Percy Jackson and the Olympians

Oh. Hey guys.

Before you say anything, I know. It’s been FOREVER. But, though my taste in books would indicate that I am a fourteen-year-old in the throes of middle school, I am in fact in my twenties, and just finished my junior year of college. And, my being a junior in college, and an English major, meant that I had to set aside my wonderful young adult novels to pursue decidedly more “academic” and “age-appropriate” literature.

I read Ulysses.

 The cover is ugly as sin, but the innards are BEAUTIFUL.

So, needless to say, I loved Joyce’s famous reimagining of the Odyssey, but this is not the place, and I am most certainly not the scholar to give it a just and thorough review. So instead, I’ll review a decidedly less prestigious reimagining of Greek myth.

Percy motha-effin’ Jackson.

It’s not the greatest novel of the twentieth century, but it is a novel!

Frankly, this series is pretty awesome. The basic premise is that P. Jacks’ mom has the greatest hookup ever and finds her uterus full of the SON OF POSEIDEN, GOD OF THE SEA. That’s right. The hero of this young adult novel isn’t your average orphan, boy-wizard, or vampire-werewolf-mermaid-griffin. He’s a DEMI-GOD.

Basically, the entire series is Percy navigating through pretty much every Greek myth out there, in his attempts to create harmony between the world of humans and the world of the Olympians. The plot concept is really freakin’ cool. The execution is really freakin' juvenile.

Now, I often get flack for reading books that are very ill suited for my age. For the most part, the flack doesn’t bother me. I can handle it. In fact, I welcome it. Flack. Part of a healthy, balanced breakfast. Not to be confused with “flak,” the antiaircraft weaponry. 

Not this.

But with this book, I started to feel ashamed. I think it really hit me when I was substitute teaching for a third grade class, and several of the spry little eight-year-olds referred to the series as “childish.” I made sure to never let them find out that I had good old Perce tucked in my backpack at that very moment. It’s one thing to be judged by eight-year-olds. It is quite another to know that their judgment is not entirely unfounded.

The thing is, Percy Jackson is an unassuming twelve-year-old with twelve-year-old problems and a twelve-year-old sense of humor. The chapters of this book have such darling titles as “I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-algebra Teacher,” “Grover Unexpectedly Loses His Pants,” and “I Battle my Jerk Relative.”

I also really like to think that when I was twelve, I was not as idiotic as this spawn of Posieden. Percy is literally attacked by a flying she-beast from Hades, his best friend reveals to him that he is half-goat, his mother is carried off by a minatoar, but when a centaur tries to suggest to him that the gods of Ancient Greece are real, Percy simply won’t have it. “’But they’re stories,’ I said. “They’re – myths, to explain lightning and the seasons and stuff. They’re what people believed before there was science.’” Pages 67-68

PERCY. USE YOUR HEAD.

The movie is also super bad. Not like the awesome movie, Superbad, but actually just really shitty. For one thing, Percy looks a hell of a lot older than twelve, which really makes his dumbassness all the more embarrassing. But, on the upside, it has Sean Bean playing Zeus. Obvi. Anytime you need anyone slightly regal in anything, Sean Bean is your man. Boromir, Odysseus, Ned Stark, that pedophile in Red Riding, Sean Bean’s found his niche.

The upcoming sequel, set to come out on the Ides of March, 2013, is starring much of the same people, who are now wayyyy too old to be taken for thirteen year olds. Sean Bean will not be returning for this one, but his presence as a chronic typecast will not be missed, because the part of the Cyclops will be played by this guy:

His name is Derek Mears, and he is a 40-year-old actor who specializes in the portrayal of beef-heads, muscular serial killers, and terrifying aliens alike. His most notable accomplishments include “Thug #2” in Andy Barker, P.I., “Jones Thug #2” in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, “Thug #4” in My Name is Earl, and “Classic Predator” in Predators. 

The face of success.

So, overall, I do recommend this series, but I recommend it for true tweens. In the flesh as well as the mind. It’s an excellent tool for teachers who want to get their kids excited about Greek myths. I actually learned a lot from reading it. Like, enough to be able to dominate in some of my college classes. No joke. 

