Kay's Bookshelf

From the very beginning it is obvious that in this book, like in some previous others, Mr. King has tried to explore the idea of a small group of people (good and bad), ending up outside the reach of the law. From this point of view the book reminds me of The Stand, where this separation from any law being applied came from the fact that there were simply no people left to apply it (the flu has killed 99% of the US population). In Under the Dome though this separation is quite literal, since we have the huge dome of glass that lets no armed force in. Add to that the fact that most of the police force inside the dome ends up consisting of bad guys and that’s a recipe for disaster right there.

The first (predictable) effect of such a rupture from the outside world would be (and is, particularly in this book) that the bad guys would let their lack of scruples (and their temporary invulnerability) go to their heads. And Mr. King is not one to shy from describing such deeds. We have multiple murders, a gang rape, arson, beatings, thievings, take your pick. What is the most awful is that most of these things happen almost within sight of the Army, stationed on the other side of the dome, and there’s nothing anyone out there can do because there’s no way to get in. As one of the characters put it, the armed forces were “Like kids looking into an aquarium where the biggest fish takes all the food, then starts eating the little ones.”

One of the fortes of the book is the fact that, albeit there are a lot of characters, Mr. King has managed to infuse them all with their own personalities and motivations. Sure, the good guys are good, and the bad guys are bad, but they are all believable and their choices make sense. Rennie for example, the all-around bad guy, sincerely believes that “This was the high point of his life, his chance to achieve the greatness of which he knew he’d always been capable.“. Adding to that his unwavering belief in God (and the fact that God is on his side no matter what he’ll do) we begin to get the idea of a dangerous man, a man who will single-handedly turn the quiet life of the small town into anarchy in no more than a few days.

Another thing I have enjoyed while reading was the imagery surrounding the Dome. When I first read summaries of the book I thought of the Dome as a sheet of glass, hardly visible for anyone looking at it, but nevertheless visible. But the actual Dome looks like… nothing. It does act like a sheet of glass, from the sound it makes when people knock on it, to the way it gets dirtied by pollution and things crashing into it, but it cannot be seen. Making the people who bump into it all the more surprised, and the related imagery (people trying to touch their hands but unable to, although there is no visible obstruction) all the more powerful. Speaking of imagery, the description of natural phenomena as seen through the Dome are quite cool too (my favorite was the part with the pink stars falling, of course, when the stars “come down in brilliant pink lines. Some of the lines crisscrossed each other, and when this happened, pink runes seemed to stand out in the sky before fading.“).

I think that, even if I hadn’t known who the author of this book was, I would probably have guessed it while reading. Not only do people die right and left (regardless on whose side they’re on), but there are also small clues now and then, clues that are to be found in almost every book of Mr. King’s. For one, we have the children sharing prophetic visions (that most of them don’t remember afterwards). Also, my favorite, the statement that repeats itself throughout the book, at various intervals (as far as I can remember every single book by Mr. King that I have read had a phrase like that, usually part of a song or something out of the main character’s childhood, that someone keeps thinking about). In this case the said statement is shared between many people (almost every important character thinks it at one time or another), is part of an old hit-song and goes like this “it’s a small town and we all support the team“.

The book would probably make a great movie, as it is very fast paced (something breath-taking is always happening), plus I can just imagine the special effects that could be created on this purpose. Not to mention the fact that the very presence of Barbie (a very good ex-Army guy, who just happens to be in the right place at the wrong time) made me think of a blockbuster movie from the very moment Barbie’s past was revealed :)

Something I didn’t think of while I was reading is the political side of the book — here’s what Mr. King had to say about it:

Sometimes the sublimely wrong people can be in power at a time when you really need the right people. I put a lot of that into the book. But when I started I said, “I want to use the Bush-Cheney dynamic for the people who are the leaders of this town.” As a result, you have Big Jim Rennie, the villain of the piece. I got to like the other guy, Andy Sanders. He wasn’t actively evil, he was just incompetent—which is how I always felt about George W. Bush. I enjoyed taking the Bush-Cheney dynamic and shrinking it to the small-town level.

While I (who live so far away from the States) barely know who Cheney was, and very little of what he did or did not do, I find the very fact that the book is sort of inspired from real life quite cool. Let’s call that an extra layer of the thing I liked most in the book, which is…

What I liked most: Unsettling as it may sound, I think the book was a great study of human nature. It other words, it explores people and feelings that are very believable for me; most people act the very way I would expect them to. For example, I can just imagine how, if something that bad would happen, the vast majority of people would look up to their leaders to tell them what to do and how to behave. I can also very well imagine how those people who abstain from doing bad simply because they’re afraid of the law would unleash their worst once it’s clear that no punishment can be inflicted on them (Nazi Germany anyone?). Not to mention the fact that many people would have trouble adjusting to the new world, clinging “to the notion that the world was as it had been before the Dome came down”, thus falling prey to the people who have a lot less scruples than that. And many, many more.

