Inside Out review

Inside Out
by Maria V. Snyder
Harlequin
April 2010

First line: "I'm Trella. I'm a scrub."

In a dystopian future, Trella is a "scrub" responsible for cleaning and maintaining the pipes that service the "uppers" or higher castes. Everyone lives in a building only known as "Inside" - there are rumors of an "Outside" but no one's seen it in their lifetime. As a reader, you know that there are one of two possibilities: either they are underground, or in a spaceship. My money was on spaceship, pretty quickly on. Time is referenced to only in weeks, which gives everything a pleasantly alien feel - the characters refer to themselves as "x" weeks old, and seem to use the phrase "a hundred weeks" the way we'd refer to something as "a year or two." They speak about "one million weeks" the way we might say, "an eternity" and it's a commonly held belief that they'll find the way Outside when the clock reaches one million weeks. Children are raised in creches by their Care Mothers until they graduate to a job assignment. Overcrowding is a real problem on the lower levels, yet the "Pop Cops" still inexplicably test everyone to ensure that no one is making use of birth control. Failure to obey results in being fed to "Chomper" a.k.a. the ship's recycling system.

The story was a slow build-up to what for me was the super-obvious "reveal" of the novel. But I did like the character of Tris. She's petite, and not at all girly. She's a bit aloof from the other scrubs, hence her nickname, "Queen of the Pipes." Cogon, another one of the scrub workers, seems almost like a father figure to her. He arranges for her and her childhood friend Logan to meet with Domotor, a wheelchair-bound prophet looking for the Gateway which he believes will take them Outside. There is the mildest hint of romantic interest, when she meets Riley, one of the uppers who secretly agrees to help her search for plans to Gateway, which they hope will take them Outside. If this book was skewed for just a little older, I'd say we have the beginnings of a Trella/Logan/Riley love triangle, but that situation doesn't appear to rear its ugly head here. I'll recommend this for middle-grade readers and young teens.

Compare to:
The Pledge - Kimberly Derting
Birthmarked - Caragh M. O'Brien
Across the Universe - Beth Revis
Glow - Amy Kathleen Ryan


I borrowed this book from the library.

Bumped review

Bumped

by Megan McCafferty

Balzer + Bray

April 2011
Set in a dystopian near-future, everyone over 18 has become infertile and teens are highly paid for their ability to procreate. The invented slang quickly immerses you into the world: pregging, bumping, fertilicious, FunBumps, reproaesthetic, masSEX.

High-school student Melody is sitting pretty. With her excellent academic record, good health and great looks, she's scored an amazing contract with a couple who want her to carry a child for them. The only problem is that they've been a little too picky, trying to score the perfect young man to be the father, and Melody isn't pregnant yet, and it doesn't look like she will be anytime soon. In the meantime, Melody's long-lost twin sister Harmony shows up, much to Melody's hyperactive, talk a mile-a-minute fertility agent's dismay, who has crafted a sales pitch for Melody based on her uniqueness. Harmony is on the run from the conservative religious compound where she's been raised. Naturally, several instances of mistaken identity, with one twin being mistaken for the other occur and hijinks ensue.

Melody's friends crassly recommend that she take on her good friend Zen as her "everythingbut" - a friend you fool around with and do everything but what could lead to pregnancy. With yuppies paying so much for procreation and adoption services, and with such a heavy emphasis on eugenics, I was surprised that the teen couples were expected to "bump" in the bedroom, rather than being inseminated in a lab, where any birth defects or unpromising looking embryos could be weeded out at the outset.

I wondered why so many of the girls outside of the religious compound didn't want to keep their children. As Melody's best friend explains to her, she's having this child now, and selling the child to the highest bidder to secure a financial future for herself, so that one day, she'll be able to pay someone to do the same for her. However, if people knew that their only chance of becoming grandparents was to help support their daughters through a teen pregnancy, and raise the baby, surely they'd step-up and we'd see more multi-generational families, right? Melody's parents were shockingly heartless. What kind of monsters mortgage and re-mortgage their house, go on lavish vacations and shopping sprees on the chance of whoring out their daughter? While my heart went out to Melody, who despite all the pressure just doesn't feel ready to get pregnant, I found her sanctimonious Bible-spouting twin Harmony fairly unlikable, which was really shame. The chapters alternate between the two and I enjoyed the Harmony chapters much less.

