Summary: A new world order has arrived, as the humanity has been conquered by tiny, silvery aliens who call themselves souls. The vast majority of the population has been implanted with such a creature, but there are still some, very few, who would not give up the fight.

One of them was Melanie, a twenty year-old who preferred taking her own life to being possessed by the enemy. Unfortunately for her, she did not die, and one of the creatures, a veteran one, calling itself Wanderer, was indeed attached to Mel’s brain, in order to access her memories and discover where other unaltered people are hiding. Wanderer is very confident in her abilities, so she is taken very much by surprise when she discovers a wall between the consciousness available to her, and the memories that she should be able to access, but isn’t. That’s a first sign that Melanie’s own self is still there, trapped in a corner of her former own mind, and it is thus that this strange conqueror/conquered relationship begins.

Melanie fills their common mind with images of a man, the man she unconditionally loves and, unable to protect herself from this attack within, Wanderer too starts yearning for this man. In the end, there was only one course of action open to them both: to run away and search for him, in hopes he’s still alive, in hopes they will know where to find him.

General impression
After being as infatuated with Twilight as I was when I first discovered it (alas, before the first movie was made and before the notion of Twihard entered anyone’s mind), it is a wonder I waited so long to get to this book. Now that I did though, I can say I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience, a thing that has actually taken me by surprise since lately everyone’s been harping on and on about how bad Twilight is and how bad a writer Ms. Meyer happens to be. While of course I am not saying she is a master writer, or anything like that, I didn’t find this book badly written at all (although, unlike when reading Twilight, I was keeping an eye on these things). Perhaps I am really bad at detecting badly written prose, but either way I very much liked this book (and I actually think it’s better than Twilight :) )

Characters
Born on the Origin and a visitor on eight other planets, Wanderer is almost like royalty in soul circles. She is so experimented that she considers each new insertion a mere formality. Yet she is very little prepared for the things she is going to find here on Earth, living among humans. I very much loved looking at the humanity through Wanda’s eyes: she starts out believing them a despicable and terrifying species, prone to violence, but little by little, as she starts living among people, and actually gets to know some of them, she begins to feel sorry about the fact that her species has taken their planet from them.

The very same process happens with the human characters too: used to thinking to their invaders as parasites who must be mercilessly destroyed, they are surprised to get to know Wanda, and discover her fair and altruistic nature. Poor thing is badly mistreated at first, almost each important male character hitting her at least once, without thinking twice about it, as they all think her an “it” that does not deserve to live and all that. Speaking of which, my favorite character started out being Jared, because of the fact that at first we only get to see him in Melanie’s fond memories, and she remembers him as a guy who always has a smile on his face, despite the tough life they were leading. However, the real Jared is completely different (understandable the fact that he lost his beloved Melanie to the parasites, but still), quite on the brutal side at first and, while I sympathised with him, I started being quite wary of him also.

And Ian… Ian is an Edward without the glitter and the mind reading. By which I mean to say he has the same way of being intensely in love, so much so that he loses his head sometimes when it comes to protecting his loved one, and the same uncanny ability of always knowing the very right thing to say. So — could I not have liked him? Especially as he was the opposite of Jared whom I wasn’t fond of? :) (speaking of Ian = Edward, there’s also a similarity between Wanda and Bella, as they are both the same selfless to the very extreme; however it’s easier to understand when Wanda is involved as she is a soul, and the souls are peaceful and interested in the welfare of the rest of them like that :) ).

Relationships
My favorite relationship in the book is the one that is formed between Melanie and Wanda: initially in completely opposite camps (Wanda even goes out of her way to do things that annoy Melanie, such as eating her chips dipped in milkshake), they get united by their common purpose (finding Jared and Jamie) and, little by little, not only they become friends but they also start influencing one another’s way of thinking quite a bit: Mel becomes a bit more peaceful, a bit less inclined to act rashly, whereas Wanda learns sarcasm and even gets a bit too fond of it :)

I very much liked what the author did with the main love story: Melanie’s, who loves Jared so much it almost overflows, invading Wanda’s own feelings too. This can turn into quite the philosophical debate: what makes us, us? How much in a person is the soul/self, how much the memories, how much becomes ingrained in the body itself? Some of the best moments of the book I think are those where Mel & her body yearn for Jared, while Wanda’s own mind is captured by someone else. The situation is hard on the male characters too, having to share the same body (there are some scenes that I found rather cute, where each guy holds one of Wanda’s hands), and yet everything is written as believable as can be, in the situation.

Plot
Leaving aside the Melanie/Wanda part, this is also a story of survival in front of adversity, as the people in the story are one of the last pockets of humanity in the world. Sure, this part is not as heavily stressed on as the Mel/Wanda part, but it’s still an interesting thread of the narrative.

Now, while I couldn’t call the plot fast-paced, I found it to be mostly captivating (some people complained that it started out slow, it didn’t feel like it to me as I was hooked by Mel/Wanda’s story from the very beginning). There are some suspenseful moments, and some intense ones too, the very kind I like, so it is probably obvious by now that I had nothing to complain about, plot-wise :)

Setting
One of my favorite parts of the book. The world is just as we know it, with very few changes. One: there’s no more need for money. Each soul has what they call a Calling, a job they’re good at, and he/she does it for free, in order to give something back to the society that feeds them and clothes them for free. Two: there’s no more need for medicine, as the soul society is so advanced that all the illnesses are cured. And three: there’s no more violence (the very reason why the souls started to take over our world was that they wanted to purify it from violence, and, being so many of them, they succeeded). To be honest I would have liked it very much in that world (provided they would have let me be myself, of course).

Thoughts on the title
A very simple one, marking the relationship between Mel and Wanda (one being the host body of the other). I for one think that almost any one of the chapter titles (always one, meaningful word) would perhaps have been a tad better.