What I liked least: Silly but I kept being bothered about the Internet (how did they have Internet if the landlines were cut off? A city this small couldn’t have had Wi-Fi all over) and the cellphones still working (I know that air permeated the dome but would it have been enough for the cellphones? Somehow I doubt it.)

Thoughts on the ending: First of all, I noticed that many people said they loved the book until the ending, which they didn’t quite like. For me it was quite the opposite, meaning I thought it to be about the only ending that could actually make sense.

show spoiler

Recommend it to? First of all, I have read a lot of S. King’s books. Not all of them, but a lot. Second, this is quite possibly my favorite of them all. So yup, I recommend it to anyone around :) (however reader beware, there’s usually a lot of brutality in Mr. King’s books and this one is no exception).

See also
Chester’s Mill map (via Amazon)
The official site of the book
The “official” site of Chester’s Mill (a bit freaky, especially as it includes links to the site of Big Jim’s used cars dealership, the site of Chester’s Mill newspaper and the site of Sweetbriar Rose).

Written by the same author:
The Black House (with Peter Straub)

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Popularity: 16% [?]

The book starts out at quite a good pace, alternating between the story of Karen and the accidents that occur because of the dust. I liked both Karen and Jerry and I had soon become emotionally involved in their attempts of destroying the thing plaguing their neighborhood. Unfortunately the pace was kept constant throughout the whole book (with Karen’s scenes rather few and far between, separated by lots of “accidents”), and what once was interesting kinda faded out after a while — after all, how many accidents can anyone be interested in? Not to mention it was getting hard to read about any new people (the author introduced anyone new with a bit of background, Sidney Sheldon style, quite a nice thing except when one knows that any new character is to be very much hurt or even killed). I think I, as a reader, was expected to dislike the dust more and more with each new accident, and root all the more for the characters. However it didn’t happen like this, my feelings towards it soon reached a plateau and… in a way it all went downhill from there as my interest partially faded.

At first I loved the premise of the book: a strange-looking dust came out of nowhere that does harm to people for the fun of it. Sort of like a “dusty” version of Predator. I was certain, all throughout reading, that we will probably never know where the dust came from, how and why. And I was OK with that (this is not a spoiler as you’ll have to read the book to find out whether I was right or wrong :P ). However as I was nearing the end of the book I started having a lot of questions regarding it. It’s funny actually if one thinks I had no problems with accepting the idea of a dust so evil that it kills people, but I couldn’t help having an issue with “how does it see?” and “how does it know human anatomy?” (it would need to know quite a bit of the latter in order to kill people as it did).

A few words about the cover: it it very simplistic but to tell the truth I kinda had fun with the it while reading. At times I amused myself thinking what I could have done instead, what image would I have set on the cover had I been the editor (or whoever gets to decide these things). While my ideas were more or less complicated, I always ended up considering that the initial concept (an image of the title character, on a stark, white background) also held a lot of promise, and I sort of fell in love with it. Sure, the quality of the image isn’t to die for (and I also had fun imagining what a really good graphic artist would do to the concept), but what I want to say here is that, surprisingly enough, I ended up appreciating the cover though I wouldn’t have thought so in the beginning (what with it being such a simplistic cover and so on).

What I liked most: The ending. Although everything happened quite fast I liked the idea behind it (quite original I would think). My only qualm about it is show spoiler

What I liked least: A pet peeve of mine while reading the book: the way the verb “to scream” was used at times. It may be just me (although Merriam-Webster seems to think so too), but to me the verb implies a shrill sound. In this context I have found its usage a bit forced every now and then, in cases where perhaps the verb “to cry” (not the teary kind) would have been a much better match (for example imagine Karen screaming “Mom!” on the phone when told she has a new blind date or someone screaming “Ow!” every now and then). But that’s just me.

Also, I was a bit bothered at times by the fact that Karen was always certain that, whenever something bad happened, it happened because of the dust. Imagine a dialogue going something like this:

Karen: “What happened to you?”
Neighbor: “A pan fell down and hit me.”
Karen: “Have you seen any strangely-colored dust?”
Neighbor: “No.”
Karen (to herself): “That’s what you think, but the dust was there.”