With its bitingly satirical message, I would love to pair Megan McCafferty's Bumped with Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal and see how teens would react.


I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Breathe review

Breathe
by Sarah Crossan
Greenwillow
October 2012

First line: "Breathing is a right not a privilege, so I'm stealing it back."

Alina, Quinn and Bea live in a world where oxygen is hard to come by. Many citizens live in safely protected domes, where oxygen is carefully controlled. The wealthy, known as Premiums, are able to afford more, of course, while poorer members of society known as Auxiliaries must move slowly and breathe cautiously in order not to run out.

Alina is working with a group of rebels who are hoping to use plants outside the domes to increase oxygen in the air. At the very least, they want to break down some of the unfair class structure that is currently rigidly enforced.

Bea is a lower class citizen. After she flunks the very challenging set of tests to be raised to a higher position, her parents are left to hope that she'll make a good marriage and raise the entire family's status so that they can all breathe easier.

Wealthy Quinn is up for a bit of adventure and he readily agrees to a camping trip on the outside of the dome.

The story features a love triangle between Alina, Bea and their love interest Quinn. Love triangles can frequently move a plot along with plenty of opportunity for conflict, but here, I just felt sorry for the two girls. Quinn is overcome by Alina's beauty, even though he's been best friends with Bea for ages. I enjoyed the alternating chapters format which pivots between the three main characters and their unique voices.

The lack of oxygen is fairly well-thought out - exercise becomes a privilege for the wealthy who are able to afford to get their heart rate up. Poorer people age faster and tire easier in the oxygen poor environment. Fans of dystopian will find a lot to like here: an oppressive government, citizens who are kept in the dark about what is really going on, brave teens who are ready to challenge the status quo, a love triangle and some daring chase scenes.


Compare to:
Under the Never Sky - Veronica Rossi
More Than This - Patrick Ness
The Pledge - Kimberly Derting


I borrowed this book from the library.

Dystopian Mashup

Here's a spoof, pointing out that all dystopian movies are really the same.

Bookish Links du Jour 2/22/15

Enjoy this video: Book nerd problems: Getting a book wet! This is a major emergency. Help is needed, STAT.



Experience every dystopian novel trope at once, in this delightful twitter send-up of the genre: @DystopianYA For example: "It's the night before my 17th birthday, which means in a few hours, I'll have to face the mysterious Test to determine my future."

Oh my. Here's a book written by a staunch anti-vaxxer, Melanie's Marvelous Measles by Stephanie Messenger. Amazon reviewers have provided some delightfully snarky comments, for example, "As a carpenter who specializes in itty bitty coffins I can't say enough good things about this book, my customer base has been growing at an epidemic rate!" Check out more reviews on the site.

The One review

The One
by Kiera Cass
Harper Teen
January 2014

First line: "This time we were in the Great Room enduring another etiquette lesson when bricks came flying through the window."

As dystopians go this is a fluffy, light-hearted, enjoyable conclusion to The Selection trilogy. America Singer lives in a future with a strict caste system, where once in a generation, the prince of the land holds a televised competition for his bride. As a Five, she and her family scrape by with careers in the arts and a lower-middle class standard of living. She's secretly fallen in love with Aspen, a Six who struggles even more than she does. Meanwhile, her parents are only too happy to see America chosen for the competition, with an opportunity for their daughter to become the princess and for everyone in their family to be catapulted several castes higher.

Gradually, America starts to fall for hunky Prince Maxon, a poor little rich boy, and her own good looks and thoughtfulness begin to win over the public as well.

As the final installment of the trilogy picks up, America really has fallen in love with Prince Maxon, and the two of them announcing their engagement seems like a forgone conclusion. There is some trouble in paradise, however, as America grows jealous of the way Maxon still openly flirts with the other contestants, and she wonders if she can really bear to give up Aspen (who has now bettered his life situation by signing up to be a palace guard.) The main thing that bothered me is the same thing that bothers me about any reality-TV dating show, where the "star" is going on dates with multiple contestants, but the contestants are expected to stay loyal to the star. What a double-standard!