Thoughts on the ending
show spoiler

What I liked most
show spoiler

What I liked least
I was a tad disappointed with the alien characters names. While I do get what the author’s been trying to do (I found Sunlight Passing Through the Ice a pretty image to be named after, and Petals Open to the Moon too), I am a bit surprised that everyone’s names actually do mean something, and they actually have aome sort of patterns that let one infer the name owner’s original planet simply after his name. But there’s so many of them (the idea that they conquered planets because of their sheer numbers appeared more than once in the book), so it doesn’t make that much sense of there being that many nice expressions to cover them all. Or perhaps I simply wasn’t fond of the idea and now I’m making up excuses for it :)

Recommend it to?
A tough one, since the author has as many detractors as she got fans, or even more. I’ll just say that if you happen to like dystopias you should at least give it a try, despite whatever you happen to think of Twilight. It is not a perfect book but I do think it’s well worth a read :)

Buy this from amazon.com | Buy this from bookdepository.co.uk | Stephenie Meyer’s official site | The Host RPG Boards

Written by the same author:
Twilight | New Moon | Eclipse | Breaking Dawn | Midnight Sun

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Summary: Young Edward Russett’s life has pretty much been established: he is to marry into an important family and spend his life in their string factory. But a prank gone wrong sends Eddie in the Outer Fringes, in a small town named East Carmine, to conduct a chair census and learn some humility.

And Edward fell in love from the first minute he saw her, a girl his age with a retroussé nose. But not only she wants nothing to do with him, she has a lots of secrets that poor Eddie unwittingly stumbles across in his attempts to know her better and get closer to her.

Sounds boring? Mix in some Pookas, carnivorous trees, painting by numbers, an Apocryphal man, a living road that takes care of itself, and… who knows, perhaps you’ll like it :)

Prepare yourselves to be amazed. Mr. Fforde has created a very original world where everything is based on color. While I was somewhat aware of that, having read some reviews previous to reading the book, I was nevertheless very pleasantly surprised to discover the actual thing.

The world has changed after Something That Happened. Even the people have evolved (or rather devolved) into Homo coloribus, people who can see nothing at night and only a certain set of colors by day. According to colortocracy, the highest ranked people are the ones who can see the most colors, for example a Grey (someone with no color sight to speak of) is lower than a Red (someone who can mostly see red, and very little of the rest), who is lower than a Purple (someone who can see lots of red and blue).

The people’s very names are based on this system too, as anyone who can see color gets to pick an appropriate name (like Russet, or deMauve, or McMustard; my favorite name was Floyd Pinken), whereas the Greys have to contend with using their own address as a last name (G-23 or G-8). Even the diseases are treated by showing people certain colors: what we know as doctors are called swatchmen there, and their medicine cabinets have been replaced by swatches of colors. Making me a wee bit dreamy as you have to agree it would simplify seeing a doctor tremendously :)

One of the elements I love in Dystopian books (or other forms of SciFi) is when the author manages to make the reader as familiar with current technology as can be. Mr. Fforde’s ingeniousness has dealt with that very well in this book: the powers that be decide, periodically, to give up some pieces of technology that they deem useless, or subversive, or whatever. The chosen technologies are then Leapbacked, meaning the artifacts are destroyed and no one is allowed to make or use them ever again. The society thus goes backwards and backwards, ending up, at the time the book opens, at a level more or less equivalent, technology-wise, with the beginning of the 20th century. A bit worse actually, since the bicycles have been Leapbacked, the books too, and who knows what else.

The country (world?) is ruled by the Munsell, whose statues are in every village and whose rules are never broken. Everything is constant, from the number of people (carefully guarded) to the shortage of spoons. The rules are incredibly strict, regulating from what outfit can be worn in a certain occasion to the minimum number of meals per day. More on the rules:

“The Word of Munsell was the Rules, and the Rules were the Word of Munsell. They regulated everything we did, and had brought peace to the Collective for nearly four centuries. They were sometimes very odd indeed: The banning of the number that lay between 72 and 74 was a case in point, and no one had ever fully explained why it was forbidden to count sheep, make any new spoons or use acronyms. But they were the Rules—and presumably for some very good reason, although what that might be was not entirely obvious.”

Unsurprisingly, loopholery abounds, people in charge always finding ways to do what they want (usually by declaring some things as being something else; my favorite example is the “chicken is a vegetable” one but there were more).

And the spoons, let’s not forget the spoons. For some reason spoons are missing from the list of items allowed to be manufactured, so the number of spoons is always constant (or even decreasing if we think some may be destroyed, or lost, now and then). So

“Acceptable rules of conduct were suspended when it came to the spoon shortage. The deficit had gotten so bad that prices were all but unaffordable, and dynastic spoon succession had become a matter of considerable interest. Spoons were even postcode engraved and carried on one’s person to eliminate theft, and good table manners, one of the eight pillars upon which the Collective was built, had been relaxed to allow tea to be stirred—shockingly—with the handle of a fork.”

Interestingly enough, although no one can see full scale, color is very important to people. Everything is colored and recolored using pipes with liquid, very expensive colors (colors that can only be obtained from artefacts that have belonged to the Previous, the ones before). And yet, color is going away from the world: everything colored falls prey to the Saturation Dispersion Index (or simply put, is fading). I sort of see a similarity with oil here, as there’s a limited quantity of it, huge yet but still limited, in our world, as are artefacts in theirs, and I thought it a nice touch (and also couldn’t help feeling sorry for those condemned to live in a black and white world after all color is gone).

To speak about the characters a little too (can you see I was head over heels fascinated by the world building?), they too are interesting, most of all by the way they grow throughout the novel. Taking Eddie Russett, he starts out as a naive person, yet with a good heart and always ready to do the right thing. Jane on the other hand is the very opposite: she knows lots of hidden secrets about their seemingly ordered world, and is ready to do anything to reach her purposes (I think I even detected a touch of cruelty in her, given how she treats people who mention her nose). Yet Eddie loves her and gradually she started to grow on me too (not to mention I was so happy to find such an atypical heroine :) )

Thoughts on the ending: show spoiler

What I liked most:
The charm is, as always, in the details. For example I have been wondered for a bit why the people in the book use the word Beigemarket instead of black market. And then it hit me: black is not a color, so it would not exist in a color-ruled world :) (speaking of beige, for the people in the book it is the color equivalent to Hell — I imagine it is so because it is so complete and utterly boring, but I may be wrong).

