Quick Book Review: Starters by Lissa Price

This book has appeared on several book blogs that I read. Dystopia always sounds good to me, and so I recommended this book to my son (15) first, then when he enjoyed it, read it myself.

The story is told by the 16 year old Callie. She and her brother live in derelict houses with a friend, Michael. They are on the run from the police, who round up “unattached minors”. After a virus attack, only minors (Starters) and the elderly (Enders) are left alive, as they were the first to be vaccinated. Starters that have no Ender to look after them, roam the streets.

Callie decides to rent out her body, to make enough money to get her own home. At the Body Bank, she is connected up such that an elderly can use her body for the day (or longer) and have fun like she used to when young. When she is rented out for the third time something goes wrong and she discovers there is a plan that will endanger many teenagers. She and the elderly lady that rents her body work together to try and change the plans.

This was a fun story. The idea of someone inhabiting another person’s body was an interesting idea that worked well in the book. The story as such was reasonably well developed but it missed a certain wider story: the virus attack came from another country but there is no ongoing war or occupation by foreign soldiers. There also wasn’t a clear explanation as to why people could live up to 150 years and how long this had been the case.

This is a YA story that will also be fun for adults that enjoy dystopian novels.

Rating: 4 / 5

Number of pages: 352 (My Dutch edition)

First published: 2012

I got this book: from the library

Genre: dytopian fiction, Young Adult fiction

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Book Review: The Uninvited by Liz Jensen

Liz Jensen is one of those quiet writers that you don’t hear a lot about, but who has a few titles in her name. Her most well-known is The Ninth Life of Louis Drax but more recently her book The Rapture has had some attention on the book blogs. I have read several of her books and enjoyed them to 4 stars or higher. Both The Rapture and The Paper Eater are dystopian/apocalyptic novels just like The Uninvited. Jensen’s book are always a bit odd which makes them good fun.

The Uninvited: What it is about

From the publishers: “A seven-year-old girl puts a nail-gun to her grandmother’s neck and fires. An isolated incident, say the experts. The experts are wrong. Across the world, children are killing their families. Is violence contagious?

As chilling murders by children grip the country, anthropologist Hesketh Lock has his own mystery to solve: a bizarre scandal in the Taiwan timber industry. Hesketh has never been good at relationships: Asperger’s Syndrome has seen to that. But he does have a talent for spotting behavioural patterns, and an outsider’s fascination with group dynamics.

Nothing obvious connects Hesketh’s Southeast Asian case with the atrocities back home. Or with the increasingly odd behaviour of his beloved step-son, Freddy. But when Hesketh’s Taiwan contact dies shockingly and more acts of sabotage and child violence sweep the globe, he is forced to acknowledge possibilities that defy the rational principles on which he has staked his life, his career and, most devastatingly of all, his role as a father.

Part psychological thriller, part dystopian nightmare, The Uninvited is a powerful and viscerally unsettling portrait of apocalypse in embryo.”

The Uninvited: What I thought

I loved this book! I loved the main character, 36 year old Hesketh, who has Asperger’s Syndrome and has his own way of dealing with people and situations. When it gets too much, he carries out his hobby, origami paper folding, in his head: he thinks through the steps of folding a swan in order to calm himself down and to shut himself off from his environment – what a fantastic idea!

He also creates flow charts in his head to work out the possible outcome of situations, which he uses during his investigations into industrial sabotage and parent-killing children.

This novel is an apocalyptic mystery story in which Hesketh tries to find out what is going on with the world. Things seem to get worse and not just in his own country: all over the world similar things happen. He gets very close to the action when he is a first-hand witness of both a suicide and of a murdering child as well as a sabotaging colleague. He slowly realises what is going on.

Weird things happen in the book. I loved trying to work out what could be happening to the world and used each “clue” to think along with Hesketh and his colleagues in order to solve the mystery. The build-up to the ending seemed unsatisfying at first, but when I finished the book, I was happy with the solution after all.

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Rating: 5 (out of 5)

Number of pages: 320

First published: 2013, January 8th (USA, 2012 UK)

I got this book: from the publishers for review via Netgalley

Genre: contemporary fiction, speculative fiction

Extra: Other books I read by Liz Jensen: The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, The Rapture, The Paper Eater and My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time

 

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What did you think?

Quick Book Review: The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

Rating: 4/5
Number of pages: 256 (my Dutch edition)
First published: 2012
Genre: science fiction, apocalypse
I got this book: from the library (Dutch edition: Wij waren hier).

