The Scorch Trials

Book Title: The Scorch Trials

Author: James Dashner

Series: The Maze Runner #2

Date Started: October 11th 2014

Date Completed: October 17th 2014

Genres: Dystopian, Thriller, Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, Mystery

Rating: Three stars

Review:

I did enjoy The Scorch Trials, but after being told the series definitely picked up after the first book, I was quite disappointed in the end. I expected something that would explain the previous book, as well as introducing new conflicts and mysteries to conclude the series, but it seemed less eventful that The Maze Runner. I preferred the previous book, personally, but even so I'm looking forward to the last instalment in the series.

After surviving the Maze Trials, Thomas and the Gladers think they're finally found safety, but when they wake up from their haven to an empty building and a new addition to their group, it seems that perhaps their fight for their freedom isn't quite over. Now they must face the Scorch and its monsters if they want to finally be out of the clutches of WICKED.

Dashner has never been my favourite writer, and the style isn't really overwhelming improved for the second book. The main problem I had was both the overuse of slang that made the narration just seem childish, and the rushed plot. It seemed like everything is made up as it goes along and so there's a lot of little bits that don't get cleared up and it's very disjointing as a reader. (Admittedly this does compliment atmosphere of the book obviously, but it becomes very frustrating after a bit.)

I really enjoyed the start and end of the book, but the middle was quite hard for me to go along with. I really like having either drastic mystery or quite plausible events, and for me The Scorch Trials just didn't have enough sense made from what happened, and not enough unknown for it to be exciting. (I also found the set-up of the 'experiment' quite questionable and not really developed enough to end up getting results anyway.) The continuous problem from this was really that none of what happened was really significant to the overall story, and we ended up in a very similar place at the end as we were at the beginning.

In addition, I forgot that there was a threat for most of the story, as everything was quite conveniently worked out. The boys either got something wrong and gave up to move onto something else, or solved problems very quickly and events moved on too quickly. The Scorch didn't have any lasting affects on the Gladers; the Cranks weren't really that much of an issue, and WICKED itself seemed very detached from the overall story. I think a lot of this happened because things weren't explained or featured enough for me to understand the impact they could possibly have on the characters.

climax was good, but the ending annoyed me

For me, the best parts - and the main thing that keeps bringing me back to the stories - are the characters. Though of course they kill have their flaws, their personalities are interesting, and their development arcs are what really drive the book.

Thomas, though a good protagonist, can sometimes be an idiot. On the other hand, I do actually enjoy a hero that doesn't ever really know what he's doing, and genuinely acts on his instincts and often gets things wrong. It's become quite common to have heroes that are unsure and mess up, but Dashner makes Thomas really seem he's only going on what he guess.

Newt is definitely my favourite character of the book. Though he isn't in it much, I think he's made to stand out from the rest of the characters and his attitude to the others is a nice relief from the typical doomed conversations. Minho's definitely another of my favourites, but I did feel he was a bit neglected and dismissed as the leader.

I was also a bit underwhelmed with Teresa's inclusion, as I didn't really see the point of it. This went for the new inclusions of Brenda and Jorge: I think they'll become more key to the story in the future, but at the moment we aren't given enough information or time around them to know what they're like.

I was able to get through this book very quickly, mainly due to the writing, but the fast-paced story definitely helped. On the other hand, I didn't really think anything was focused on for long enough to really get into the moment and appreciate the events, so by the end it didn't feel like a whole lot had happened.

Even though I'm not a huge fan of Dashner's writing or the plot lines of this series, the characters really draw the interest back in for me. Even so, there's a nice different kind of concept for dystopians and adventure than to what I think we're used to these days. This isn't the kind of series you can read in any order, and it's the kind of thing where, even if you don't particularly enjoy the main duration, you still really want to know what happens next.

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Heir of Fire

Book Title: Heir of Fire

Author: Sarah J. Maas

Series: Throne of Glass #3

Date Started: September 11th 2014

Date Completed: October 10th 2014

Genres: Fantasy, Action, Adventure, Romance

Rating: Five stars

Review:

Heir of Fire hasn't been my favourite instalment in the Throne of Glass series so far, but I still loved it. For me, it was a filler book, which is something I am not a fan of, but Maas managed to create enough plot to get the characters where they needed to be so it was still entertaining to read.

Celaena Sardothien has to finally stop running from her past, and face the responsibility resting on her shoulders as her birthright. As instability ravages the world and the assassin hides across the sea it becomes clear that Celaena must fight for her life and her people to prevent the King from overtaking everything. While Chaol and Dorian struggle with the balance of power in Adarlan, Celaena must learn to control her powers to unveil the secrets hidden around her.