Photo Cred:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aircraft_warfare

http://moviecarpet.com/2010/01/29/percy-jackson-olympians-new-photos/

imdb.com

http://www.fromdusktillcon.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=2797

http://www.flavorwire.com/213838/10-novels-that-take-place-in-a-single-day?all=1

http://rickriordan.com/my-books/percy-jackson/percy-jackson-olympians.aspx

http://www.agta-gtc.org/the-right-method-to-test-gems-and-precious-metals/

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Have you ever noticed how page turning is a laborious and often strenuous task? I’m not even talking metaphorically here, I mean physically. Your fingers have to grasp the page, make sure it’s not stuck to any others, (no hop-ons), and then the muscles in your hand and arm have to work to flip that sucker entirely upside down. It’s a workout, man! That shit burns calories!

Probably less calories than this.

Now I know you, reader. I can read you like the back of a box of Berry Berry Kix. Right now you’re sitting at your computer, iPad, iPod, Nook, or digital watch with a data plan and thinking “What is she talking about? Page turning is easy! If page turning is a workout than why am I not reading James Joyce in my jazzercise class?”

Joycercise.

I don’t know why you’re not reading Joyce. You need to take that up with your jazzercise instructor. All I’m saying is that you don’t notice the strains of page turning until you have to do it over and over again at a fairly quick pace.

And that’s what happens when you read The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Most of it is pictures, with the occasional page or two of printed word, and usually those pages of words are only half –full. Or half-empty. It really depends on what your attitude towards words are.

So, because of the intense amount of pictures in this book, you’re fippin’ pages like they’re veggie burgers! (in case you didn’t know, veggie burgers need to be flipped fairly rapidly). I mean, sure, I guess you could take your time and enjoy the artwork and really let it sink in, but that would totally mess with the pace of the story. There are multiple chase scenes that are depicted entirely through full page drawings. At that point the pages should be flowing at a pace that would rival a flipbook.

IT’S ON

But despite the fact that my right arm is now rippled and muscular and my left arm still looks like one of those resistance yoga bands that you found in a thrift store dollar bin, the artwork was actually a really cool addition to the book. Bravo, Brian Selznick, for successfully fusing two forms of art together to tell a story!

The problem is, the story that the art forms were telling was kind of bad. The basic plot is sound enough, I guess. There’s an orphan boy who’s living alone in a Paris train station. He’s taken over as timekeeper after his uncle disappeared, so he sets all the clocks in the train station in secret. He steals food and mechanical toys that he can take apart and use the pieces to make his automaton, which is this weird-ass mechanical man that Hugo is devoting his life to.

Ah, youth.

This is a fine set-up, and could very well lead to an interesting, perhaps even heartwarming story. But it didn’t. The story was full of characters whose emotions would do a complete one-eighty out of nowhere, the “big twist” at the end was really not that big a deal, and the book had way way way too many chase scenes.

All right. I guess I’m on board with this.

Oh no. She fell. What a creative new development.

Ok these need to STOP.

Ahh the chase scene. A surefire way to provide suspense in your novel. Chase scenes are fail-safe, they are effective, but like gutter guards in a bowling competition, they should be used spare-ingly. (yeah. I’ve been sitting on that gem for a while). It is a mark of true creativity to be able to make your reader’s heart race without quickening your character’s pace. (yep. That one too). I respect authors who can have me clutching my heart in fear and anticipation without providing a good old-fashioned run for you life. Chase scenes are a cliché. They are a last resort. And they should certainly never be used as many times as they are used in this book.

So, on the whole, I was pretty unimpressed. I had been really excited for a fascinating story told through the cooperative effort of well placed words and outstanding artwork (see Leviathan) but what I got was decidedly less-than. Not a gem.

I heard the movie kicks ass, though.

Photo-Cred

http://blog.itechtalk.com/2010/improving-cardio-workouts/

http://biblioklept.org/2008/09/22/james-joyce-reads-you-listen/

http://blaine.org/sevenimpossiblethings/?p=2228

http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2012/jan/06/exploring-grand-centrals-secret-author-hugo/

http://trustmovies.blogspot.com/2011/11/scorseses-hugo-intelligent-personal.html

http://dornob.com/rainbow-flip-book-brilliant-diy-3d-illusion-you-can-hold/

http://www.filmonair.com/magazine/article/hugo-it-all-started-with-a-trip-to-the-moon

Graceling

So guys, guess what? No, I didn't learn how to roller disco. Stop asking me that. It'll happen when it happens.