I love books in which the world is no longer as we know it (post-apocalyptic or dystopian novels). In The Age of Miracles, the reader is present when the changes start: the rotation of the earth is slowing down, with as a result that the days become longer. First only about an hour is added to the day, but slowly but surely, the days become extremely long, up to 60 hours or more.

Julia is a twelve-year old who lives with her parents and has a secret crush on a boy from school, Seth Moreno. The story is told by an older Julia, looking back on her youth. The slowing of the earth has all kinds of effects. For instance, crops won’t grow because they spend too long in the sun (longer days) or too long in the dark (longer nights). Some people become ill with a new illness, related to the changing situation.

The main effect is, that most people follow the government’s instruction and continue living a 24-hour schedule. This schedule is no longer related to the rotation of the earth, so in the middle of the night it can be completely light, whereas on another day, it can be dark, or nearly dawn. A dissident group of people want to live by the “real time” day and try to stay awake while it is light, sleeping when it is dark. Soon, they are being discriminated against by the majority.

The book explores the further effects on the lives of people as the earth’s rotation slows more and more. I found this all very believable, although I was surprised how well society seemed to continue as before. Julia gets a little closer to her heart-throb Seth, but there wasn’t too much of a plot to the story.

The story ends in the “current” time, but the reader doesn’t get a good insight in what the situation is then, how the living conditions have changed compared to the time before the slowing. I loved reading the story until I got to the end and felt a little cheated. What now?

I very much liked the way this book explored a “What if” situation that no one could put right again. They had to adapt to the situation as well as they could. Only the ending was unsatisfactory to me, because the reader still doesn’t know what will happen to humanity according to the scenario in the book.

Book Review: The Miracle Inspector by Helen Smith

As you might know, I love dystopian fiction. I even made a post about it, with adult dystopia novels (as opposed to YA dystopia, which is much better known to a lot of people). When it comes to dystopia, I prefer a situation that is in the near future, and not too far removed from our current situation – that usually makes it even more scary!

The Miracle Inspector: What it is about

In The Miracle Inspector, I guess we are about 50 years in the future, in London, England. Women can’t work outside the home and cannot go anywhere except to the shops and to family (there is an official at the Ministry to check out people’s family relationships to make sure women are really visiting relations and not strangers or friends).

Lucas has a good job at the Ministry as a miracle inspector. When a miracle is being reported, he goes to check it out. So far, no genuine miracles have been found, although the public do their best to make up their own miracles (the face of the Virgin Mary in a flan, etc.).

Lucas is a well-off man, with his own car, a rarity in London, and a nice house. His wife is Angela, a clever woman, but stuck to a boring life at their home. The couple make plans to escape to Cornwall, where they would be free, but they need passes to get there. Their attempt to escape London lead to serious consequences for Lucas and Angela.

The Miracle Inspector: What I thought

This book reminded me of The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood) to start with, because of the restrictions to women. These were society’s restrictions, and within their marriage, Lucas didn’t feel it was right that a woman like Angela had to spend all her time at home. On the other hand, he was a product of his society, so I didn’t feel completely comfortable with the way he thought about their situation.

Later on, the book had some elements of The Carhullan Army (Sarah Hall). But while there were similarities with that book and with The Handmaid’s Tale, The Miracle Inspector was definitely a unique book in its own right.

I loved how the society’s rules were made up by the people themselves. At some point, people were allowed to make the laws and some very odd regulations followed. Many of the rules were formed based on three (perceived) threats: everyone was a potential terrorist, rapist, or paedophile. Because of terrorists, people could not freely travel; because of rapists, women should not leave the house; and because of paedophiles, hardly any schooling existed any more. In London, there was a rumour that in Spain, pre-school children were often looked after by their grandparents during the day (when the Spanish women worked). But this was considered very unlikely, as you could hardly trust even the children’s own fathers with their kids, let alone the grandparents!

So, there were a lot of funny things in this book, but the plot is more serious. Angela discovers that life on the other side of the (London) fence isn’t so great everywhere either, and at some point she wishes she was safely back at home. The book’s ending is somewhat open, but it doesn’t take too much imagination to think what would happen next.

The world Angela and Lucas were living in seemed well thought-out, and I would have loved to know more about Cornwall, the place (besides Australia) that every Londoner wanted to escape to.

The book was well-written and a pleasure to read. If this was a children’s book, there would definitely be a sequel. Even so, I secretly hope there will be one, or a least another book based on the same dystopian world.