I still love Maas' writing, and there isn't much I can say that I haven't praised before. There's a brilliant perception of characters and human nature in these books which allows Celaena's character to become even more realistic and dark, setting it apart from the majority of Young Adult novels on offer in my opinion. But there's always something more going on than just the main story for the characters; politics is a driving influence, and smaller issues play on their minds and change the way they think. The world just comes to life when Maas describes or orchestrates anything.

Heir of Fire was not my favourite book in the series because it was a filler book. If you read my reviews you know that I hate the idea of books being there mainly for the purpose of putting characters into places for future events - any reader should be able to pick up any novel and entertained at least without knowing all the little details around it. However, though I was conflicted on the rating for this book, I believe that Maas did honestly create an engaging story in the process of getting the story where she wanted it to be. I will also forgive it because you can tell the next book is going to be groundbreaking for Young Adult.

One of the things that didn't really work for me was the fact that there were various little stories running through the novel to show where each character was, but sometimes they just weren't necessary. Others also felt neglected and underdeveloped to focus on the main plot lines. It also because a predictable at times.

On the other hand, once I made it through the first part of the novel, things really kicked off and I started reading very quickly just to know what happened next. This was what I was used to from the Throne of Glass story, and it was just a shame I hadn't still been as excited as I was when I first picked the book up.

Finally, the ending of the book was far more dramatic than I could have imagined, even though I saw some of it coming. Though the climaxes were weirdly structured (with one story's climax finished, then another one, followed by the last one when more tension could have been made by having them simultaneously) it definitely left an impact on me and completely changed the direction of the books.

The characters were the one thing that really secured the five star rating for me. I was disappointed in most other areas, and though there were still a few little holes for me in this department, the people of this book are still the shining element to the series.

If it's possible, I think I grew to love Celaena even more in this book. Her character arc becomes so complex and dark, and for some reason that let me connect with her even more. How she develops with her experiences, how she acts with new characters, how she struggles with her past and future - it's all just so interesting to me and it's so nice for there to be a female character that has so many sides and such depth and isn't actually a 'good' person.

Rowan is definitely one of my new favourite characters. Right from the beginning I knew he was going to be fascinating and have a huge impact on the plot. But my absolute highlight for him would have to be his relationship with Celaena. Again, I adore there being such a close, intimate relationship between the two without it having to be romantic, or have the awkward 'do you like me?' moment.

I was a little disappointed about how Chaol's story slowed way down compared to most of the others, but I still was interested in how he progressed and affected the story.

Aedion is the character that I'm most looking forward to in the future. When he was first introduced I wasn't sure whether to trust him, and there's still that danger around him now. But I think he's going to be a big part in future story lines and I'm very curious as to how he changes the other characters.

My least favourite characters this time had to be Dorian and Sorscha. I wasn't really a fan of Sorscha when she was first introduced, but I appreciated the diversity of characters. But when Dorian's story started to become only about their relationship I got more annoyed and I was disappointed that Maas didn't twist my predictions and catch me by surprise like she usually does.

This book took me forever to read, mainly because of the fact I started college and the workload is quite frankly terrifying. However, I do think that because of the very slow start at the beginning of the book until around halfway through, I wasn't unable to put it down. While the whole book was a filler, the first part was even more of a filler for the second part - so all in all it became a lot of information you needed to remember given in not the most interesting way.

However, Throne of Glass remains one of my favourite book series' of all times. It combines all my favourite genres (fantasy, action, adventure, mystery) with amazing characters that go through some really impressive story arcs. I can tell the next book is going to be absolutely amazing now that everyone's in their carefully placed positions. If you haven't started this series yet, do, because it's only going to get better.

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The Young World

Book Title: The Young World

Author: Chris Weitz

Series: The Young World #1

Date Started: September 7th 2014

Date Completed: September 9th 2014

Genres: Dystopian, Thriller, Action, Adventure

Rating: Two stars

Review:

I wasn’t expecting The Young World to blow me away, but I thought it would be entertaining and slightly more series to the typical dystopian setting with kids running around in groups. Unfortunately, I was wrong. This book ended up feeling actually quite childish in most aspects and I just had to put it down because I was getting so caught up in everything but the story.

Jefferson is the leader of one of the teenage gangs roaming New York after the illness took out all the younger and older people. No one knows why it happened, but Jefferson and his tribe are too busy protecting themselves and the people they love from the gun cults and mock-militia ready to threaten them around every corner to have time to work it out.