Believe it or not, I found another gem!

It’s called Graceling and it’s by Kristin Cashore and it’s awesome andzomgeveryoneshouldreaditbecauseit’sthebest!!!!

ahem.

Ok, so, background: Katsa is a girl living in the Seven Kingdoms. These Seven Kingdoms are constantly shifting alliances and there’s lots of political confusion and all that really fun stuff. (That last bit sounded sarcastic but it’s not. I reeeaaaallly like this book).

There are some people in these seven kingdoms who are known as “Gracelings”. Their eyes have two different colors (like husky dogs!) and they have special abilities. One Graceling might be really good at cooking, another dancing, swimming, building, tic tac toe, whathaveyou.

So the setting of this book is kind of middle-ages-y. It’s got a real Robin Hood vibe to it.

But not this. This has a failing marriage vibe.

THERE WE GO.

Now imagine that’s a teenage girl. And she is graced with the ability to kill people.

She doesn’t just rob the rich. She flippin’ kills them!

Katsa is the king’s niece, and he uses her as his assassin. Katsa doesn’t agree with her uncle’s politics and hates what he forces her to do, so she starts her own secret society of people who put thing’s right behind the kings’ backs.

JUST LIKE THE MERRY MEN!!!

Just like this.

So what is it about this book that makes it a gem? No it’s not the gleaming sheen of its cover or the fact that it formed 400 kilometers below the earth’s surface. (this last part is probably not true but I have not yet confirmed that it isn’t.)

Kristin Cashore in her teen years.

What makes this book wonderful is the plot. It’s kick ass. There’s an evil king, and Katsa has to save his daughter with the help of, wait for it, a totally hot prince! His name is Po and he’s also graced, and Katsa and him have all these awesome fights full of kicks to the face, round-house punches, and a healthy dose of sexual tension. And though a movie has not been made yet, meaning that I can’t show you photographic evidence of this, there is some really weird fan art that I am more than willing to share:

This was a fairly popular Nickelodean children's show in the 1490s.

I also found this:

Just because she’s holding a knife does not prove that she is not a fairy princess. That could be her steak knife. To cut her fairy princess steak.

But I’m not here to talk about fair princess steak. I’m here to talk about how much Graceling rocks. I think that my favorite thing about this book is that the main characters aren’t idiots. I have found all too often in my travels through young adult literature that the main characters usually have shit for brains. Take Percy Jackson for example (I’ll probably right a review for that series pretty soon). Percy is a normal, dumbass, twelve year old kid, who gets attacked one day by a screeching, winged, she-beast that was disguised as his pre algebra teacher, and he also finds out he’s the son of Poseidon. Meaning he’s a freakin’ demigod. THEN he gets his mom get’s carried away by a flippin’ minotaur and he’s like “but wait… minotaur aren’t reeeeaaaaallll.”

COME ON, PERCY. I know you didn’t really get a good education, what with your teacher being a she-beast and all that but use some goddam brain cells! You accept the fact that you’re father is the Greek god of the sea, but you don’t accept that an animal that is alarmingly close in physique to a bull could possibly exist?

That’s why Katsa and Po are such wonderful characters. They aren’t idiots. They figure out what’s going on fairly early in the story, and spend the rest of the book trying to stop it. No crazy plot twists, no life-changing discoveries that the reader had figured out chapters before. Sometimes, devices like that work in young adult literature, but they are always risky. I respect Kristin Cashore for staying on the straightforward path and just telling a really good story.

But anyway I don’t really want to say much more about Graceling because I want everyone to go read it. Trust me. It’s good. It’s completely engrossing, it has a super badass female protagonist, and the plot is really smart. All around gem.

Bob Rankin? Why is my fairy princess steak so dry?

Photo Cred:

http://i2.listal.com/image/55400/936full-robin-hood-photo.jpg

http://www.buycostumes.com/Robin-Hood-Adult/27237/ProductDetail.aspx

http://www.pdplayhouse.com/robin%20hood%20pics.htm

http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Cave-troll

http://jeelchristine.tumblr.com/post/7034432551/katsa-and-po-of-graceling-snuggling-fighting

http://jeelchristine.tumblr.com/post/7044519786/katsa-no-fairy-princess-by-jackie-lyn-on

http://askbobrankin.com/gems_and_minerals.html

The Forest of Hands and Teeth

Ok, raise your hand if you saw The Village.