Other such details I revelled in were (marked as spoilers in case you want to find them for yourself):
show spoiler

What I liked least: I have found nothing to complain about. :)

Recommend it to? Anyone who loves dystopias, anyone interested in quirky worlds. Anyone else should at least give it a try :) (I was bound to say that, I love Fforde in general and I found this book in particular charming).

See also:
Some of the colors featured in the book
Q & A with the author

Written by the same author:
The Eyre Affair
Lost in a Good Book
The Well of Lost Plots
Something Rotten

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The dynamics of the relationship between the three of them has always been complicated, she thinks. Starting from their childhood years, when Ruth was sometimes being difficult and Tommy was sometimes having tantrums. As they grew up, Ruth and Tommy became a couple, and Kathy was always there for them in their time of need.

(if you don’t know what the book’s about you might not want to read further as a major spoiler could follow)

Hailsham seems, at first, like a normal school. Sure, the personnel there does not consist of “teachers” but of “guardians”. Sure, the pupils there have very little contact with the outside world. And there is certainly a good deal of importance placed on developing the pupils creativity. Despite it all, the daily life is just as normal as one would think. Children are being taught, they interact with one another in ways more or less mature, they grow up and, once they reach sixteen, they leave. All seems natural enough… but there are also mentions of things that make the reader wonder just how ordinary the school is.

For example, all the students know that they can never have babies of their own. All students know that they must keep as healthy as possible, and smoking is so taboo that even the pages in the books mentioning it are being ripped out. Every now and then there are talks of having to make donations later on. All clues are pointing to one simple truth (unveiled one rainy day by one of the teachers): the students are not ordinary children. They are just clones that have been created in order to “donate” their organs later on.

But this surprise is not, in my eyes, the central point of the story. For me, everything focuses around the fact (easily forgettable by the people of that time, and understandable too under the circumstances) that these clones are people too. Although they have been brought to life with a specific purpose, and their path in life has already been traced for them, they’re just like everyone else: they argue, they fall in love, they enjoy reading books, etc. A truth that’s obvious to the reader, especially given that the story is narrated by “one of them”, but way less so to the society Kathy, Ruth and Tommy live in.

Here is a quote explaining precisely that (and also a quote that makes everything seem very possible, like it could actually happen the very moment the logistics and technology would be available):

Suddenly there were all these new possibilities laid before us, all these ways to cure so many previously incurable conditions. This was what the world noticed the most, wanted the most. And for a long time, people preferred to believe these organs appeared from nowhere, or at most that they grew in a kind of vacuum. Yes, there were arguments. But by the time people became concerned about… about students, by the time they came to consider just how you were reared, whether you should have been brought into existence at all, well by then it was too late. There was no way to reverse the process. How can you ask a world that has come to regard cancer as curable, how can you ask such a world to put away that cure, to go back to the dark days? There was no going back. However uncomfortable people were about your existence, their overwhelming concern was that their own children, their spouses, their parents, their friends, did not die from cancer, motor neurone disease, heart disease. So for a long time you were kept in the shadows, and people did their best not to think about you. And if they did, they tried to convince themselves you weren’t really like us. That you were less than human, so it didn’t matter.

(I know that cloning people is theoretically possible even today, but right now the moral part is prevalent and the process is forbidden in most countries. And yet I can only too easily imagine how the morals would have to take a step back once it may be discovered that this would be the way to cure cancer, for example. Luckily for everyone involved, as far as I know efforts are being made to grow organs in labs, out of stem cells, so theoretically the need for creating a “whole human” would not exist, ever. Only the future will tell, though, if that is the case or not).

Another issue that got me thinking (and as I write this I have yet to decide what my feelings are on the matter) is whether these children-clones should be told or not about what is in store for them. Should things be kept hidden from them, should they think themselves normal and should they be allowed to have plans for the future? Or should all their little ambitions be nipped in the bud, and the harsh reality fully exposed to them? Hailsham’s head guardian has one way of looking at things, Kathy and Tommy have another. And I… I have no idea who to agree with. Or better yet, who not to agree with as I currently tend to think both sides are as correct as possible, given the circumstances.

As a final consideration, the world the author has created is, towards our characters and their peers, harsh and cruel. A world where twenty-something year olds have to die in order for other people to enjoy longer life. Frightening. But also a world where people no longer die from, say, heart disease (one of the leading causes of death these days). Two sides of the same coin, and there cannot be one without the other. I do hope that there won’t ever be such cases in real life, that we will never “create” people like that, and yet I am lured by the benefits too. It all boils down to the person whose shoes I’m putting myself in whenever I try to decide which option is best. Yay for lab-created organs is all I’ll say.

What I liked most: The way the Hailsham students were told about who they are. show spoiler

I found the last few phrases particularly moving too:
show spoiler

What I liked least: Nothing. It was great.

Recommend it to? Anyone. It saddened me while reading (and a bit after), but that is a sign of how good a book it is.


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Summary: Following her adventure in the pages of Jane Eyre (where she radically improved the ending), Thursday Next is the celebrity of the day. However she does not enjoy her time in the spotlight, and is always happy to get to work on her SO-27 literary assignments. Life in SO-27 is never dull: Thursday uncovers a missing Shakespeare play, travels in a Skyrail wagon with no less than seven women named Irma Cohen, gets shot while trying to save a Neanderthal kidnapper, is told by her time-travelling father that the world is going to end quite soon plus she discovers she’s pregnant, and all in a single day! Unfortunately, this is merely the beginning of it all as the next morning something worse happens: Thursday’s husband Landen has been eradicated (history has been altered so that he died as a child) and she is now being blackmailed by a Goliath Corporation representative, wanting to trade Landen for the Jack Schitt that Thursday has imprisoned in a copy of Poe’s works. Since the Prose Portal has been destroyed Thursday knows no other way to enter the pages of a book, but she loves Landen dearly so she goes straight to Osaka to find the one person she knew could enter books at will.