The main reason I wasn’t able to stick with this novel was the writing style. There were far too many bad habits in the narrative and it felt both like the author was being lazy and was trying too hard.

The little bits of script just tampered with the flow of the writing too much for me, and I don’t understand how it contributed anything to the overall voice. Furthermore, the narrative was trying too hard to mimic that of a teenager: it was just the stupid things they thought about in their situation, but also the overuse of slang words; jumping back and forth between various things; italics representing the character's thoughts when you’re already reading from their direct perspective! It came to the point where the narrators just became unbelievable, childish and frankly annoying.

As far as I read, I couldn’t find any direction in the story. There was an awful lot of information dumping - with no real explanations for the important stuff, and the incompetent character relaying it - and no threat or fear that I connected with. There was basically no build up, if any, to events so even when something that I assume would be significant in the grand scheme of things happened, it gave no more impact than the rambling explanations.

The continuity was also a little all over the place (I’d like to know how they can use this vast collection of weapons) and quite honestly the romance was ridiculous - if you could even qualify blurting out love with a mechanical nature within the first couple of chapters romance.

I’m sad to say I didn’t connect with any of the characters, and due to the number of strange nicknames in quick recession most of the people just blended into one since I couldn’t see any defining qualities.

My one big moan about this book was the very typically male portrayal of the girls. I loved the fact that the main - and pretty much only female lead - was kick ass, but that doesn’t mean that that’s all she’s worth as a character and person. I’m not really happy with her being the ‘slightly unhinged girl-power chick’ and then all the others girls being practically non-existent. (And I’m not convinced that the protagonist disapproving of girls being sold for livestock makes up for the fact that it’s never mentioned again and he does nothing about it.)

I started skim reading very quickly, and like I said, eventually gave up on the book. Pace-wise it wasn’t that nothing was happening, it was just that the things that did happen weren’t thrilling or exciting and the plot didn’t seem to be progressing.

It’s a shame that I didn’t enjoy The Young World. I think I was expecting it to be much more mature Young Adult reading than it ended up being. So perhaps if you’re just getting into YA fiction, or are a fan of Gone (which I also didn’t like, but would compare this to) you might get along with it better than I did.

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Wonderstruck

Book Title: Wonderstruck

Author: Brian Selznick

Date Started: August 26th 2014

Date Completed: September 1st 2014

Genres: Adventure, Mystery

Rating: Four stars

Review:

Wonderstruck is another brilliant story from the mind of Mr Selznick, and though it wasn't as engaging as I'd expected, it was still a lovely story accompanied with stunning illustrations.

Ben dreams of the wolves coming to get him, every night. But when he finds a book in his old house, with a mysterious inscription to a father he has never known, and a bookmark with an address all the way in New York, his desire to piece together his past grows. And when he's struck by lightning and loses his hearing, it's the final push he needs to run away and solve the mysteries around his childhood, and why the wolves are always waiting for him when he closes his eyes.

I adore Selznick's writing style, for nothing more than the pure passion for what's writing about. It's so clear when you read any of his work that he has a deep interest in film, history and museums, and an even bigger love for books. This comes through in their involvement in the story, as well as how they're described. It's not often I read a book and I find such a similar person to myself telling me the story.

Another thing that must be mentioned are the illustrations. Whilst being completely and utterly stunning, and portraying an extremely vivid story all by themselves, the pictures are used very cleverly in this book. The character being followed is deaf, and therefore through the drawings we see what life is like for her: you can't hear pictures, and so this allows the reader to relate very closely with the character when they previously wouldn't have had a similar perspective on the story.

I thought the plot line in Wonderstruck was very nice, but not amazing. Essentially, two different stories are being told: Ben's story through the narrative, and then Rose's through the illustrations. The combination of these two stories prevented either one from becoming slow and boring, and the time jumps were particularly interesting to me. Finally, I loved how the two stories drew together at the end and ended up impacting one another quite a bit.

Another element that really impressed me was the inclusion of deafness. It's not something I see a lot of these days, and the way it was included was extremely clever and thorough: little obstacles weren't ignored but the whole story wasn't centered around the fact the characters were deaf. It was just another part of them that was readily accepted by the writer and therefore reader.

Pretty much every character in this story is wonderfully endearing and they each contribute their own little things to the story. However, I felt quite distant and detached from all of them: they didn't show a huge variety of sides and emotions that I picked up on. I think this is probably one of the reasons I didn't enjoy Wonderstruck quite as much as I expected.

