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.

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!

Independent Study (The Testing #2) REVIEW

I have to be honest, at least at this point in the series; this is better than Divergent and on par to be better than the Hunger Games. I talk about this novel all the time, I think about the kind of world Cia Vale lives in, and how I would deal with that sort of life. I love every situation and character plot of this series, and this sequel didn’t let me down. Independent Study is one of the greatest post apocalyptic novels I have read in a very long time.

Cia Vale survived the Testing, passed with flying colours and is now at University in Tosu City. Everything should be great, her boyfriend loves her, she gets a great internship in government with the President, a house that thinks she intelligent, everything should be perfect. But it isn’t. Cia heard the tape of herself after the Testing, she knows what she did, and what they did to her. The government is the enemy, at least some of them are. And her boyfriend might be an enemy too. Cia knows what Thomas did in the games, the lies he told and the lives he took.

Cia wants to bring down the organization that allows for the testing, but even the people she thinks she can trust she finds she is wrong about. Hidden letters, secret meetings, and more murders than even the Testing saw. Cia realizes that she might actually be alone in this, with no allies or friends who wont give her up for an advancement in University or placement in the government’s inner circle. Loyalty, friends and even family are all a changing game as far as Cia can tell, but what she witnesses at the end will forever change the final installment of this series.

I literally have a countdown on my phone for when the final book comes out. I gave this series to multiple people for Christmas, and received text messages from all of them saying they loved it (the girl I babysat as a child called to tell me she likes it more than Hunger Games).  It holds up to the first novel, and exceeds all expectations.