Character-wise, I found this book to be an improvement compared to the previous one. There are still some characters (the official, SO-something ones) that I sometimes mix up, but there are also a few strong ones I would recognize anywhere. To my surprise Landen Parke-Laine is one of them: I kinda disliked him in the first book (his being engaged with someone else didn’t help), but here he seems a perfect match for Thursday, sharing her sense of humor and caring for her. Actually, Thursday’s whole family is penned in more detail now, making it easier for me to care from them, starting with Thursday’s pet dodo, Pickwick, who turns out to be a girl when he lays an egg, and ending with her mother that, perhaps not surprisingly, has also been a SO-3 officer (higher in rank than Thursday) and still works for them now and then. The utmost revelation is Granny Next, Thursday’s grandmother, one hundred and eight years old and always on the lookout for the most boring piece of literature ever written, so she could rest in peace already (as she puts it, she “got mixed up with some oddness in my youth and the long and short of it is that I can’t shuffle off this mortal coil until I have read the ten most boring classics“), but other than that a very sharp woman that always gives good advice. One of my favorite characters :)

The author stills seems to have had a lot of fun playing with the details of the book (although there are fewer interesting names): for example, the Jurisfiction members communicate to people in the real world via footnotes, using what they call a footnoterphone; uncle Mycroft’s sons are named Wilbur and Orville (like the Wright brothers); the SO-5 agents assigned to following Thursday around (that mysteriously die every now and then) are named Kannon and Phodder, Dedmen and Walking, and (the ones who actually make it ’til the end) Lamb & Slaughter; a very successful TV show of the time is “65 Walrus Street” (21 Jump Street anyone?); and many many more.

There are two parts of the book I have absolutely fell in love with. One is the part where Thursday finds herself in her memories, because it’s the only place where Landen exists now — my favorite part was where she remembers a day when the two of them (she and Landen) went out to tea and, as she couldn’t remember the people around them, everybody looked about the same, matching Thursday’s image of how a person visiting a tea shop should look. Actually, I loved all the memories where Thursday hasn’t paid attention to people or has forgotten them and because of this they look blurry, with undistinguishable features. It seemed to me quite a cool idea, albeit a slightly predictable one. I have also loved everything related to Thursday’s experiences with the Jurisfiction department, where she gets to know Miss Havisham and a lot more fictional characters, including Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights (who Thursday is told used to appear in movies under the name of Buck Stallion). As in Jane Eyre, the characters in books are shown acting their parts whenever needed, and were free to do what they pleased between chapters — I was very much amused to discover many of them having a penchant for technology/anachronistic devices between chapters (not in the least Miss Havisham who became almost a different person in the close proximity of a powerful engine :) ).

The library where the fictional characters reside (their books actually) is the stuff dreams are made of. With 26 floors above ground and 26 floors below (27 according to certain rumors), all covered in shelves, it contains all the books ever written (reminding me of Heaven in What Dreams May Come), and a few more. The floors below ground contain what is called “The Well of the Lost Plots” (the name of the next book in the series, that I imagine takes place there), because there reside all the ideas that have never made it into a book. As every respectable library this too has a very capable librarian: the Cheshire Cat (or the Cat who used to be Cheshire but, since they moved the boundaries is now Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat). I have to admit I am quite curious to read the sequels and discover what happens next, both in the library and outside it).

NEXT DAY UPDATE: Here’s a quote taken from The Well of Lost Plots explaining the library a lot better:

Doesn’t this sound GREAT?

A quote that somewhat illustrates Mr. Fforde’s idea of changes to a timeline:

I regarded my father as a sort of time-travelling knight errant, but to the ChronoGuard he was nothing less than a criminal. He threw in his badge and went rogue seventeen years ago when his ‘historical and moral’ differences brought him into conflict with the ChronoGuard High Chamber. The downside of this was that he didn’t really exist at all in any accepted terms of the definition; the ChronoGuard had interrupted his conception in 1917 by a well-timed knock on his parents’ front door. But despite all this Dad was still around, and I and my brothers had been born. ‘Things,’ Dad used to say, ‘are a whole lot weirder than we can know.’

What I liked most: It is a tie between three elements/details/plot devices. In no particular order, the first one is the Kafka-like trial where Thursday is accused (and, of course, in a true Kafka manner, most of the time she has no idea of what she is actually accused of). The second is the part where Thursday’s father proposes her to take a vacation in a parallel world until her child is born, and that world is our very own (and I dearly regretted that Thursday didn’t accept the offer). And, last but not least, all the coincidences created by A. Hades were quite a nice touch too :)

What I liked least: Can I complain a tiny bit about how little was the present affected by major changes in the past? Not that I mind this one very much since the author explained that the timelines have a way of preserving themselves, but sometimes I did find it a bit difficult to believe that Thursday’s life was exactly the same with or without Landen (other than the place she lived in, of course). Count on me to complain about everything time-travel related that doesn’t change the future as I think it should :)

Recommend it to? Anyone who has read and liked the first book. While this one is my favorite of the two, I am not sure the atmosphere can be understood well enough without knowing the previous events.

This book is a sequel to:
The Eyre Affair

This book is followed by:
The Well of Lost Plots
Something Rotten

Also written by the author:
Shades of Grey

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

Summary: After World War Terminus, living on Earth has become a lot harder. The vast majority of animals have died and the atmosphere is filled with radioactive dust. Most people have emigrated to other planets, encouraged by the U.N. who offered everyone a free android slave as an incentive to move. Understandably enough some of these androids, especially the later models who were more advanced, rebel, kill their owners and move back to Earth, where they do their best trying to pass as humans. Since their doing so is of course illegal, any “andies” found are “retired” ( = shot dead). There is a reward offered for each “andy” killed, so the bounty hunting business is flourishing.

