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!

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. 

Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis

I think this book had great potential. It’s a futuristic dystopian novel, set in a time when water is scarce, population laws in cities are harsh and those that live outside the city are left to fend for themselves. It’s realistic, at least in that sense. There are also water witches, woman who can sense where water is and if there are under water streams and lakes. That’s the strain of the book that made me shake my head in annoyance, and made what could have been a great book hardly mediocre.

            Lynn knows no life but the one by her pond. Her mother taught her two things, keep the water safe and don’t trust anyone. Shoot first, don’t ask any question, protect the water because nothing else matters. Lynn has life figured out, its hard and solitary survival is of the upmost importance, and never go anywhere without at least one rifle and a knife.

            There have never been to many people, coyotes usually pose more of a threat than the random starving wanderer, but then Lynn starts to notice things in the distance. Smoke, and a weird eerie light during the twilight and evening hours, and its not the passing smoke of a wanderer. Strangers are in her area, ones who aren’t passing through. They are staying, they are strong, and they are powerful.

            For the first time in her life Lynn knows that she can’t take care of this problem herself, she needs people to help her. Despite the mistrust, Lynn teams up with an old friends of her mother from across the woods, and a young boy and his niece who were left alone after all their family was killing for violating population laws back in the city. Not much, but it’s all that Lynn has, and she would rather go out fighting than give up her pond and become a sexual slave to the strangers.

            Like I said, this book could have been good. Had the water witch thing not entered the story, I know I would have enjoyed it more. It would be a 4/5 star novel if not for the water witch thing, which brings it down to a 2.5 rating. What makes that detail the most annoying, is that the water witch thing isn’t actually a very big deal in this first book of the series, but it will be which is why it gets brought up. Annoying, I wanted a realistic dystopian future novel, not a semi-magical one.

The False Prince (The Ascendance Trilogy #1)

Civil War is brewing in the kingdom. Rival nobles are out for blood and the threat from outside kingdoms grows ever stronger. What most people don’t know is that the royal family is dead, a secret that one of the King’s low ranking regents and advisors has been keeping a secret.

Four years ago, the King’s youngest son disappeared. Rumored to have been murdered by pirates, with his body never found some still hold out hope that the young prince will one day return and unite the kingdom. That is at the root of Connor’s plan. He has searched every orphanage in the kingdom, looking for boys he thinks might fit who the prince would look like now. He has chosen four boys, all of the age and with similar facial and body structures to the king and queen, Sage is one off those boys.

Sage, while young, is head strong and a fairly clever thief. While the other boys look at the possibility of ruling with pleasure and want, Sage scoffs at the idea of being a puppet king for Lord Connor and his agenda. Fighting the training Connor and those in his camp are forcing on the boys, Sage continues to be defiant and headstrong, often at danger to himself and the few people he has come to know and care about.

There is also something that Connor isn’t telling the boys, Sage knows what people look like when they are lying and avoiding the truth, and when one of the other boys gets killed Sage realizes there is much more to Connor’s plan than trying to protect and unify the kingdom.

What Connor and his men don’t know is that Sage has a secret too, a boy living on the street learns tricks, and hears rumors and secrets that people try to keep hidden. Trying to turn Sage into the long lost prince might be the worst thing Connor has ever done.

I loved this novel. I liked the twists and turns the author wrote, some of which I figured out or at least mused on, while others came out of no where and wasn’t until I really thought about it did I realize the hints that Jennifer Nielsen left throughout the novel. It has a historical fiction feel without is being based on a specific event. This is a novel that can stand on its own, but I cannot wait to read the sequel when it comes out!