The political situation with the rebels heats up, and there is a dramatic event at the end of the novel which changes quite a lot, but I expected there to be an even bigger twist at the end. Finding out that America's father was secretly a rebel didn't feel that shocking. I thought the monarchy would probably be dissolved, but Maxon hangs on, with a promise to gradually end the caste system, starting with improving the lives of the Eights, those who live in homelessness and total poverty. This is a feel good, fun love-triangle romance, perfect for Meg Cabot readers, or teens ready for The Hunger Games "lite."

Compare to:
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
Wither - Lauren DeStefano
Birthmarked - Caragh O'Brien

Dystopian Infographic

Here's a great infographic, put together by Goodreads, on the upsurge in teen dystopian novels.

Under the Never Sky review

Under the Never Sky

by Veronica Rossi

Harper Collins

January 2012

First line: "They called the world beyond the walls of the Pod the 'Death Shop.'"

In alternating chapters, Aria and Perry battle the elements and fight to be reunited with their families in an ecologically ravaged future. Most people live in cramped, climate-controlled Pod cities and amuse themselves by spending the bulk of their time in an immersive online virtual reality called the Realms. Those on the outside of the Pods live in unbelievably harsh conditions, subject to storms and cannibal attacks.

Aria has grown up in a Pod called Reverie, but decides to leave when she's worried about not hearing from her mother in a neighboring Pod for some time. Peregrin, known as Perry, lives outside the Pod in a region plagued with Aether storms. I kind of imagined them as powerful dry electrical storms with some sun flare like properties.  After Perry ends up escorting Aria through some dangerous territory the two of them have a fairly prickly relationship that simmers with tension. Aria and Perry's worlds are so different - they struggle to communicate over the most basic things. I loved the scene where Aria is relieved and pleased to reattach her optic eye, while Perry is horrified, but too polite to say anything at her cyborg appearance. The two of them don't realize that they actually have feelings for each other until fairly late in the game. The romantic ending leaves things well open for the sequel.

Compare to:
Breathe - Sarah Crossan
Enclave - Ann Aguirre
Inside Out - Maria V. Snyder

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

THE GIVER trailer

With the huge popularity of The Hunger Games and Divergent, it only makes sense for Lois Lowry's The Giver to come out as a film. I'm really intrigued by this trailer!

More Than This review

More Than This
by Patrick Ness
Candlewick Press
September 2013

I nearly gave up on this book. I make a rule, that if a book doesn't grab me in the first fifty pages, it's okay to give up on it. Let me recount what happens in the first fifty pages of this story:

• Seth wakes up and is confused and disoriented. He's in his childhood home in England, with no idea how he got there.
• He drinks some water
• He throws up quite a lot.
• He falls asleep again.
• He manages to pee. It is a bit of an ordeal.
• He sleeps.
• He bathes in the rain, but does not feel much cleaner.
• He eats a bit of horrid cold chicken soup from a can

And... that's it. Ladies and gentlemen, I was ready to throw in the towel right there, but I had several friends who had read the book and encouraged me, keep on going! It gets better!

I am glad that I soldiered on. Once poor Seth gets past the very base of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, things start to get interesting when Regine and Tomasz show up. Regine and Tomasz are both are willing to entertain Seth's idea that they are in some kind of afterlife - a hellscape, if you will - but it seems that all of them have suffered blows to the head, disconnecting some kind of chip installed in their heads, and all of them are having vivid dreams of their lives and the circumstances that led them to the abandoned English town where they find themselves. Seth has a traumatic past, unloving parents, a special needs younger brother Owen (he blames himself for Owen's difficulties) and has recently discovered, thanks to his new boyfriend Gudmund, that he is gay. Regine has been in a very abusive home with a sketchy stepfather and young Tomasz was a struggling Polish immigrant.

This is a true dystopia, with a grim landscape and tons of suspense. It's a bit Matrix-like, and readers who aren't put off by the incredibly slow start will find the incredible twists and turns of the plot very satisfying.

Compare to:

Blood Red Road - Moira Young
Hello America - J.G. Ballard
The Silver Child - Cliff McNish
The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness

I borrowed this book from the library.