Now raise your hand if you liked The Village.

Now raise your hand if you like books that follow the same plot line as M. Night Shyamalan movies.

That’s what I thought.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan, has all the makings of a really captivating story. A girl living in a village surrounded by a forest where zombies live. She needs to find out if there is anyone else alive in the world outside her town. It sounds pretty sweet. Post-apocolyptic. Zombies. Not to mention the reviews on the back said it was sexy. But even with all this going for it I was still weary. Because I saw The Village once. I did not see The Village Twice. There is a reason for that. And the fact that The Village came out in 2004 and this book was published in 2009 is more than a little suspicious.

But I was having a hard time finding something to read so when I saw it at the library I grabbed it.

I was pleasantly surprised.

The story starts out with a town that is very old-fashioned, you know, arranged marriages, doing your own laundry in a babbling brook, no cell-phone service type of old-fashioned. The main character, Mary, is approached by another character, Henry who asks her to marry him. But, what’s this? Mary is in love with Henry’s brother, Travis. But, sacre bleu! Travis has already asked Mary’s best friend, Cass, to marry him. So what does Mary do?

She watches her mother get infected by zombie disease, has her brother kick her out of the house, and becomes a nun. (by the way, don’t google image “zombie nun.” It’s not as fun as it sounds.)

This is where things get cool. The town is basically run by these nuns and boy do they mean business.

But not this type of business. More like, we’re going to keep everyone trapped in this town through a combination of fear and religious devotion kind of business. I’m also pretty sure the nuns in this book don’t wear Teevas.

So it becomes pretty clear pretty soon that the nuns know more about this zombie situation than they’re letting on, and that they want to keep everyone here for a reason. Which, yes, is exactly like The Village, but for some reason I was more intrigued by this because of the strong religious overtones.

Atheist.

So, as Mary is discovering that the Sisterhood is corrupt, Travis hurts his leg and is being treated in a room close to Mary’s. She visits him often and some sexy encounters occur and we soon realize that Travis is totally into her! AHHHHHH!!!! But wait. He’s still engaged to Cass.

But that problem is solved as well! Because while Cass is fretting about Travis’ injury, Henry is comforting her and she totally falls for him!

AHHHHHHHHH!!!!

But wait. Henry is still in love with Mary. But you know what? When three out of the four people being married are upset with the situation, and changing around the pairing just a little will make three out of the four people very happy, then doesn’t it make sense to….

Apparently not, because they all decide to go along with the marriages they had already planned. Because I guess Henry’s feelings matter more than everyone else’s. Maybe he throws really intense tantrums or something.

“IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH!!!!”

So Mary marries Henry so that she can escape from the corrupt Sisterhood, but I’m thinking, ok, there’s definitely gonna be some more info about these nuns ‘cause they’re messed up, man. This could make for a really interesting story of politics, with the zombies as a backdrop, rather than literally the only plot device.

But no. According to Carrie Ryan, the zombie plot device trumps all. The night of the double wedding that could have very easily been a happy day for most, but because Carrie Ryan wanted to make her characters unfulfilled, and the only way that she could think to do that was by putting them in a very fixable situation, most of them were miserable, something awful happens. SPOILER ALERT: The zombies break into the village and kill EVERYONE. Like literally EVERYONE. The only survivors are Henry, Cass, Mary, Travis, Mary’s brother and his wife, a small boy named Jacob, and a dog.

Now, this is awful for a couple of reasons. I mean, first of all, their entire town was totally destroyed. That’s pretty bad for the characters. But looking at this from the perspective of someone who knows that this is a book that was written by an author who has total control over what happens in it, that was literally the worst plot twist I’ve ever seen. You had a good thing going, Carrie Ryan! You were creating intrigue! But now that intrigue is gone because not only did you kill off the characters creating it, you demolished the entire village, leaving the subject moot.

This happens pretty early on in the book too, and let me tell you, the rest of the book sucks.

