

The Queen has with her a copy of Alice and Wonderland, and tries to convince Alice it is a book of prophesy. The Queen believes that humans and the biters can live I. Harmony, and that Alice is the key to peace on Earth once more. 

If the novel wasn't horrible enough at this point, it gets worse!  Alice and the biters head back to her camp, but Zeus a military camp headed by a mix of old world commanders wants the biters killed. Alice now believes that this whole new world was orchestrated years before her birth by an old Chinese government to rid the world of undesirables and start a more evolved one. 

This novel explains little, leaving plot holes and unanswered questions. No, I will not be reading the rest of the series even though they were purchased in a set with the first. Please save yourself the trouble, time and money and don't read this book.