If there is one book that lovers of “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” would love to own, it’s this book: “Middle-Earth: From Script to Screen, Building the World of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.” This weighty (literally, maybe five pounds) book is filled with photographs, information, architectural drawings, and quotes about the entire process in creating the Tolkien world.
“Warcross” by Marie Lu features a young girl who is a bounty hunter in a world where virtual reality has eclipsed real life. Hooked yet? Read the first chapter and you’ll be drawn into the life and struggle for survival along with Emika Chen, whose ability to hack into the virtual world and fight in the real world have helped her survive — barely — in New York.
Emika’s mother bailed on Em and her father when Em was young, and her father died before Em was a teenager. She’s a loner who has had to rely on herself and only herself. She hasn’t paid her rent for months, and the eviction notice is on the door. If she can just bring down one big bounty, she’ll be set. But things don’t work out, and Em doesn’t know what to do.
Bruce Hale is a master when it comes to using colorful, figurative language in his writing. “Mutant Mantis Lunch Ladies,” his sequel to “The Curse of the Were-Hyena,” is filled with great imagery. When narrator Carlos describes his best friend, Benny, and himself he says, “…we’d been just your typical comics nerds — as plain as white rice on an ivory plate.” He also noticed that “time was running out like Halloween candy in November.”
Similarly clever imagery is sprinkled throughout the story. Carlos is a diverse main character. His abuelita (grandmother) lives with them during the week when Carlos’ mother is in Los Angeles with his budding television star younger sister. Abuelita is not only an amazing cook (she makes mole), but she plays the saxophone and sprinkles Spanish in her dialogue.
“A Million Worlds With You” is the last book in the “Firebird” trilogy by Claudia Gray that started with “A Thousand Pieces of You,” and continued with “Ten Thousand Skies Above You.” The trilogy ends just as beautifully as it began.
Marguerite is an artist who grew up in a family of scientists. She is the odd one out, but her family is wonderful and loving. Her parents are immersed in science, and Josie is an adventure-loving, brilliant older sister. Two of her parents’ graduate students, Theo and Paul, are practically part of the family.
The trilogy that began with “The Queen of the Tearling,” continued with “The Invasion of the Tearling,” now ends with “The Fate of the Tearling.” The books seem almost prescient — especially the last book.
The world in the trilogy is a new continent where a group of people live together. They are those who left a world filled with violence, the rich and the rest — who lived horrible lives, to follow a visionary, William Tear, to a better place. But the “better place” is not better.
In fact, the world in which Kelsea, the Queen of the Tearling lives, is one in which “… there are drugs, there is an extremely corrupt Church (in this book the author shows just how corrupt), and there is unmitigated evil.”
Kelsea often has visions of the past. She sees the pre-crossing world through the eyes of Lily, William Tear’s lover, who was in an abusive marriage. In this world, the rich become even richer, the poor and marginalized become even more so, and women are deprived of their rights. Lily is married to a wealthy man, but he is — or becomes — weak and cruel. Because of her society’s anti-female rules, there is nowhere for Lily to go, and she has no means of escape from her awful marriage.
In this book, Kelsea has visions of a different character from the past. She is someone who was there at the beginning of the new world. Through her eyes, Kelsea sees the beginning of unrest in the small colony. She sees the cause of it, and the reader is left wondering whether mankind is capable of the utopia William Tear envisioned.
Voyagers is a series of six books about a group of twelve-year-old kids flying a mission across space to rescue a dying planet Earth. The six books are written by six best-selling children’s authors. Each book features a different adventure to a different planet — and the challenges and dangers don’t only come from battling aliens and nature on each planet. Sometimes, the danger may come from their fellow travelers because the Alpha team finds out that there is another team on the job — in a different ship and with a far more nefarious plan.
