Getting Weirder...

I am still reading the Adoration of Jenna Fox. Jenna has just gone back to school, albeit only three days a week at a charter. A lot of weird things happened before that. First, Jenna found that she was missing a scar on her chin that she had when she was ten. I know that over the course of seven years, it would be much less recognizable, but scars never disappear without a trace, like this one did. Also, when Jenna remembered going camping, she also remembered the taste of hot chocolate. Jenna couldn't eat normal food, just tasteless nutrients. Her parents said that it was because her body couldn't digest normal food after getting its nutrients through a tube for over a year. When she made hot chocolate, she expected it to taste like how she remembered it to taste like. However, when she drank it, it was tasteless. There is one more hint that something much weirder than just a car accident and a coma had happened. When Jenna was up in her room, she heard her mom and grandma (though she always called them by their first names) in a loud discussion about her. Lily (her grandma) said that it wasn't natural. I'm not sure exactly what she means by that, but it definately means something is up. Anyways, when Jenna was in school, she met her four classmates, Ethan, the boy she saw at the mission, Dane, the boy who lives in the Georgia style house, Allys, a girl who lost much of her body to an infection and had very realistic looking artificial limbs, and Gabriel, another boy. I think that Allys' artificial body shows what medical science can do in the future and might act as a way of foreshadowing what really happened after the accident. This book has been filled with suspense and I would suggest reading it.

Eh...

This week, I tried to start reading Truancy, but I couldn't really get into it. It takes place in a city in the distant future, where the government is trying to control through education. As a student, your life is basically controlled by school. The school day isn't any longer than ours, but during that time, you can't talk unless called upon, you have to were hidious and uncomfortable uniforms, you get even more homework than on a busy night here, and you only have one day a week to get away from it. When I started reading it, I figured that the school system was like the japanese school system. They have school on saturday and have to wear uniforms, but it doen't seem nearly as oppressive as this book is. I kind of got bored of it once I found that it's pretty much the same as our world, only school is even more boring and oppressive. I also started reading the adoration of Jenna Fox, which I am more interested in. It is about a seventeen year old girl named Jenna Fox who had been in a coma for a year and forgot who she was, what happened to her, how to walk, talk, and pretty much everything else. After a couple of days, she started regaining the abilities that she would have to use every day (walking, speaking, ect.) but still had no memories. The house in california that she lived in after she woke up wasn't the house she lived in before. She didn't have any friends, or she used to, but they gradually forgot her. Oh, and did I mention that it takes place in the future? So far, the events in the future haven't affected the story much. I don't know if I should recommend this book yet, but it looks promising.

Hungry for more!

This week, I am reading the Hunger Games. Almost everyone I know who read it recommends it, and I can see why. I've only had the book for about three days, and I'm almost done with it. The oppressive laws in Panem remind me of the American Revolution, only this is more of an alternate universe where the colonists didn't win their Independence, and ended up stuck with even more oppressive laws. If you get caught for stealing anything, even if you're a three-year-old who just stole something like a piece of candy, you could end up getting whipped or even killed without having so much as a trial to plead your case. If you can't work or get enough money to feed yourself, you either break the law and harvest food from the meadow or the woods, or starve to death. When I read that District 12, the poorest district, was in Appalachia, I realized that in the hundreds of years in the future that this book takes place in, not much has changed. Jobs are still scarce, hunger still rampent, only here, food stamps and wellfare aren't here as a safety line. Also, the fact that 24 teenagers are forced to kill each other, causing needless casualties and grief, just as a way for the Capitol to assert its superiority is pretty harsh too. Whoever came up with that idea must have no conscience whatsoever. They killed a boy who obviously had a serious mental disorder when he stole a pair of night-glasses. In today's society, someone like that would be given help. Having to either lose your life or your humanity-or both- just to amuse a bunch of rich hypocrites shows how ruthless these leaders are. I know that our world today has plenty of unfairness and cruelty in it. I just hope that the real world doesn't end up like this. This is definately a great book, with just the right balance of action, romance and suspense. However, it is also pretty violent and in some parts very sad, so I wouldn't recommend it to anyone under ten or eleven years old.