It’s obvious what the author’s been trying to do, make the dust attack in such a way that most people hurt don’t see it (lest there was talk of a strange-looking dust going around), and yet have Karen aware of all the “hits”. It didn’t quite work for me though, I like the reasoning the characters in books do to be based more on facts than groundless suppositions. I admit though that I had a hard time coming up with something better (other than Karen somehow being there and seeing the dust for herself; or perhaps videos or pictures of the accident scenes, where Karen noticed the dust but everyone else dismissed it as camera artifacts?)

Recommend it to? Anyone in the mood for an easy, uncomplicated reading (with some blood involved). This is the first book of the author and I may have been a bit harsh with it in my review (with the best intentions, of course, hoping that it will help the author notice what didn’t work that well in hopes of a great second novel — it would be a pity not to as the book was, albeit not perfect, among the better half of the self published books I came across).

See also:
The official site of Susan Berliner
An interview with her regarding Dust

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Popularity: 10% [?]

I was fascinated by the book from the very first page and the very first moment when the author started to describe life in the fiction world:

All the boring day-to-day mundanities that we conduct in the real world get in the way of narrative flow and are thus generally avoided. The car didn’t need refuelling, there were never any wrong numbers, there was always enough hot water, and vacuum-cleaner bags came in only two sizes – upright and pull-along. There were other, more subtle differences, too. For instance, no one ever needed to repeat themselves in case you didn’t hear, no one shared the same name, talked at the same time or had a word annoyingly ‘on the tip of their tongue’. Best of all, the bad guy was always someone you knew of and – Chaucer aside – there wasn’t much farting. But there were some downsides. The relative absence of breakfast was the first and most notable difference to my daily timetable. Inside books, dinners are often written about and therefore feature frequently, as do lunches and afternoon tea; probably because they offer more opportunities to further the story. Breakfast wasn’t all that was missing. There was a peculiar lack of cinemas, wallpaper, toilets, colours, books, animals, underwear, smells, haircuts and, strangely enough, minor illnesses. If someone was ill in a book it was either terminal and dramatically unpleasant or a mild head cold – there wasn’t much in between.

Add to that the fact that the streets contained very few cars that appeared repeatedly and how some of the minor characters have names like “Unnamed Police Officer #1″ and “Unnamed Police Officer #2″, and you’ll get an idea of the world where the book’s action takes place. There is an affluence of generic characters (many of them transformed accidentally in Mrs. Danvers), contraband with plot devices is flourishing, the characters in Wuthering Heights are forced to take anger management classes, the nursery rhymes characters are perpetually threatening they’ll go on strike and so on.

I was very glad to see that my favorite three characters from the precedent books are also present in this one. Thursday (predictably enough, since she is the main character) is always solving other people’s problems, while at the same time struggling with a few troubles of her own. Miss Havisham, Thursday’s mentor, trying to break the world’s car speed record and protecting Heathcliff from the ProCaths (I’ll never look at Mr. Dickens’ Miss Havisham with the same eyes again :) ). Granny Next, unexpectedly arriving in Thursday’s book, and being by her side in her battle with Aornis’ aftereffects. It is perhaps interesting to note that, while the book can boast with no less than three strong female characters, there is no male counterpart to either of them. Not that it is a fault, of course, especially as strong female characters are hard to come by, I just was amused at the “out-of-ordinary-ness” of it :)

There are many things I have found absolutely charming in the book (Mathias, the Houyhnhnm that is a bit of a show-off and speaks in quotes, or the fact that there is a reference about a new Nursery Crimes series starting to take life in the Well — quite cool if we take into account the fact that the author’s next series, currently a trilogy, but unpublished when this book was released is perfectly described), yet by no means I think it’s perfect. I would say it has the same fault all Fforde books I read so far have: there are many characters and many subplots and many of them are incompletely explored or not at all in some cases (What was the deal with Big Martin? What did actually happen to Godot? and more). I do acknowledge this, and have even been bothered by it at one time or another, but on the whole I was so enchanted by the whole literary world that I ended up not caring about (most of) the details (not to mention I am fairly certain that some of them are going to appear in the next two books too).

An idea that sounded quite interesting:

Write is only the word we use to describe the recording process,’ replied Snell as we walked along. ‘The Well of Lost Plots is where we interface the writer’s imagination with the characters and plots so that it will make sense in the reader’s mind. After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colours of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer’s breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer – perhaps more.’