Finally, the ending to the young adult scifi series “The 5th Wave,” is out. The author, Rick Yancey, has kept readers wondering what the true nature of the 5th wave will be. The first few “waves” have decimated the Earth’s population killing 7.5 billion people. The very first wave was a massive EMP, electromagnetic pulse that killed all electronics. Planes fell from the skies, cars lost power, all electricity shut down. The next wave was when “The Others,” the aliens, dropped some kind of huge rod onto one of Earth’s fault lines resulting in earthquakes and huge tsunamis that destroyed all Earth’s coastlines and those who lived there. The 4th wave consisted of humans called Silencers, a group of humans who while fetuses were downloaded with alien memories and technology. They didn’t know about it until they turned 13. That’s when they began to kill other humans. Other humans know about the Silencers, but because they look and act just like other humans, they are virtually impossible to detect until they start killing people.
Cassie and her group of allies — some are friends and some are not — are trying to survive. Cassie and her brother Sam survived the first waves, and she is with him in this last book, along with former crush Ben Parish (also known as Zombie), and Evan, who is a Silencer but who fell in love with Cassie and will do anything to protect her. Others include Ringer, Poundcake, and Dumbo (names they were given at the military “camp” that trains children to be killers of other humans).
The aliens who caused this devastation have been watching Earth for ten thousand years and have watched the gradual deterioration of the planet under mankind’s less-than-stellar stewardship. Finally, in order to save the planet, they create a series of events designed to decimate Earth’s population. One of the most fanatic of the alien followers is Colonel Vosch, the Nazi-like, unfeeling, sadistic person in charge of the military camp where Cassie and her group each have spent some time. Eventually, every character in the book meets up with him.
For those who read the first two books as soon as they were published, it’s probably better to reread those books before attempting the third and final book. Yancey creates a group of characters and a plot and subplots that are complicated and interwoven. The only way to really remember and know what is going on is to have recently read (or at least skimmed) the first two books.
Yancey’s writing is just as solid and descriptive as in the first two books. The story is told all in first person narrative from several different points of view. It allows the reader to understand the characters’ motivations and actions. What Yancey does beautifully is reveal the human condition. Some of us take whatever we can get in times of trouble and, like Vosch, use power to ensure survival at all costs. Other humans realize that individual survival at any cost is not always the most courageous option. When humanity is in danger, what is one life worth?
None of the characters is perfect. Cassie kills an unarmed soldier in the first book, but this incident and the reason she killed him are replayed throughout the series. She thinks of those issues when she is forced to make difficult choices. What is one life worth? A valid question and one that is worthy of discussion and reflection.
Yancey makes a statement here about the fact that when hundreds or thousands of people die, we can somehow become inured to those deaths. But when one person dies in front of us — it can be a revelation. 7.5 billion people is an unimaginable number, but a little girl with a bomb in her throat is just one person. What is her life worth? What is the value of the lives of the children who are brainwashed into carrying bombs of their own and detonating them? That really happens in our world. Those questions are certainly thought-provoking; and young adult readers should be carefully and painstakingly considering them.
What finally vanquishes the aliens and their evil plan to exterminate the human race? No spoilers here, but it’s a human emotion that resonates in each book. It’s the strongest human emotion there is.
Please note: This review is based on the final hardcover book provided by the publisher, Putnam, for review purposes.
Rating: 4 stars
“Unidentified Suburban Object” by Mike Jung is the story of a girl of Korean descent who is frustrated by her white-bread town and the fact that most of its inhabitants don’t know Korean people from Chinese or Japanese people.
Chloe is frustrated by the stereotypes, which include calling her by the name of a famous Korean violinist just because she plays the violin. In a sense, Chloe does fit the stereotype because she is a fierce student and competitive musician. She must be first chair in the orchestra, and she must get the best grades on all assignments.
Chloe is fascinated by her Korean heritage, but she is frustrated by her parents’ refusal to talk about being Korean. When she makes Korean food, they barely even notice. When she wears a traditional Korean dress (that she bought online), they don’t notice. When a new teacher arrives who is Korean, Chloe is thrilled that she will finally have someone to talk to about being Korean.
But a class assignment about family stories leads to a huge shock — and a huge surprise — for Chloe (and the reader). When she loses her Korean identity, Chloe is not sure just how she fits in.