Everlost Update

I am still reading Everlost right now, but I'm practically done with it. Here is a quick summary of what happened since my last post: (this summary contains tons of spoilers. You have been warned!) Nick and Leif were taken from the Haunter's factory and onto the McGill's ship, so Allie tried to rescue them by taking the living world ferry. Of course, since Afterlights sink through living world objects, Allie almost sank right through the ferry. Her only chance at staying on the boat was to take over the ferry captain's body. It worked, and she managed to change the course of the ship just enough to reach the McGill's ghost ship. Once on board, the McGill learned that Allie had the ability to skinjack, so he kept her around, and realized, to his horror, that he was falling for Allie. He told her that he had sunk to the center of the earth but managed to claw his way back up, reappearing as a grotesque monster. Allie used a typewriter to write a fake fortune (which in Everlost are always true) which instructed him to go to the peirs of defeat: the old Steeplechase and steel peirs in Atlantic City. He went there only to discover Mary Hightower, who was really Meghan McGill in her life. It turns out that the McGill was Mary's brother who was mentioned earlier in the story. I was shocked that the two turned out to be related, since the McGill had a stash of her books which he read more out of annoyence than anything. I can't believe Mary, with her insane amounts of patience, kindness and generosity, could be related to a cruel monster who hoarded everything he could find. Also, Vari snuck onto the McGill's old ship after he turned back into a fourteen year old boy, and became the new McGill. I was surprized by a lot of things, like how Speedo's "sweet ride" mentioned early on in the book turned out to be the Hindenberg. This book has been very suspenseful and satisfying. The begining is a little slow, but if you keep reading, you'll find that it's worth it.

Yet another Post

For the past week or so, I have been reading Everlost. A lot of people say it's a bad book, but I disagree with them. I personally love books that deal with the supernatural or what I call "non-alien" science fiction. Anyways, I don't think Everlost is a bad book, I just find it a bit odd and rather confusing. For example, it took me a while to figure out what it meant when Leif said that everyone on that highway either passed by or got where they were going (It means they died and got to the light at the end of the tunnel). Only children that get lost on their way to the light and objects that were loved during their time in the living world are supposed to cross over, but unloved objects can be pulled in by vortexes caused by sunspot activity. Afterlights (what the spirits that wander Everlost for all eternity are called) aren't supposed to be able to interact with the living world, but certain afterlights, like Allie, one of the two main characters that the book follows, can pull objects out of the living world and into Everlost. As you can see, the book contradicts itself fairly often.

Another thing that the point of view changes. (Well, technically, it's always written in the third person, but the character who it follows changes.) The point of view changes in every chapter in Unwind, which made it a little confusing in the same way, but in Everlost, there isn't anything announcing it. This was especially confusing during Nick and Allie's time in the twin towers because they had very different views of Mary Hightower and the "routines" that many of their fellow Afterlights fell into, doing the exact same thing day after day until the end of time. Still, if you get over the confusing writing style, Everlost is a very cool and interesting book. I would recommend it to "non-alien" sci-fi fans and other people who like their fiction anything but realistic like me.

Another Post

So last week, we finally started our class novels. I am reading so yesterday. It is about Hunter, who looks for new fashions that could be marketed to the general public, which he calls cool hunting, as a job. At the very beginning of the book, hunter met Jen, who was an Inovater, the person who starts the trend instead of following it. Jen brought some new ideas to a focus group for a shoe commercial (the missing black woman formation), which caught the attention of Hunter's boss, Mandy. They were supposed to meet in Chinatown, but Mandy didn't turn up. After a bit of investagation, Hunter and Jen found Mandy's cell phone in an abandoned building, as well as a mysterious shipment of the coolest shoes they had ever seen. I forgot to mention that there is a bald guy who also seems to be involved, though I haven't read enough to know how. This book was written by Scott Westerfield, the author of the Uglies series. I am starting to notice a few simalarities. In chapter 0, one of the previews was about the jammers, who are trying to take down the system. Hunter said that he thought he was on their side. This reminds me of the uglies, because at the beginning of every book, Tally starts out with her full alegence to the city government, and stays that way until she is reminded that (SPOILER ALERT) the surgery to become a pretty/special changes the way your brain works, making you less able to rebel, but also to think for yourself.

Book update

The book I read this week is The Seems: The Glitch in Sleep. It is about a boy named Becker Drane, who is a Fixer in a place called The Seems, which is home to various departments that each run one aspect of the World, from Time to Sleep to Weather. In this book, a Glitch (which is a tiny three-armed monster that destroys everything in its path, rather than a random programing abnormality) attacks the department of Sleep, preventing it from being able to ship out sleep or dreams, which are vital for chains of events (These are pretty much the same as in the real world, except that they are planned. If a chain of events were to become unraveled, something known as a ripple affect would happen, and the very fabric of reality would pretty much be toast.) Becker has to take on this glitch as his first mission. I found this book very interesting. I find it rather similar to Heck: Where the bad kids go Because both have a supernatural idea that is very organized and rather bureaucratic.