Top 10 Worlds I'd Never Want to Live In

This week's Top 10 Tuesday topic from The Broke and the Bookish is:
 Top Ten Worlds I'd Never Want To Live In.

Okay! Here are my top 10 places I'd give a big fat, "no" to. Ahem.

1. Westeros. I love high fantasy. I love magic and dragons. I love books with intricate world-building and lots of nations/cultures coming into conflict. So, I enjoyed the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin. But, I would not want to live there. In making his series "realistic" by adding lots of death, rape, dismemberment, prostitution, muddy filth and general hardship, I know this isn't a world where I'd fit in.

2. Delirium by Lauren Oliver. Live in a world without feelings, where everyone has their emotions surgically removed? Boo! Thumbs down to that!

3. Tripods series by John Christopher. In this classic dystopian series, tripod aliens have taken over the Earth, forcing everyone to live with medieval level technology since that is all we are "responsible" enough to handle. Scary! No thanks!

4. Hytanica. In this fantasy trilogy by teen author Cayla Kluver, the country is run by a featherhead princess in love with a foreign mage prince. While she abandons her duties for true love, the country goes to pot.

5. The Giver by Louis Lowry. In this classic dystopian, everyone lives perfectly managed lives, and euthanasia/assisted suicide is perfectly cool. Feh. Do not want.

6. The Abhorsen series by Garth Nix. I loved to read this series, since it has a quasi-British feel and is chock full of strong heroines, but actually, I would not want to deal with some of the dangerously scary magic and undead spirits that Lirael has to handle in this book.

7. Thirsty by M.T. Anderson - This is a world that I would not want to live in because it is perfectly normal, boring suburbia, except for the fact that everyone (even if they don't realize it yet) is doomed by the evil vampire demon lord Tch'muchgar.

8. The Dustlands series by Moira Young. Living in a desert hellscape of desperate scavengers does not actually sound like very much fun.

9. The American Fairy series by Sarah Zettel. As if surviving the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl isn't enough - the characters in this magical historical also have to deal with malevolent fae who are bent on exacting torment on the already disadvantaged human Midwesterners.

10. Panem. Nothing about the world of The Hunger Games is good. Almost everyone is starving, and people are forced to watch kids kill each other on reality TV. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No thanks. Well... maybe if I could be besties with Effie Trinket. Actually, you know what? No. Not even then.

Divergent trailer

Divergent isn't coming out until April of next year. The trailer looks amazing, though - it's going to feel like a long wait!

The Color of Rain review

The Color of Rain
by Cori McCarthy
Running Press Kids
May 2013

First line: "Of all the directions to be looking, I stare up."

Seventeen year old Rain White dreams of getting away from decrepit and dangerous Earth City. Her younger brother Walker is becoming "Touched" - more and more catatonic by the day, and the rest of their family has already been ripped away from them in this dystopian future. She hopes to get passage for her brother to mech space where there may be a cure for his debilitating condition. Clearly, Rain's only option is to become a space prostitute. Her best friend Lo convinces her to sell her virginity at a good price to a disgusting client, but when this plan falls through, she meets Johnny, a sexy space traveler, who offers her and her brother a spot on his ship... for a price.

Rain is horrified when she learns that Johnny's offer to buy her virginity is all a sham. He's actually a space pimp with a whole stable full of girls. Yes, he said he was interested in her body... but he never said it was specifically for himself. Her brother is cryogenically frozen and spends most of the book as a popsicle, as she struggles with psychopathic Johnny and his number one assistant, cyborg mech Ben.

Johnny casually takes Rain's virginity, and then downgrades her from "red" status - meaning only he can touch her - to blue, green and then yellow, as he allows fat slobby crewmembers to abuse her. Gradually, she and Ben reach out to each other, as they discover Johnny's secrets. Johnny is actually trading Touched colonists as slaves to mining colonies. Rain and Ben try to free them at a gambling colony run by Johnny's ex-girlfriend, but are foiled by Johnny's seemingly all-powerful reach.