Wonderstruck was quick and easy to get through (though I did end up putting it on hold for a few days due to a new release). Since half of it is illustrations, you can choose to fly through it or slow down and appreciate the drawings more. Either way, the story wasn't rushed and actually seemed quite short to me.

I would recommend Wonderstruck to anyone who has a passion for museums, art and writing. While the story is lovely, it's the words and illustrations that makes Selznick's books so wonderful. However, I would recommend reading The Invention of Hugo Cabret to get into his novels first, as his portrayals can be richer than this.

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The Dying of the Light

Book Title: The Dying of the Light

Author: Derek Landy

Series: Skulduggery Pleasant #9

Date Started: August 28th 2014

Date Completed: August 31st 2014

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Action, Thriller, Mystery, Comedy, Horror

Rating: Infinite stars

Review:

I don't think I'll ever really be ready to write a review for this book.

Indescribable. Epic. The perfect end.

There's also nothing I can really say without giving the whole thing away.

If you know and love this series, know that it broke its own sky-high standards.

Mr Landy, you are an evil genius, but thank you so much. For everything.

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The Kiss of Deception

Book Title: The Kiss of Deception

Author: Mary E. Pearson

Series: The Remnant Chronicles #1

Date Started: August 17th 2014

Date Completed: August 26th 2014

Genres: Romance, Adventure, Mystery, Fantasy

Rating: Three stars

Review:

There's been quite a bit of hype recently over this book, and I was really looking froward to picking it up. Unfortunately, however, while I think this story had so much potential, it fell infuriatingly flat of anything exciting and engaging for me.

Lia, the First Daughter of the House of Morrighan, is about to be wed off to secure a political alliance. But in a desperate bid for freedom, she flees on her wedding day, and travels across the country to settle in distant town. But her father won't just forget her defiance, and soon Lia has to be wary of everyone, even the two men lodged in the Inn she works at. But one is an assassin sent to kill her, the other the prince betrothed to her. Can she discover their secrets before it's too late?

The writing had it's fair amount of faults for me. It was very straightforward, which isn't always a bag thing, but I felt like there was actually the baselines of an interesting world, but it's never explored enough to be worth anything.

Furthermore, the narrative just wasn't engaging to me, and each different character sounded exactly the same when they led a chapter. For this reason, I think the book would really have benefitted from a third person perspective, rather than first. This also would have been incredibly useful in the 'who's the assassin, who's the prince' mystery that the book is known for. As it is, it messes up the continuity and characters with a constant, straightforward style in a book that's supposed to be about working out who's who!

Not much actually happens in this book. And that's fair enough, since the main plot device to supposed to be working out the prince and assassin's identity. The problem is, that mystery was solved for me in the first few chapters, because there's very little depth and ingenuity to it. Literally, the first descriptions you get are very obviously pointing to each identity. (Maybe it could've at least tried to give no - or at least little - information about them!)

Something else that really irritated me was the fact that, realistically, Lia should've been dead within the first hundred pages. She's constantly getting followed, and completely unaware of it, and she's constantly doing stupid things. I won't rant, but honestly, she should be dead.

Another problem I had with this book was the vast amounts of information dumping, that wasn't really relevant anyway. The majority of the book is Lia relaying various childhood memories and dragging explanations of a tradition that doesn't end up being very useful. I've already said I had trouble with Lia's narrative, and so going through longish paragraphs about this that and the other just made me skim read, and I actually didn't really absorb any of it.

The continuity also lacked in various places: sometimes Lia was guilty, but the next second she'd be completely fine; she suddenly just knows how to defend herself (don't get me wrong, it's great to have a heroine who can handle herself. But HOW can she handle herself in this situation?).

Oh, and the instant love was just ridiculous.

However - yes there is something that went very well actually - the last pages were brilliant. I considered giving up this book several times while reading it, but I was skim reading most of it, so I was getting through it reasonably fast. I'm very glad that I kept going, because the last few pages were great. Suddenly there was something happening, and the characters finally got conflicted. It is such a shame because if the whole book had been like that, I probably would've given it five stars. (It's now even more annoying because I really want to know what happens next.)

I think, if the characters had had individual personalities and qualities, I might have been won over. But they didn't and I found it really hard to connect to any of them or feel anything towards them apart from annoyance.

I disliked Lia right from the beginning: she seemed bratty and stupid and far too proud. But, at the time that was fair enough, and I was willing to wait for some character development. However, as the story went on, and she continued to be stupid, I pretty much gave up on her. It also really annoyed me that everyone fell in love with her in thirty seconds - she was just too perfect.