“Unidentified Suburban Object” is well-written. It features an authentic first person narration. Middle grade readers will find the story entertaining and — one might hope — thoughtful. Not only is diversity discussed in the story, it also illustrates a student who is driven to be the best even at the expense of her classmates. Is that healthy? This would be a great choice for a group read to be discussed with the teacher.
Please note: This review is based on the final paperback book provided by the publisher, Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic), for review purposes.
Rating: 4 stars
This “Voyagers” book, the second, is written by Robin Wasserman, who does a masterful job following up on “Project Alpha,” D. J. MacHale’s first book in the series (and he’s a tough act to follow). The series is about four pre-teens who are chosen through a rigorous competition to be the astronauts who head out light years into space to save Earth. In the first book, all eight competitors are introduced. In “Game of Flames,” the crew of the four winning kids heads for the second planet, from which they need to extract something that will eventually lead to a formula to save Earth.
At first, they don’t know that the four kids who were not selected are following them on another spaceship from Earth, but in this story the kids learn many surprising facts — about their mission, their mysterious fellow crew member Chris, and about the four failed contestants. Wasserman continues to build the characters but, Dash remains the protagonist and the person the reader gets to know the best.
Wasserman grabs the chance to do some character development in this book. She does a masterful job of showing that people — even kids — are sometimes much more complex than they might appear to be. Are all “bad guys” really bad? Not necessarily. In this second book in the series, all the characters gain depth and strengths and vulnerabilities that they didn’t show in the first book.
Like the first book, there is plenty of danger, plenty of need for the kids to problem solve, and some humor. This is a great suggestion for reluctant readers, and because the vocabulary isn’t complex, a wide range of readers would find this enjoyable — from fourth grade through seventh or even eighth grade. The next book in the series is “Omega Rising” by Patrick Carman, and it will be available in January, 2016.
Please note: This review is based on the final hardcover book provided by Random House Books for Young Readers for review purposes.
Rating: 5 stars
In “Ten Thousand Skies Above You,” Claudia Gray has accomplished something that is very difficult for many authors to do. She created a sequel (to “A Thousand Pieces of You: A Firebird Novel“) that is every bit as exciting and gripping as the first book in the series. This series is actually a series of accomplishments.
The plot is pure science fiction — it’s about a universe where the technology has been created to travel to alternate universes. The protagonist, Marguerite, is an artist whose parents created the technology. Two of her parents’ graduate students (they are professors) have become very close to her — Theo and Paul. In the first story, Marguerite’s father dies and Paul is thought to be the culprit. No spoilers here, but Theo and Marguerite travel to alternate universes to find Paul and bring him to justice.
The stories are both beautifully put together. The three main characters, Marguerite, Paul and Theo are complex and described in enough detail for the reader to feel like they are real (Marguerite and Paul perhaps more than Theo). But perhaps Gray’s most impressive accomplishment is that in spite of the many alternate universes that they travel to — and there are many — she keeps the plot and the action simple enough that it’s easy to keep track of where they went and what happened.
Often in science fiction and other novels, the plot becomes so complex and with so many characters that it’s difficult for the reader to really keep track of what is going on and who everyone is. There are times when a reader (me) will simply choose not to read the third novel because of the effort involved in trying to keep track of everything.
While rereading (or skimming) the first novel is still recommended before reading this novel, there are enough reminders that it’s not totally necessary. And while it could, possibly, stand on its own and be read without reading “A Thousand Pieces of You,” why miss out on the enjoyment you’d get from reading the first part of the story?
For all of those of us who have thought, “I wonder if in another universe this happened and changed my life,” the possibilities are all there in this book. Each version of Paul, Theo and Marguerite are different — some much more so than others. And while the Paul from Marguerite’s original universe (not ours) believes in destiny, or fate, she begins to wonder.
There are moral issues involved, too. How ethical is it to take over your alternate body in another universe? Especially when, as Marguerite finds out, there could be serious consequences. But the stories are also about espionage and warfare between universes. In one particular universe, Marguerite finds out how serious the stakes are — not only her life but the lives of those who exist in whole universes that could be destroyed.