Interestingly, Rain is fairly highly sexed herself. She finds Johnny attractive, and enjoys their time together, even as she recognizes that mech Ben is much more sensitive and ultimately, a better match. Even though she's only recently become sexually experienced, she's quickly able to turn off her feelings and provide a decent experience for her repulsive clients.

While marketed for fans of Across the Universe by Beth Revis, the space element is not as prevalent as one might think and this book might actually be a better match for mature readers who enjoy dark dystopian fantasies or readers looking for books about arranged marriages. Readers who liked Julia Karr's XVI about a dystopian world where all women over 16 are fare game for random men, or Suzanne Fisher Staple's Shabanu about a Pakistani girl doomed to an arranged marriage, or Pearl Abraham's The Romance Reader about a girl's escape from an arranged Hasidic Jewish marriage, will find much to appreciate in this gritty sci-fi dystopian novel about a girl's exchange of sexual power for freedom and family.

Compare to:
Across the Universe - Beth Revis
XVI - Julia Karr
Shabanu - Suzanne Fisher Staple
The Romance Reader - Pearl Abraham


I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Prized review

Prized
by Caragh M. O'Brien
Roaring Brook Press
November 2011

First line: "She grabbed the hilt of her knife and scrambled backwards into the darkness, holding the baby close in her other arm."

The dystopian saga continues, as teenaged midwife Gaia Stone escapes from the controlling factions near Unlake Superior. It's quickly apparent that she's jumped from the frying pan, into the fire. In Birthmarked, Gaia lived in a modest cottage with her small family, with the unpleasant job of delivering babies to the nearby city to meet their "quota" to the Enclave. Since making her escape to the settlement of Sylum, ostensibly ruled by a council of elder women, she finds things even more challenging. At first, the hardscrabble life of the settlers seems like salvation for Gaia who is on the run from the authorities of the Enclave. They provide food for her sickly infant sister and welcome her skills as a midwife. But, Gaia soon finds that the rules at Sylum are quite harsh. She can't leave because the Matrarc is holding her sister Maya hostage. Also, the residents are suffering from radiation poisoning, which only worsens if they try to run away into the surrounding Wastelands.

In Sylum, men outnumber women by about 10 to 1 - meaning that even with her scarred face, Gaia is considered a great prize. She's still interested in Leon, the boy she met in Enclave, but now she has two new suitors: brothers Will and Peter. It's a love square! Gaia also has the option of declaring herself a "libby" - a group of women who remain unmarried, but lose their voting rights on the council. Kissing without intent to marry is outlawed. Men who overstep their boundaries with the few available bachelorettes find themselves harshly punished. O'Brien's rich vocabulary gives a unique feeling to the world - set in the future, yet living like pioneers in the past.

There are plenty of meaty issues to explore in this series: infertility, abortion, gender roles and class differences to name a few. I'm looking forward to reading the final book in the trilogy, Promised.

Compare to:
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
Graceling - Kristin Cashore
Wither - Lauren DeStefano
The Pledge - Kimberly Derting

I borrowed this book from the library.

City of Ember review

City of Ember

by Jeanne dePrau

Yearling

May 2003

First line: "When the city of Ember was just built and not yet inhabited, the chief builder and the assistant builder, both of them weary, sat down to speak of the future."

In what we assume is the far future, Lina and her friend Doon live in what they believe to be the last bastion of humanity. A disintegrating city surrounded by darkness is reliant on the last of their dwindling stores. The Builders left Instructions for their descendants, which have since been lost. Most of the townsfolk are content to continue scraping along with reduced rations, hoping that the Mayor will somehow find a solution. In a scene reminiscent of Lois Lowry's The Giver, Lina is pleased to receive her assignment for her new job: that of Messenger. Doon, on the other hand is assigned to the pipeworks. Together, they end up piecing together the secrets hidden in their city.

Doon is the "responsible" one seeing the danger in the city as they are running low on supplies, including lightbulbs. I was mystified by their situation at first. The adults in the town seem strangely incurious, bureaucratic and ineffective. A lot of them seemed like mealy-mouthed whiners to me, because they see the supplies running out, but aren't willing to fight for any solutions.