Rick Deckard is such a bounty hunter. Quite a good one too. Feeling the proper way towards his job: androids are outlaws, androids have no empathy, androids may me killed remorselessly. Until one day when he falls in love with a girl android. This opens a door for him to a whole new class of thought, changing his perspective on the surrounding world (even starting to empathize with the androids, attributing them feelings deep down he knew they did not actually possess). Can he keep his job after that, can his life even go on?

In a time where there are very few animals left, their value increases tremendously. They become a symbol of social status and morality (“You know how people are about not taking care of an animal; they consider it immoral and anti-empathic.“). Every person is proud to have and care for at least one animal, however small. People who cannot afford one (such as Rick and his wife since their sheep died) try to make do with electrical replacements, looking realistic enough to fool one’s neighbors (Rick is the not so very happy owner of an electric sheep). In this context the title suddenly becomes a lot more clear (I’ve been wondering about it since I first read there’s a book with this title, ages ago): in a world where caring for an animal means the ability to have good feelings, to care for the others — do androids dream to have an animal? Do they have empathy? Do they care about living things around them? After reading the book, the answer is an obvious no. Rick Deckard seems to think otherwise though (and the same goes for the other main character, J.R. Isidore, a man who befriends some androids out of sheer loneliness).

Another predominant concept featured in the book is that of Mercerism, a religious movement based on the life story of Wilbur Mercer. In short, he was a guy who had the power to revive animals; however that was deemed illegal so when he was caught his brain was treated with a chemical that was supposed to annihilate the part of Wilbur’s brain controlling his special ability. As a result, he felt he ended up in a world filled with dead animals and decay, a world that he tries to escape by climbing a mountain hill. It’s mostly this difficult ascent that his followers are trying to participate in via an empathy box — an electrical contraption with a screen and two handles that when touched put the person touching them in “mental fusion” with Mercer and the rest of the people grabbing the handles of their empathy boxes at the same time. This way, people can share their experiences, feeling others’ joys and pains while making their own felt by others too. I didn’t exactly get what happened when Mercer reached the actual top of the hill he was climbing (did he die?), but whatever it was made the cycle start all over again, forever (I imagine it much like Sisyphus and his stone). Although I found the story to be somewhat vague and hazy, I did like very much its effect on people — they became better, more ready to share, more caring with the helpless (see Mr. Isidore and his spider), so in a way I think that if that empathy box were actually invented the world would actually become a better place.

Since I am mentioning new and interesting concepts, this review would not be complete without the item that fascinated me the most, the “mood organ” (a device that could induce a person various moods, such as the desire to watch TV no matter what’s on or (my “favorite”) “pleased acknowledgement of husband’s superior wisdom in all matters”. While it had many positive emotions to offer, it also had negative ones available (such as a deep, dark depression), making me wonder why that was. Sure, Rick’s wife has found an occasion for using the depressive setting, but nevertheless I would have expected such device to be positive only (you know, like pills in our world, there aren’t any pills to make one miserable while there are plenty of happy alternatives).

In the end, perhaps I should talk a bit about the characters too. I liked Mr. Isidore, the “special” person (he had an IQ too low for him to be allowed to reproduce or leave the planet), because he was, simply put, a nice guy. Not very bright, of course, and quite shy, but he was essentially nice and I liked reading about him. Rick Deckard, having a higher IQ, is a lot more complicated. He is mostly seen struggling with the way he sees the world as opposed to the way he thinks the world should be seen. His empathy levels are good enough for me to like him though (although I do disapprove of him in one particular instance) and I rooted for him throughout the book (although rooted is perhaps a term badly matched to the level of dark moods this book has). I also found interesting the other bounty hunter (Phil Resch) because of his behaviour when confronted to the fact that he might be an android too (the very symbol of what he despised) and for the fact that it seemed to me that his purpose in the book was to represent normality itself as a reference for comparison for Rick (as in Peter was the way every bounty hunter should be; Rick was looking at him and sometimes longed to be the same, because it felt right).

What I liked most: The way the people in the new world related to animals, hands down. The fact that in that world animal cruelty has been eradicated because everyone empathized with all living creatures. Did I mention that I’d really like for the empathy box to be actually invented?

World War Terminus was quite a cool term too. Oh, and the idea of kipple (debris left behind by people moving out, quietly multiplying until taking over whole buildings) was also interesting. I wonder where does the name come from.

What I liked least: Possible spoiler: at one time Mercer appears in front of Rick and tells him something he couldn’t possibly have known. To me it seemed an impossible feat (as I saw Mercer, a religious leader in a story of long ago, as existing only in his followers’ minds not outside them) that sort of detracted from my reading pleasure (although interestingly enough I had no issues whatsoever with rocks flying out of empathy boxes when their users shared Mercer’s ascent as his enemies chased him with rocks).

Recommend it to? SciFi fans, of course. All the rest of the world too since it’s one of the classics.

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

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Summary: Ever since first meeting Dr. Cable the thought of Special Circumstances sent shivers down Tally’s spine. But now she is one of them, a super-capable fighting machine, nearly indestructible and with all the senses ramped up. At last she feels like she is in a place where she belongs. But there’s one cloud up in her sky: the thought that Zane is not with her. If only he’ll prove capable enough to impress Dr. Cable, who’d then agree to turn him into a special too…

But Zane’s brain is still affected and his motor skills aren’t by far what they used to be (or what they should have been for him to be able to impress anyone). What is Tally to do?

Ever since the first few lines Tally reminded me of Bella in Breaking Dawn: too strong and too close to supernatural for me to identify with/relate to her anymore (just think about it, spectacularly enhanced senses, improved speed, ceramic unbreakable bones and… internal software? really??). Add to that the fact that her mind has been messed with again and you’ll probably guess that I didn’t “click” with Tally, nor cared too much about her for most of the book. Actually, the only main character I did like and whose future I was quite interested in was Zane — I found him to be quite the hero, fighting to overcome his disabilities (and truly despised Tally seeing her reaction towards him). As such, I was very sorry that he got so little “screen time” (since the storyline is following Tally around not him; but I would have loved to know a lot more).