A quote from the author about the title:

The title of the book, incidentally, comes from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana and Marianne have to go to the Well of Lost Souls to find the Sacred Ark of the Covenant. (remember that scene with all those dried corpses?) For years I referred to the place where the kid’s missing socks went as The Well of Lost Socks, so the name came quite easily to a place where fiction actually grows upon the shelves; it works well as a pun, too: The spring from which all fiction rises.

What I liked most: The mispeling vyrus!! A virus that turned every word around it to being misspelled (see it’s own name). It destroyed everything in its path if left loose, by misspelling the defining words in names or descriptions (the table became a label, glass became grass and so on). It was quite funny to me to see the way everyone’s lines became badly spelled when exposed to the virus, but the nicest touch of all was in my opinion the fact that Uriah Heep was at first named Uriah Hope (prompting me to rack my brains trying to remember whether his name was Hope or Heep in the original book), and became Heep later on after he was exposed to the aforementioned virus.

Also, it very much amused me the way everyone was always waiting for Godot and the fact that the American spelling of some words (labor, valor, flavor, etc.) actually exists because at one time the reserves of U were running out so they (the people of BookWorld) had to think up a strategy to make them last longer.

What I liked least: This book begins with a rewriting of the last scene of the previous book, the scene where Thursday arrives in the book she’s to live in and the former occupant of her soon to be home shows her around. The lines are very much the same between the two versions, with one notable difference: the scene from book two mentioned a Captain Nemo and Nautilus; the scene in this book did not, and I was kinda upset because it had seemed quite promising when I first read it. Not to mention the omission is also quite useless, as we later get to discover that Captain Nemo did actually live nearby.

Also, at one time Thursday imagines the way her tombstone would look (THURSDAY NEXT 1950-1986). But shouldn’t it be 1949, since Thursday was 36 in 1985?

Minor details, I know, but somehow these two nagged me a bit more than the rest.

Recommend it to? Predictably enough, everyone who read and liked the previous two books. Actually, this is currently my favorite in the series, and I think it just might work as a stand-alone novel too, so I encourage anyone to give it a try :)

See also
The site of the author

This book is a sequel to:
The Eyre Affair
Lost In A Good Book

Also written by the author:
Shades of Grey

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Popularity: 13% [?]

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

Also written by the author:
Shades of Grey

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Popularity: 14% [?]

Reading, I was glad to find Samuel to be a fundamentally good kid. His mother died about a year before, and he’s been doing his best to take care of his father ever since. He’s even learned how to cook. He’s also a straight A student and he seems to really enjoy studying (sort of a rare occurrence in books I would think) although he doesn’t give school as much attention and dedication as one would perhaps expect from a kid with such grades. Were I to choose a few words to describe him, I’d say that “he got his heart in the right place” — he is just a teenager and he is not perfect, but he is sure trying to be the best person he can. In the course of the book he has to battle both his inner demons and an external enemy, and he does so the best way he knows how — and I admired him for it, for his courage and for the way he tried to fix things that were not his problems to begin with. And I admired the author too, for managing to create such a shades-of-gray character, and yet likeable enough for the reader to root for him ’til the end.

Speaking of the author, in my opinion another thing that he does very well is capture the atmosphere of that little small town. It’s a quaint place and time seems to have stopped there — so much so that at first I thought the book takes place in the ’50s or sometimes around then. There are mentions of DVDs and cell phones and video iPods so that cannot be so, and yet the more I read the more surprised I was at the “50s vibe” the town seemed to have (and I have to say I’m very impressed with the author for managing to give off such powerful feeling, even though it was probably unintentional since the book takes place decades later).

What I liked most: The art installation that Samuel’s father builds for the sole reason that he promised his wife (the one who imagined it) he’ll bring it to life, despite his being anything but the artistic type. It was a very nice touch in my opinion, from start to finish.

What I liked least: There’s nothing that has truly bothered me. Sure, I didn’t enjoy the scenes depicting cruelty, but I understand how they are necessary to the development of the book.

Recommend it to? Everyone, especially if interested in coming of age novels. It’s a well written book, albeit a bit dark at times.

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Popularity: 7% [?]