The city is surrounded by darkness, and beyond the trashdumps are the Unexplored Regions. I saw a few plotholes here. Everyone has a massive ravening, unceasing fear of the dark. Everyone? Really? With no exceptions? People have difficulty navigating their own houses that they've lived in all their lives without the help of the lights? I wondered if their fears were at least partially chemically induced, but that didn't seem to be the case. Over several generations in a town of a fair sized population, not one person has ever happened to be blind and thus not afraid of the dark? Mysterious. The pace of this was excruciatingly slow. Some readers could argue that people who have no knowlege of anything else in the outside world would take a long time to puzzle out things which might be obvious to us. This is a solidly imagined world - Lina's knowledge of flora and fauna, for example, is limited to a few insects and a couple of varieties of garden vegetables. She has trouble understanding what a boat is, or how to use a candle.

The main characters are both twelve years old, and there's little or no romance of any sort in the book; their mindset seems very young. The story has a satisfying ending, but is still quite open for more in the series.

Compare to: 

The Giver - Lois Lowry

Inside Out - Maria V. Snyder

Shade's Children - Garth Nix

Incarceron - Catherine Fisher

I borrowed this book from the library.

The Host review

The Host
by Stephenie Meyer
Little, Brown and Company
January 2008

I highly recommend this amazing, fast paced, psychological sci-fi thriller from the very popular author of the Twilight series. This is true science-fiction, on par with Bradbury or Asimov. Meyer uses the concept of an alien and human forced to co-exist in the same body to pose questions about memory, personality and what it means to be human. 

The story begins as the conquest of Earth is nearly complete. The altruistic Souls have invaded and are using most humans as "hosts" for their small, parasitic bodies. 

Wanderer has taken over Melanie, her 8th host, and she finds the strong-willed personality of her host start to push through, as she starts to fall in love with the same humans her host cared about. In the meantime, a small band of humans have formed a top-secret resistance, and the society of the Souls may be changed by this particular invasion more than they ever could have anticipated. Riveting stuff, with a bit of a twist to the ending that will leave you wishing this wasn't a stand-alone book! Meyer has supposedly been working on a sequel for a while - let's hope some excitement about the upcoming movie finally spurs Meyer to complete it.

I purchased a copy of this book.

The Darkest Minds review

The Darkest Minds
by Alexandra Bracken
December 2012
Disney Hyperion


In this dystopian world, Ruby is snatched away from her parents at age 10 and sent to live at a concentration camp for kids with powers. A worldwide epidemic IAAN (Idiopathic Adolescent Acute Neurodegeneration) has killed off most children, and those that remain have alarming abilities. In the camps, the children are sorted into colors: Blues have telekinetic abilities, Greens have eidetic memories and are fast code-breakers, Yellows control electricity, I'm not really sure what Reds do - set things on fire, maybe? The most dangerous of all are the Oranges, who have mind-control abilities. Most of the Oranges are psychopaths who enjoy using their abilities to create murder and mayhem. Ruby is an Orange - she accidentally mindwiped her parents who now have no memory of her - but she's terrified of the other Oranges, so she Jedi mind-tricks the doctor at camp Thurmond into believing that she is a relatively harmless Green.

I had plenty of questions about this world. What's the endgame for the remaining adults? Are they planning for this to be the end of the human race? Why don't they train the Greens or Blues to do useful things? Sure, there probably are some parents who'd be delighted to ship off their teen and pre-teen children - but I found it hard to believe that absolutely none of them want their children back. Why are all of the Oranges totally crazy, and why is Ruby the exception? A few of those questions get answered, but plenty of them don't, leaving lots of room in the sequel to further explore.

Ruby spends six horrible years at Thurmond, until she manages to get broken out by a rebel faction hoping to recruit her to their cause.

The Darkest Minds contains plenty of stock-in-trade ingredients of a great dystopian. There are plenty of car chases, daring escapes, scavenging for supplies in a wrecked and empty landscape, multiple warring political factions and of course, a love triangle.

While Ruby is on the run, she meets up with a small tribe of survivors, Liam and Chubs, both Blues, and Zu a sweet little girl Yellow who doesn't speak. The four of them travel in their battered mini-van nicknamed "Black Betty" throughout Virginia looking for "The Slip Kid" a leader who's supposedly set up an asylum for kids like them.