Speaking of Tally and Zane, I think that one of the book’s greatest faults is the lack of a plausible struggle. Tally is way too strong now for any of her difficulties to be truly believable (she does have some moral dilemmas but either the author didn’t insist on them or I did not care, but they never touched me the way the first book did). Zane on the other hand, is at a difficult time in his life, trying hard to escape the city despite his vulnerability, dreaming of “repairing” Tally and not giving her up despite the awful way she treats him.

There are still some common plot lines between the three books, but less with this one than in the previous two. For example, the intrigue: in the first two books, Tally starts out passionately wanting to belong to a superior group, and everything she does later is based on it; in this one Tally is already part of a powerful clique, but she starts out by wanting Zane to be a part of it too (and mostly everything she does later is based on it). As in the first book, Tally goes out to find Smoke, ready to betray everyone so that she’ll get the operation she so much wants (in Uglies, her becoming pretty, in this one, Zane’s becoming a Special). But, as in all three books, Tally is changed by the very fact of her being alone in the wild; and yet she ends up to blame for the bad things that happen to the new Smoke yet again.

Which is probably why I liked the books less and less — the first one surprised me in a good way, because mostly everything there was unexpected, and Tally was at her most “relatable” point back then (prior to having any operations). The second book was a lot less surprising since many of the events were “recycled” from the first book — but I could still relate with some of what Tally was going through. While admittedly this book was less predictable than the rest, the fact that I didn’t care about Tally didn’t help at all. At this point I am fairly certain I will probably never read the fourth book, Extras, especially as it seems that the old characters and issues have been replaced with new ones (a fact that, to be honest, can be both a blessing and a curse — and yet I am so not curious about it these days).

What I liked most: The fact that the author has taken into account putting in place some sort of coercive measure so that people won’t end up like the Rusties, destroying everything else around them. I would have worried about it (or rather laughed at him for not thinking of it) if he hadn’t, and so I was happy to find out that he did (though I do doubt the efficacy of the measure).

What I liked least: Icy !!! What’s wrong with these people and repeating words?? If the second book left me with a dread for hearing the words “bubbly” and “bogus” ever again, almost the very same thing happens here with the words “icy” and “random” (mostly “keeping focused” is “staying icy”, just like “staying bubbly” before; and “that’s so random” whenever something unpleasant happens, just like something being “so bogus” in the previous book). Ugh. Oh, and I wasn’t particularly happy with all the talk about people cutting themselves either :|

Recommend it to? Anyone who read the first two books and is curious about what happens next :)

This book is a sequel to:
Uglies
Pretties

Written by the same author:
The Secret Hour
Touching Darkness
Blue Noon

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

Summary: Tally Youngblood is now the pretty she has always wanted to be. But there’s something wrong with her mind, as she cannot remember most of what happened before. With the help of her new friend Zane (another pretty, facing the same memory problems) and a message from her old friends from outside the city, Tally manages to piece out the fact that the reason for her having the operation in the first place was that she could be a Guinea pig for some pills David’s mother has invented, pills that are supposed to “repair” a “pretty mind”. Since Tally doesn’t think she’ll ever have the courage to take the pills herself (they are not 100% safe), nor does she dare risking Zane’s life, the two reach an agreement, and each of them takes one of the two pills Tally has received. At first everything seems to go alright, Tally and Zane’s minds clearer than ever — but then Zane started having headaches so incapacitating that there was no time to lose: they had to escape the city and go see David’s mother as soon as possible.

For some reason I liked Tally a bit less in this book, perhaps because she spent a part of it being a vain shallow-minded creature, or at least pretending to be one. Her adventures seemed to me a bit toned down too (or maybe I was under the wrong impression since I simply cared less about what happened to her and what troubles she got into). Zane on the other hand seemed to me quite a promising character, and I was sorry to see him missing from quite a good chunk of the book (he is sent to the background about the very time the real adventures started). David puts up a very short appearance here, but I liked the maturity that he shows on that occasion (Zane too for that matter). As for Shay, I am not very happy with the direction the author has chosen to make her develop, as she has become a spiteful thing, a far cry from the person I took her for previously.

The social issues that have been fleetingly touched in the first book return to haunt Tally (and the reader too). Dr. Cable explains to her that what is done to the people when they turn sixteen is done for their own good, and for the good of the society, because this way everyone can be held under control so they cannot affect the environment as much as the Rusties did. Sure, Dr. Cable may have been painting all in a more beautiful light than it actually was, but it sort of convinced me that the whole Special Circumstances thing was actually an organization that fought for the greater good. Even Tally, a firm advocate of one’s right to choose for oneself, ends up having some doubts after seeing a village of “pre-Rusties” and the thirst for blood and revenge they seemed to have ingrained in their very being. Might that happen to the pretties (and uglies) that have decided to live outside the cities? Tally doesn’t know (and neither will I until I’ll read the rest of the books :) ).

I couldn’t help noticing that in some respects this book’s plot was quite similar with the first. Tally starts out wanting to be in a group she’s not; she then finds out there is another world, another way of living, out there; next, she falls in love with a guy who’s fascinated by her courage and adventures; she has an argument with Shay; her actions negatively affect (more indirectly this time) people in the free city, and she feels very guilty about it; last but not least, she ends up scheduled for surgery, a surgery that’s supposed to change her life completely. Hum. I would be mightily amused if the plot of the third book will turn out to have one or more of these elements too :)

As a less than relevant tidbit, I am a bit turned off by the book cover. Not only because the people there lack the huge eyes that pretties are supposed to have, but most of all because the guy is nothing like Zane is supposed to look like (beautiful, gaunt, with dark hair and noticeable cheekbones). Oh well.