Rating: 4.5 (out of 5)

Number of pages: 248

First published: 2010 (Tyger Books, UK)

I got this book: for review from the author

Genre: science fiction, dystopia

 

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Book Review: Genus by Jonathan Trigell

Say: “This book is a dystopian novel for adults” and I say: “Sold!”. Well, not strictly in all cases, but I am a fan and this book sounded just the sort of thing that I would enjoy. And so I did.

Jonathan Trigell also wrote Boy A, a book I’ve heard of but haven’t read. Obviously, after reading and loving Genus, it’s now a must-read.

Genus: What it is about

From the publisher’s website: “In the Britain of a few tomorrows time, physical perfection is commonplace and self improvement has become an extinct expression: all the qualities men and women could aspire to can be purchased prior to birth.

GENUS is a time of genetic selection and enrichment – life chances come on a sliding scale according to wealth. For some there is no money or choice, and an underclass has evolved; London’s King’s Cross, or The Kross as it is now known, has become a ghetto for the Unimproved. In The Kross, the natural, the dated, the cheap and the dull, live a brittle and unenviable existence. But unrest is growing; tension is mounting and a murderer is abroad in these dark quarters…

Acclaimed author Jonathan Trigell’s third novel is a breathtaking tour de force, exploring a dystopia of the not-too-distant-a future which will leave readers wondering not ‘what if’, as the original audience of Huxley’s Brave New World did, but ‘when’.”

Genus: What I thought

You know I love dystopian fiction and this book is no exception. While I would not necessarily call it strictly dystopian, it’s futuristic, bleak, clever, and scary.

We follow misshapen Holman, a poor artist living in The Kross where he scrapes a living (mainly by begging from his very rich and beautiful mother, a former model). His life isn’t easy and it doesn’t help that people start dying around him. Not just anyone, but people he knows and deals with regularly. His artwork gets destroyed in a riot and he relies on synth (an alcoholic drink) to get through the day. Soon he’s a suspect in the murder cases and he leaves home to hide at a friend’s house.

We also follow a policeman called Gunt, who is the most despicable person you can think of, but who does manage to solve the murder mystery. He is the most beautiful person you can imagine, and obviously an Improved person, on a quest to arrest and put away as many Unimproved as he can manage.

This book is very well written, definitely literary fiction, but not in a forced, difficult way. It’s very readable but you have to keep your mind with it. Skim one or two sentences and you may have missed something important.

I liked the way each chapter was about a certain person. Holman featured most, but other characters, such as Gunt, as well as minor characters (who had maybe just one chapter each) were featured. At first it is not quite clear how they fit in the story, but in the end, it all comes together.

Sometimes there are chapters in which each character is only briefly mentioned, not always by name. For instance, the text refers to a “heavy-set man with a pale upper lip”, and you think “who’s that?”, then you read that he has a dog, and you think, “Ah, that’s Quigley, the man with the mustache who was on the run. He must have shaved it off to be less obvious.” That makes the book extra fun to read, these little puzzles, that are not hard to solve, but take a little bit of thinking.

The Kross is where most of the book takes part and is almost a character itself. It’s a bleak place, rife with vandalism and dirt everywhere. This is very much an urban novel.

This story in a future England discusses beauty and class struggles (where the lower class are the genetically unimproved) and is scarily believable. A wonderful read for anyone who loves dystopian-type literature.

Rating: 5 (out of 5)

Number of pages: 278

First published: 2011

I got this book: from the publishers for review

Genre: speculative fiction, science fiction, dystopian fiction

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Book Review: The Magician King by Lev Grossman

This book was on the shortlist for the Indie Lit Awards in the Speculative Fiction genre. I read it because I was in the jury for this genre, which was a pleasure to do!

I didn’t read the prequel – this is the second book in the series. I got a bit bored after a while, although the story picked up again towards the end.

The Magician King: What it is about

From the publisher’s website: “The Magicians was praised as a triumph by readers and critics of both mainstream and fantasy literature. Now Grossman takes us back to Fillory, where the Brakebills graduates have fled the sorrows of the mundane world, only to face terrifying new challenges.

Quentin and his friends are now the kings and queens of Fillory, but the days and nights of royal luxury are starting to pall. After a morning hunt takes a sinister turn, Quentin and his old friend Julia charter a magical sailing ship and set out on an errand to the wild outer reaches of their kingdom. Their pleasure cruise becomes an adventure when the two are unceremoniously dumped back into the last place Quentin ever wants to see: his parent’s house in Chesterton, Massachusetts. And only the black, twisted magic that Julia learned on the streets can save them.