This book ends with a huge cliffhanger — thank you very much, Claudia Gray! Just as readers were anxious to read this second in the series, they will be even more anxious to read the next book to see how this cliffhanger resolves. Does Marguerite manage to save the universes with the help of Paul and Theo? What happens to the “evil” version of Marguerite’s parents? How does Marguerite choose between Paul and Theo? All these questions and more will — we hope — be answered in the next book.
Please note: This review is based on the final hardcover book provided by the publisher, HarperTeen, for review purposes.
Rating: 4 stars
“The Fate of Ten” is the sixth book in the series that began with “I Am Number Four” by mysterious author (and character) Pittacus Lore. He is one of the Elders from Lorien, the planet that was destroyed by the Mogadorians led by a former Elder from Lorien, Setrákus Ra. Now Setrákus Ra has set his sights on Earth, and his troops have destroyed cities in his determination to gain control over the planet.
But the Legacies are spreading to humans, and he may be getting more than he bargained for when the Lorien teenagers who are still alive and fighting him are joined by others. Sam, John’s (Number Four) best friend, gained his power at the end of the last book, “The Revenge of Seven.” They were joined by Adam, a Mogadorian who hates Setrákus Ra and everything he stands for.
In this book, John comes to some realizations about his Legacy that will change the balance of power in the future books in the series. As with all the books in the series, the action is nonstop. Not all the kids from Lorien are on the same side, and there is the problem with Ella. She is one of them, but she is also the great-granddaughter of Setrákus Ra, and he is determined to keep her close.
The real author of the books could be any of the many anonymous writers who are employed by James Frey, famous for his publication of the “memoir” “A Million Little Pieces.” His company, Full Fathom Five, employs ghostwriters who write young adult books that will have commercial appeal. This series does that, certainly, and several of the books in the series have spent time on bestseller lists.
This is not a stand-alone book and readers must have read the previous stories to know what is happening. But for those who have not yet begun this action-packed, science fiction, middle grade series, it’s a chance to start a new reading adventure. Strap yourself into your favorite seat because you are in for a rocky ride! Enjoy.
“The Power of Six” is the second in the series; “The Rise of Nine” is the third; “The Fall of Five” is the fourth; and “The Revenge of Seven” is the fifth.
Please note: This review is based on the paperback book provided by the publisher, HarperCollins for review purposes.
Rating: 4 1/2 stars
“The Sound of Life and Everything” by Krista Van Dolzer is an interesting mix of historical fiction and science fiction. It’s set in post-WWII in a suburb near Los Angeles. The story begins when Ella Mae Higbee, the twelve-year-old protagonist, and her mother discuss an article, or rather a want ad (young readers will have to be told what those are) about a researcher claiming he can grow a person from practically anything — a lock of hair or some blood. Aunt Mildred’s son’s dog tags have some blood on them from when he was killed in the war.
So when Ella Mae and her mother accompany her aunt to a secret research facility, they are surprised that others are also there to witness huge “horse pills” opening and people emerging. One of the people emerging is not Robby, Aunt Mildred’s son, but a Japanese young man. Aunt Mildred is shocked and disappointed and they leave.
But Ella Mae’s mother is made of sterner stuff and after leaving the boy at the facility, she decides that he should be in a home. So they bring him home. Miraculously, the “engineered” people are created as fully functional beings. At least that’s the idea. So Takuma, the Japanese boy, speaks Japanese but not English.
His addition to the household creates all kinds of difficulties. Ell Mae’s father is not happy with the idea of a Japanese living in their home. The Japanese were so recently the enemy that almost all the people in town are not happy about this. The time period is beautifully described from the effects of living before having air conditioning to how prejudiced many people at that time were. Difficulties going to church and even buying Takuma a pair of pants in their little town are documented.
Ella Mae learns about how difficult it is to do the right thing, but she’s lucky to have a mother who leads the way. The book is a great book for bringing up big ideas in a classroom. There are so many big ideas to discuss, including racism and bigotry, themes of family, what makes someone human, and friendship.
Please note: This review is based on an final hardcover book provided by the publisher, Nancy Paulsen Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, for review purposes.