What I liked most: I was amused by the details like the physical changes some of the pretties did to themselves (although I have my doubts that a moving swirling tatoo, or having a third eye tattooed, would actually look good). My favorite change was the one Shay got, tiny clocks around her pupils, and going backwards too (not that I can imagine it look anything but creepy but I still find it a cool idea). Also, Zane’s very own scale for measuring prettiness: in mili-Helens (one Helen being enough beauty to launch precisely one ship :) ). Oh, and all the dragon stories/dreams that Tally kept inventing/having — I found them to be very fit metaphors for everything Tally was going through at the time :)

What I liked least: All the “pretty talk” at the beginning. Many many pages of dialogue spoken by people who seemed to have a very limited vocabulary. There’s only so many times one can read a particular word on a given page, and these kids used “bubbly” (their word for anything good) or “bogus” (their word for anything bad) every few words. It became very tiring after a while (and alternately quite boring). Not to mention the fact that the author seemed to have wanted to invent his own version of newspeak, all the pretties using, instead of some words, expressions like “brain-missing” (stupid), “fashion-missing” (out of fashion), “sad-making” (saddening) and so on.

Recommend it to? Anyone who read and enjoyed the first book :)

This book is a sequel to:
Uglies

This book is followed by:
Specials

Written by the same author:
The Secret Hour
Touching Darkness
Blue Noon

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

Incoming search terms for the article:

Summary: The novel is set somewhere in the future, when our current way of life has failed and a new civilisation was born out of its ruins. They try to do everything better than “the Rusties” (a.k.a. us), so they believe in recycling, renewable energy, fixed population and so on. Everyone is scheduled to undergo surgery once they turn sixteen, a surgery meant to make one immune to most diseases and at the same time very beautiful. A few weeks before her own surgery, Tally is looking forward to it and to the moment she will be able to mingle with her older friends again. But then she meets Shay, another girl on the verge of change but with a completely different outlook on life: she believes that all this turning people into looking the same is plain wrong, and, what’s more, it sort of depersonalizes everyone. She tells Tally about a city where people go when they don’t want to be “turned pretty”. But can Tally give up her dream?

I did like all of the main characters. Tally, the one who has never known there was another world outside her own, but easily adapts when the need arises (perhaps a bit too easy? I cannot even begin to imagine how it must be to come from a life of having everything you might want at the tips of your fingers and end up living very much like people did centuries ago). Shay, the determined one, the fighter (and even the smarter one in my book given her ruminations on what does becoming beautiful entail; it can be argued, of course, that she’s had a lot more time than Tally did to get used to the idea). And David too, the legend, the exotic character that has never known what modern life, life inside a city, looks like.

I have found the author’s take on society quite interesting because of its let’s call it duality. On the outside, the pretties: beautiful people made so in the name of equality, in the name of mutual benefit. Parties, endless food, unlimited clothing, anyone has everything one might want. However, dig a bit deeper and dark secrets begin to appear: a Big Brother type of leadership, wanting to keep anyone under control. Making it all a lot more believable than it was while I was seeing only the outside layer :) (I may be cynical but I don’t quite believe in egalitarian societies simply because some people are always going to want to be “more equal” than the rest).

Were I to rate this book I have no idea how I would do it. I liked it and some of the ideas in it, of course, but I wasn’t smitten. Among other things it seemed to me a bit forced at times. For me Tally has adapted a bit too fast to the life “out there” — sure, she was a brave kid to begin with, but everything was very new to her (in an unpleasant way) and, given that she had a choice, I was surprised to see her choose the path she did (well, not exactly surprised since to be honest it all was quite predictable, but her motivations seemed to me to be a bit lacking). Not to mention the romance: as most heroines, Tally also finds love — but it too seemed a bit forced and a bit too fast coming for it to be truly believable (although I liked the fact that the author has taken the trouble to explain in detail the reasons why the guy fell for Tally). Nevertheless, were I to draw a line at the end, I would state, again, that I did like the book despite its shortcomings. It held me on the edge of my chair at some times and my heart filled with Tally’s distress at others — what more can anyone want from a book? :)

An (almost random) quote:

In the city, she’d owned lots of things — practically anything she wanted came out of the wall. But city things were disposable and replaceable, as interchangeable as the t-shirt, jacket, and skirt combination of dorm uniforms. Here, in the Smoke, objects grew old, carrying their histories with them in dings and scratches and tatters.

What I liked most: The whole idea of making everyone looking approximately the same so there’ll be no more discrimination on physical reasons. Extra points for taking into account all the “pre-programmed” stuff, such as having good skin makes people unconsciously think the owner is healthy, or having a certain set of eyes makes the owner seem vulnerable yet trustworthy and so on. Not to mention the whole idea of normal people seeing themselves as ugly because they kept comparing themselves with the beautiful ones and, of course, came up short (interesting because, among other things, it goes to show how relative the idea of beauty actually is; as stated in the book, in a world of only beautiful people no one is truly beautiful since everyone’s the same).

What I liked least: The ending!! I hate it when the authors do that — just stop whenever the action was getting even more interesting! I know the book was supposed to be a part of a trilogy but I would really have liked it a lot better if it made sense as a standalone book too (like Outlander for example, or Harry Potter) rather than this. It leaves me as a reader feeling very… unfulfilled.

Recommend it to? Anyone. It’s a fast read and quite interesting too.