The Magician King is a grand voyage into the dark, glittering heart of magic, an epic quest for the Harry Potter generation. It also introduces a powerful new voice, that of Julia, whose angry genius is thrilling. Once again Grossman proves that he is the modern heir to C.S. Lewis, and the cutting edge of literary fantasy.”

The Magician King: What I thought

It didn’t really seem to matter that I hadn’t read the first book in this series, The Magicians. I did look up the story on wikipedia and was able to jump into this new story quite easily.

There wasn’t a general plot to the book, at least, it seemed so at first. It went from Fillory – a voyage on a ship for no clear reason, back to Earth, then back to Fillory, via Neitherland. There was a high Narnia factor, but there were more than just the two worlds. A new world was created by finding and using seven keys.

There were some interesting elements – Dragons in a Venice canal, a new world was created, Gods that were magicians (übermagicians) and more. I also liked the secondary story line about Julia. This was a very clever idea. She learned magic from an underground group. But it never became clear to me why Julia was focused on in particular and no one else from her group of friends (other than Quentin).

Definitely a book for adults (that enjoyed Narnia). For me, there wasn’t a clear enough story line, the story seemed to move from one thing to the next. Still, an entertaining read.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
I got this book: for review from Viking for the Indie Lit Awards.
I read this in: English, the original language
Number of pages: 400
First published: 2011
Genre: fantasy

Book Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

This book was on the shortlist for the Indie Lit Awards in the Speculative Fiction genre. I read it because I was in the jury for this genre, which was a pleasure to do! (And actually, I wanted to read it anyway, not just for the awards). Oh, and the book won!

I enjoyed this book all the way through. Although it is set in the future, it was like I was reading something real, that was happening now.

Ready Player One: What it is about

Wade Watts, 18 years old, lives in a trailer on top of many more trailers. He is living with his awful aunt and is very poor. He spends most of his time in a van on a junk yard. There are junk yards with piles of cars everywhere, because petrol cars cannot be used anymore as there is not enough petrol left in the world.

In the van, Wade logs into OASIS to go to school. This is a huge online system. With some special glasses and gloves on, it feels as if he really is present at school, or playing online games after school hours. Wade is especially interested in finding a treasure, that has been left in the system by the inventor of OASIS, John Halliday, as a legacy after his death. Many people have tried to find it but so far no one has ever found even the first of three hidden keys.

Wade, however, does manage to find the first key and his online friends (or people that will become his friends) follow suit. But the Sixes are also after the keys. They are a large group of organised people who will do anything to find the treasure. They pressure Wade to tell them where the first key is as there will be severe repercussions if he doesn’t comply.

Bit by bit Wade discovers more clues to the prize, but has to fight off the Sixes at the same time.

There are a lot of references to old computer games and movies (from the 1980 especially), many of which Wade has to play with a perfect score in order to get closer to the keys.

Ready Player One: What I thought

I loved this book so much! I thought it was fantastic. From the description you might think this book is for computer geeks and it is. But it’s also for people that have an average interest in computer games.

I was totally immersed in the book while I was reading it. When I wasn’t reading, it was as if this acquaintance of mine, Wade Watts, was somewhere out there fighting a difficult battle. Only when I finished the book, and the issues were resolved, was I able to let go of the story.

It was a dystopian story in which the big corporation that the Sixes were working for, was in charge of most of what happened in the country, with lots of people working for them in a kind of slavery situation. Wade Watts is determined to undermine them and gets himself in dangerous situations to achieve this.

The world building could have been a bit more comprehensive. At times I felt I was looking through a tube, seeing Wade and his actions, but not really having a good idea what the rest of the world might look like and what its people were doing. This didn’t matter much, as the pace of the book was high and there was little time to stop and reflect on such matters.

My favorite moment was when Wade is in OASIS looking for a key and finds himself in a movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and discovers that he is a character in this movie. He has to (and can, as he has seen the movie many times) reproduce the exact dialogue of his character at exactly the right time. If he passes through the complete movie with few errors, he will be allowed to go to the next level of the search for the treasure. What a brilliant idea!

This is an absolutely wonderful book if you like science fiction-type books. A little computergames-geekyness doesn’t hurt, but even without that, this makes a great read.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
I got this book: for review from Crown publishers for the Indie Lit Awards.
I read this in: English, the original language
Number of pages: 363
First published: 2011
Genre: science fiction
Extra: An interview with Ernest Cline, after winning the Indie Lit Awards