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.

Cress (Lunar Chronicles #3) by Marissa Meyer

Cress was locked away in a satellite orbiting Earth, she could hardly remember a time when she wasn’t there. She was a Lunar shell, but rather than have her killed Queen Levana and her trusted advisor Sybil put her away in a satellite orbiting Earth, the planet they hoped to one day soon over take. Cress was in charge of watching the Earthen newsfeeds for information, watching the leaders of the world for weaknesses, for making the Lunar spaceships around the Earth undetectable to any other satellites. It was Cress’ job to spy on Earth, keep the Lunar ship movements undetectable, and report any and all findings to her Queen. Unfortunately for Levana, Cress started to betray her.

Alone, with no one to talk to and with the knowledge that her queen almost killed her, not to mention knowing everything evil that Levana was doing Cress started to rebel. She did her duties aboard the satellite, but when Cinder (the true queen of Luna) was being hunted by all of Luna, and by Earth under threat of annihilation, Cress hid her the way she had been hiding Lunar spaceships for years.

When Cinder and her friends learn of this, they contact Cress and plan on rescuing her from her satellite prison, but they are to slow. Sybil intercepts the message and is waiting for them aboard Cress’ satellite. Just like the evil witch in Rapunzel. Sybil captures Scarlet and heads back to Luna, hoping to use lunar methods of torcher to get the information on Cinder and her plan to over throw the current crown. Before she leaves for Luna though, Sybil blinds the hero Carswell Thorne who was the one on the podship sent to retrieve Cress. The two are left in the satellite as Sybil sets its coordinates to fall out of the sky and toward Earth.

Cinder, the true hero and main character of this story is at a loss. Everyone she had been counting on to help her is hurt, wounded, dead, or captured. She too has barely escaped with her life, and the only person with her is a mortally hurt Wolf. The only thing she can think to do is head to Africa, where the crazy Luna doctor lives in secret. A doctor who has helped Cinder many times in her life, and the man who reveled her true identity and saved her as a baby.

Would you believe that this isn’t even the first half of the novel? That is how amazing this third installment of the Lunar Chronicles is. I love the characters, the way each book introduces different characters and themes of popular fairytales, without over doing it or forcing the story to follow the original fairytale. I loved this book, and couldn’t put it down. The 550 pages seemed to fly by as I read it. Cannot wait for the next novel to come out next year!

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 Fallen: Enemy Novel #5

As it says at the beginning of The Fallen, this book starts at the same time that The Sacrifice takes place, and ends with a few of the characters from the two novels coming together. This is the fifth installment of Charlie Higson’s absolutely amazing The Enemy Series about a zombie apocalypse that takes place in London, England. This isn’t going to be the most details review, because it takes place far into the series, and the novel is over 500 pages.

This novel centers around the characters who are at the museum and those who have been traveling to the museum. It opens with the kids from Holloway arriving at the museum just as the sickos have broken in. If not for the skills of Jackson, Achilles, and the rest of the crew the chances of Justin or anyone else surviving the night was slim to none. Once the two groups merge they decide to embark on an expedition to the medical center nearby. While there, the small group of fighters and scientists learn a few things about the disease that are not good. And while they lose a lot of people on the way, they also pick up some “freaks,” mutated children trapped in the medical center who know more than anyone they have ever come across.

Back at the museum, they are on the lookout for whoever let the sickos in, and that would be Paul. Paul is slowly killing of other kids, he seems to have caught the sickness. That isn’t the worst part though, in the second to last chapter things are revealed about Paul’s evil deeds that shocked me, things I didn’t see coming. And the cliffhanger at the end, about Small Sam and Ella is just to much to handle!! Such an amazing series, cannot wait for the next one.