It’s interesting to notice how much the characters have grown and changed in the few months since the first book has started. Melissa for example is a whole other person, calm, collected and very much in control of her abilities (and temper). Rex, following his encounter with the darklings, is also very much changed (sort of a bummer for me actually because in doing so he has lost his vulnerability somehow, he has become almost invincible, which makes for less challenges and a way less interesting hero). Dess, still the math prodigy, is now showing us her bitter side (due to a quarrel that I am not sure how I feel about; I keep wondering whether Dess is right or just exaggerating), while Jessica and Jonathan’s relationship is somewhat (very slowly) evolving too.
(as a side note, show spoiler

If I were to choose one single thing that I liked about this book (or the whole series actually) I would have to say it is its lack of predictability. One never knows what happens next: although the five characters always have a plan up their sleeve something always goes awry. This makes for some interesting situations (and, of course, fights and rescues) and I was happy for that. And yet, despite the fact that things were happening and there was almost always something going on, I was surprised to notice that at times there were bits that seemed to me quite dragging. I have no idea why, as the tone never seemed to vary very much throughout the books, and yet they made the experience somewhat less enjoyable (but that’s just me, other reviewers swear by the very opposite of it). I’d still choose this trilogy over the Uglies series any day though :) (words like “bubbly” and “icy” still make me shiver, LOL).

On a lighter note, I found the title to be very well chosen. It makes one think of “blue moon” (as in the moon of the blue time) and also of noon, and its archaic sense of midnight. Not only that but superimposing the two notions (blue as in the blue time, and noon in its usual meaning, of midday) we get precisely what happens in the book: the blue time encompassing times of day when it shouldn’t have had, bending the rules and taking over.

My thoughts on the ending: show spoiler

What I liked most: The fact that we were presented the reverse of the coin (so to speak). In books one and two everything we get to see is from the midnighters’ point of view, and they are understandably upset about what happened to the other midnighters, the midnighters from 50 years ago, destroyed by “daylighters” in a single night. In this context choosing a side was easy: midnighters = good + innocent, daylighters (the ones involved) = bad + guilty. Easy peasy. And then we meet Angie and everything reverses: from her point of view the midnighters are the manipulative ones, playing with ordinary people’s minds, and so they only got what they deserved. I very much loved the ambiguity of it all, because all of the sudden the roles (the bad guy/the good guy) became less obvious and I liked that.
(unfortunately after a short while the author kinda ruined everything by solving it all with a single statement — “these midnighters have a different set of morals, are better than the old ones” — but I did enjoy the uncertainty of it all while it lasted).

What I liked least: I have a minor qualm with Rex’s ankle being broken and him still be able to walk and even run, but other than that there’s nothing that has actually bothered me :)

Recommend it to? Anyone who read and liked the previous two books.

This book is a sequel to:
The Secret Hour
Touching Darkness

Written by the same author:
Uglies
Pretties
Specials

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Popularity: 7% [?]

One of the things I enjoyed most when reading this book was the way the characters grew and developed before my eyes. Melissa’s change is by far the most spectacular: with the help of her trusted Rex, she learns, little by little, to control her ability. As she gets the hang of going with the flow, or finding herself, as needed, a new relationship blossoms between her and Rex. Although I sort of expected it from many pages ago, I was still surprised at the intensity of it — not only they are a perfect match for each other, but each gets to share the other’s very mind. I am looking forward to see how it will all evolve (while I am keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best, as they’re definitely my favorite couple). Speaking of relationships evolving, there is also the hint of a friendship blossoming between Jess and Dess — could that be the first step on the path of the five of them becoming a tight knit team?

When I read Pretties (the sequel to Uglies, by the same author) I was quite disappointed in it, not only because some parts of the plot were repeating themselves but also because the sequel lacked the intensity of the first. For some reason I was expecting the same thing to happen with this book too (given the same author part), and yet I was in for a very pleasant surprise: if anything this book is even more captivating than the first one (and a bit scarier too). One more reason for me to look forward to the next :)

As an aside, I was very amused to notice that, ever since reading this series, each time I encounter a longer word I end up counting its letters to see whether it’s a tridecalogism (word invented by Dess, meaning a word that has thirteen letters) or not. While I have yet to encounter any new one (a bit hard since there are a lot of them in the book) I have yet to give up the fight :P

What I liked most: While reading the first book I did wonder what were the odds for two midnighters to move into Bixby in a rather short period of time. The number struck me as very low but I figured it was poetic licence and thought “oh well”. In this book however the author has chosen to address this; what’s more he explains it in quite a plausible way too, and I was sort of delighted with it.

What I liked least: Surprisingly enough, nothing, again. I liked it on the whole.

Recommend it to? I would recommend it to everyone but I don’t think it works well as a stand-alone book, so I’ll just say I recommend it to everyone who’s read and enjoyed the previous book :)

This book is a sequel to:
The Secret Hour

This book is followed by:
Blue Noon

Written by the same author:
Uglies
Pretties
Specials

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