Rafe and Kaden blended into each other for me. In fact every character other than the protagonist were there for Lia, and didn't have their own stories or personalities. Neither really showed any indirect remorse or conflict between their duties and what they wanted. And when you really don't get on with the main character and everyone else is pretty much pointless, it makes it very hard to read a book.

Not much happened throughout the whole book, and the only point that that was okay, because of vaguely interesting narrative, was right at the end. But for most of this novel I skim-read because I got bored very easily and just couldn't connect with any of the characters.

While I did not enjoy The Kiss of Deception itself, until the last few pages, I do think future books might achieve the potential available more than the first instalment. To be honest, there's nothing incredibly wrong with the book, it just annoyed me how good it could have been. If you like romance-driven stories and not so much depth in characters and plot, maybe you'll get on with it more than me.

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The Shock of the Fall

Book Title: The Shock of the Fall

Author: Nathan Filer

Date Started: August 10th 2014

Date Completed: August 12th 2014

Genres: Contemporary

Rating: Five stars

Review:

I've never read anything quite like The Shock of the Fall, and I'm still not sure how to do justice to it in a review. There's plenty of books out there that try to achieve what Filer's story shows, but no rivals I'm aware of come near to the honesty of presentation in this book. Of course there were little faults here and there. But I was blown away to be honest.

Simon died about ten years ago. Matthew still thinks it's his fault, even when Simon tries to get him to play like old times again. Matthew is schizophrenic, but he's not an idiot. He knows why he's in the ward, why his life is just a repeating cycle. He knows a lot of things, about people, himself and other things, but he doesn't know anything either. So he writes it down instead. And this is what he writes.

I love Filer's writing style. At first I couldn't really pick out what it was about it, and I'm still not entirely sure. But the embedded narration has got to have something to do with it. I'm not a huge fan of first-person narratives because I think they can easily become one-sided and biased and take a lot of potential away from a story. But Filer deliberately used this to show Matthew as a character, but also the cause and affect of everyone around him - which is something really important in a story about mental illness.

The time jumps really helped this as well; not only when Matt skipped parts of his story, but also the little reminders that he's writing retrospectively and the locations he's in at the time. (Even the fonts added to this affect! There was a subtle difference between how he wrote on his typewriter back home, and then the computer at the ward.)

Matthew's character was just built up so well through the writing in my opinion: the repetition, and then confession that he copied and pasted parts just brought his personality to life. Finally, the gradual descent of his style as he got worse and better, and worse again was very well done.

The Shock of the Fall doesn't have a storyline, as such. It's more a string of events and thoughts that slowly develop and change. But, for this reason, everything you read is relevant, and has application to the rest of the novel and the characters. I absolutely loved this: it got rid of the issue that things might have been going slowly and nothing was really happening. Because everything that happened meant something to Matthew. So he wrote it down.

I loved the brutality of the events, and then the tenderness, and the raw honesty. When you can put soppy scenes, and then scary scenes, and disturbing ones, and sad ones etc in the same book and have it work, I don't know how, but it just makes everything so much more interesting and, strangely, realistic.

The ending, whilst not being what I expected at all, fitted really well with the novel as a whole. It's not a big climax, and it's not a big cliff-hanger. It's just enough to tie up some strings, but leave enough hanging. And it's not happy, but it's not sad. It's uncertain. And that sums up the whole thing for me pretty nicely.

I thought all the characters in this book were very realistic, and each added to Matthew's situation and personality, and therefore the story. However, at the same time, they all had their own stories and troubles, which I think is sometimes overlooked, especially in books focusing so heavily on one person's particular struggles. (I also adore the short time we had Annabelle. I loved her character and her reaction to Matt and I just wish there was more of her.)

Matt was a great protagonist. His narrative was so down to earth and it hit home far more than once. This made his character so much easier to relate to, despite the progressive and subtle breakdown in his storytelling (this was also amazing structurally). He therefore seemed far more real, but at the same time I could see his faults where he overlooked things about himself and other people. But sometimes he did too, which, again, endeared his character to me more because it's something that happens so much to myself.

This novel doesn't really have a storyline, but even so I got through the book very quickly. The jumping chapter lengths, while adding a great affect to the narrative, did slow me down a few times. However, the writing is still easily readable.

I kept thinking about my review of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time when writing this, and just like then, I feel like The Shock of the Fall is a book that everyone reads at some point. Not only is it an amazingly interesting book, but it's also incredibly honest and realistic about taboos in society. Everyone should read this. Everyone.

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