See also
The Wikipedia article about a Twilight Zone episode that may have inspired the book

This book is followed by:
Pretties
Specials

Written by the same author:
The Secret Hour
Touching Darkness
Blue Noon

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

Incoming search terms for the article:

Thursday Next reminded me very much of Kinsey Millhone, as she knew what she was doing and she did it well, without shrinking away from any danger that crossed her path. And, as I like Kinsey, I just had to like Thursday too. As for Acheron, he somehow did not come across as a full-fledged character (at least for me). Sure, he praised villainy, he had some really cool powers (by the way, how did he get those?), he killed people with every opportunity — but somehow he never escaped the “look at me I’m so evil” cliche (although his sidekick Felix, actually different people with the same face, was quite a cool idea). Unfortunately there were no other actually interesting characters (perhaps Thursday’s dad but he appears very little), all of them falling a bit flat in my eyes, so much so that at times I couldn’t decide who was who. I was very much amused however by the characters’ names (and I bet the author had fun writing them too): we have a Jack Schitt, a Braxton Hicks, a Runcible Spoon, a Felix Tabularasa, Acheron Hades‘ brother is Styx and many more. Oh, and Thursday has been given her name because she was born on a Thursday; her mother however was called Wednesday but she was born on a Sunday. :)

To tell the truth I was surprised to find the book somewhat less enjoyable than I thought it would be. A pity because the premise was good and the author has created quite an interesting world. One of the most fascinating parts of which was the extent of people’s love for books. For example, the love of Shakespeare is so pronounced, there are Will-speak machines — machines that “dispense a short snippet of Shakespeare for ten pence“. One of the most discussed mysteries was who did actually wrote Shakespeare’s plays. There are even people who go door-to-door trying to convince people that Francis Bacon was actually the one behind them. Not to mention that some people even change their names to those of famous poets: there are, for example, about four thousand John Miltons, each with a number tattooed behind the ear to differentiate him from the rest.

There are a lot more small details that I have enjoyed: the revived dodos and their excited plock plock, the way the banana came into use (named after Anna Bannon, invented in the future and sent to the past), the very first phrase (“My father had a face that could stop a clock.“), the way Jane Eyre ended and how everyone who read it was very disappointed by the ending and more. Not in the least I have found fascinating some of Uncle Mycroft’s inventions: a way to fax a pizza, actual bookworms (the best of them named HyperBookwormDoublePlusGood), the ChameleoCar (a car changing colors), translating carbon paper and other such wondrous devices.

A thing that I wasn’t such excited about were the time travel paradoxes the author seemed keen on inserting every now and then. For example when Thursday’s father tells her that in the future her mother will paint a room mauve so he begs Thursday to dissuade her from it. But when Thursday mentions it to her mother, the reaction she gets is “What a great idea!”; practically Thursday herself caused the walls to be painted thus. So it was the very fact that Thursday’s father complained about the walls being mauve in the future that had actually caused them to be mauve in the first place. A cool thing when one thinks about cause and effect and time travel but — how did the walls get mauve the very first time??? If they hadn’t been mauve no one would have complained about them, thus setting in motion the aforementioned cycle. Not to mention show spoiler

As of Thursday’s love interest, I cannot decide whether I enjoyed that part or not. Everything related to it was quite unlikely, starting with the fact that the two were apart for about ten years but still had powerful feelings for one another, and ending with — well, the very ending show spoiler

What I liked most: I was utterly fascinated by the play (Richard III) Thursday and Landen went to see. So wow. I can just say I would have absolutely LOVED to have been there myself.

What I liked least: The part where Thursday put an end, almost singlehandedly, to the Crimean War. Really. A war that has lasted no less than 131 years. Not very plausible if you ask me.

Recommend it to? Anyone! While it is definitely not a perfect book, it has many many interesting things so I encourage anyone to give it a try, who knows, perhaps you might find something to really suit your tastes :)

This book is followed by:
Lost in a Good Book
The Well of Lost Plots
Something Rotten

Also written by the author:
Shades of Grey

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

In this particular year, the ones chosen to represent District 12 (the shabbiest of them all) are a girl hunter very skilled when it comes to bow and arrow and a kind-hearted baker son, in love with the girl since he was five. In the week of preparation between the draw and the actual fight the two become friends — not the happiest thing in the circumstances since there can be only one survivor in the end.

The characters are interesting and in a way unexpected, as we get to assist to a classic role reversal. We have Katniss, the girl, self sufficient with her hunting and survival skills — and also down to earth and a good person at the core. Were I to choose something Katniss is not, that would most definitely be “girlish” (in the fluffy, airheaded sense of the word); she sees the world with very serious eyes, having had to set food on her family’s table since she was eleven. Peeta, the boy, is also a good person (even kind), only his life has been a lot more sheltered and it shows. He actually manages to fend for himself for a while, but he is the more vulnerable one between the two despite his being a guy and all.

The story is told in the 1st person (Katniss is the narrator), a thing that made the author’s life easier by far — as Katniss can only see the people around her (not many at any given time) and has no way of knowing things happening in other parts of the arena, a lot of competitors’ deaths are not detailed in any way: Katniss just notices that, oh, yet another one has died, and moves on. I cannot decide whether I like this or not: on one hand there were over 20 people killed in the arena, detailing all deaths would have taken up space and probably became repetitive after a while; on the other hand I was curious about some of the events (like for example the cripple boy — he is not killed among the first, but he is killed nevertheless), plus in a way it all happened too fast and too easy (remember that Katniss had 23 opponents, she ends up encountering about 8, killing only two herself). But in the end, who am I to complain? It was a great book so the way the author has chosen to write it has definitely worked :)

For some reason I love books set in dystopian worlds — perhaps because they show how things can get a lot worse than whatever we have now, perhaps because they make me appreciate our own current world some more. Which means I find the book fascinating also due to the very world Ms. Collins has created: I liked the 12 districts, each specialized in producing something; the medical advances who allowed blood poisoning and burns to be cured almost instantly and could also erase scars; all the hype regarding the games and their live broadcast; the food shortages, the lack of continuous electricity and hot water; the police/guardians, called Peacemakers and reminding me of 1984 — and all the rest of the details, of course :)

What I liked most: The fact that the author has given some background info for the reader to understand exactly what the Hunger Games were and how they came to be.

What I liked least: The open ending :-s I know this is supposed to be only the first book in a trilogy but still — a happier ending (or at least a more decided one) would have been nice.

Recommend it to? Everyone. It’s a very fast read (it took me less than a day) and it has something of everything: thriller, sci-fi, adventure, some bits of romance even :)

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.