Of course, when they find The Slip Kid, he turns out to be none other than Clancy Gray - the president's son. Ruby is torn between sweet and loyal Liam and smooth-talking, well-dressed Clancy who can possibly teach her how to control her powers. She's terrified of accidentally erasing someone's memory again. In fact, I liked that Ruby is not an overly competent Mary-Sue at all. She runs around like a scared little bunny rabbit for most of the book and though she has awesome mind powers, she isn't really sure how to use them and she doesn't really want to.

This book ends on such a cliffhanger! Readers will be dying to know what happens next.

I borrowed this book from the library.

Waiting on Ashes of Twilight

I can never get enough of dystopian. This one sounds intriguing.

Ashes of Twilight
by Kassy Taylor
St. Martin's Griffin

November 2012

Wren MacAvoy works as a coal miner for a domed city that was constructed in the mid-nineteenth century to protect the royal blood line of England when astronomers spotted a comet on a collision course with Earth. Humanity would be saved by the most groundbreaking technology of the time. But after nearly 200 years of life beneath the dome, society has become complacent and the coal is running out.  Plus there are those who wonder, is there life outside the dome or is the world still consumed by fire? When one of Wren's friends escapes the confines of the dome, he is burned alive and put on display as a warning to those seeking to disrupt the dome’s way of life. But Alex’s final words are haunting. “The sky is blue.”  What happens next is a whirlwind of adventure, romance, conspiracy and the struggle to stay alive in a world where nothing is as it seems. Wren unwittingly becomes a catalyst for a revolution that destroys the dome and the only way to survive might be to embrace what the entire society has feared their entire existence.

Waiting on Rebel Heart

I put off reading the first book, Blood Red Road, for ages, but once I picked it up, I was hooked. Fortunately, I don't have too much longer to wait for the sequel.

Rebel Heart
by Moira Young
Margaret K. McElderry

October 2012

It seemed so simple: Defeat the Tonton, rescue her kidnapped brother, Lugh, and then order would be restored to Saba’s world. Simplicity, however, has proved to be elusive. Now, Saba and her family travel west, headed for a better life and a longed-for reunion with Jack. But the fight for Lugh’s freedom has unleashed a new power in the dust lands, and a formidable new enemy is on the rise.

What is the truth about Jack? And how far will Saba go to get what she wants? In this much-anticipated follow-up to the riveting Blood Red Road, a fierce heroine finds herself at the crossroads of danger and destiny, betrayal and passion.

Soul Thief review

Soul Thief
by Jana Oliver
St. Martin's Press
August 2011

First line: The Grounds Zero coffeeshop in Atlanta made the most amazing hot chocolate in Atlanta, maybe even the whole world.

17 year-old demon trapper and hot chocolate aficionado Riley Blackthorne is trying to pull herself together after surviving a massive unholy attack which has wiped out a good deal of the demon-trappers in Atlanta. She's still an apprentice trying to prove herself and the stakes are higher than ever. Her father has been killed and reanimated as a zombie-like servant, there's a criminal cover-up with useless holy water on the market, her financial woes are worse than ever and naturally, her love life is a mess. In order to save her boyfriend Simon's life, Riley makes a deal with Heaven - she'll owe them a favor, a big one, in exchange for his health back. Beck, her father's former apprentice still has a crush on her, even if he won't admit it to himself.

To be honest, it doesn't feel like the plot moves terribly quickly. Riley spends a lot of time searching for her father, and is still trying to rally the crusty old salts who run the Trappers Guild to get together and do something about the ineffective holy water. Beck makes a somewhat ill-advised decision to start dating a snaky reporter, Justine. Simon isn't too grateful or loving towards Riley, which pushes her right into the arms of Ori, a supernaturally hot rogue demon hunter (or so he claims.)

I really enjoy a book that has a very firm sense of place. The first book in this series, The Demon Trapper's Daughter, captivated me, and I loved reading a dystopian version of the city featuring so many familiar landmarks. I'd have to compare this to Lauren Oliver's Delirium, even though the plot is quite different, it's also a post-Peak Oil world, where cars are a rarity. If you like the first book, this one is definitely worth taking a look at.

I borrowed this book from the library.