Carrie Ryan got all the good stuff out of the way early; things like dystopian society, crazy nuns, even all the sexy scenes were when Travis was injured. The rest of the book is devoted to the survivors making they’re way through the Forest of Hands and Teeth, protected by a fence that is set up along a path. That is literally ALL THAT HAPPENS. Sure, they find another town, but oh, guess what? Carrie Ryan can’t get over her zombie fetish so that town has also been destroyed by the undead.

LEAVE US SOMETHING TO WORK WITH, CARRIE!

So, I really couldn’t stand this book. It lost me as soon as everyone interesting was killed and we were left with the boring losers who couldn’t figure out how to get married.

There are also two sequels to The Forest of Hands and Teeth, but I don’t think that they have the same characters because SPOILER ALERT: everyone except for Mary dies at the end.

...Yeah, this book is awful.

Photo Cred:

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/modern-nuns-ready-for-business-don-wolf.html

http://www.tiptoptens.com/2011/08/04/10-most-popular-cgi-characters/hulk/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthracite

Twilight Needs Some Re-Vamping

So I saw Breaking Dawn Part 1 and I'm wondering why NO ONE IS MAKING A BIGGER DEAL OUT OF THIS.

COME ON.

This movie deserves to ripped to shreds. It deserves to be publicly humiliated. It deserves to be attacked by squealing middle aged mothers in garish clothing and make-up.

One of those plans has already been set in motion.

As for the other two, the best I can do is this scathing review. Now, I know that this blog is dedicated to young adult BOOKS, but I think that we can make an exception for this movie, because it was so potent that it managed to disgrace the name of young adult literature while not even being literature.

Oh, and sorry for the lack of pictures in this post. It was originally written for a newspaper, which can be read in it's entirety here: http://www.uvm.edu/~watertwr/

Now onto the review:

The word “appalling,” meaning awful, terrible, and horrifying, originates from the Old French word “apalir,” meaning “to grow pale.” It is, therefore, the perfect word to describe The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part I, which was appalling in so many ways, the first of which being that every character was so pale that they all looked like a blood-sucking family of mimes.

I saw this movie over break, managing to snag a front row seat right in front of a squealing group of thirteen-year-old fan girls. I did not join in their enthusiasm even though, yes, I admit, I have read Twilight. And yes, unfortunately, this movie followed the book pretty well.

If you are unfamiliar with the story then DON’T SEE THIS MOVIE. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. If you are familiar with the story then you know that the movie starts with Bella the human and Edward the vamp finally tying the knot (I mean, they’re eighteen. Talk about taking your time, eh?). The newlyweds fly off to an island owned by Edward’s filthy rich vampire father and they lose their virginity in a passionate, bed-breaking bout of lovemaking. The first forty-five minutes of the movie views like a feel-good romance, with the central conflict being that Edward refuses to sleep with her after that first night owing to the fact that the bed got just as fucked as they did (meaning they literally broke the bed in half) and his wife walked away from the experience covered in bruises. Edward is nothing if not rational.

But after forty-five minutes this movie takes a turn. You see, Bella and Eddie don’t use condoms because they figure, since Edward is technically dead, he does not have the ability to impregnate her. But oh does he impregnate her. Edward’s undead sperm beats the odds and manages to create a horrifying, terrible, appalling vampire fetus that literally starts eating Bella from the inside. Finally, I thought as I watched from my front row seat. Something awesome is happening.

But, alas, I was mistaken. No, nothing happens. Bella sits on a couch and gets gaunter and more pregnant and more disgusting, Jacob runs around in the woods as a wolf all upset and shit, and Edward is just mad and pale and sparkly, for like literally an hour of the movie. When a film has a running time of 117 minutes, forty-five of those minutes are spent on the vampire sex and another sixty are spent on the woes of vampiric pregnancy, then that only leaves twelve precious minutes for a plot climax. And oh how those twelve minutes were utilized.

I was fortunate enough (in a sense) to have read the book before seeing the movie, meaning that I had a little warning but even so, when you’re sitting in the front row, in a seat nailed to the floor, facing a giant screen with the climax of Breaking Dawn Part I projected onto it, twelve minutes can seem like an eternity.

So the climax of this movie is basically a detailed account of the result of Edward’s climax. Oh, I should mention now, this film is not suitable for women who are pregnant or may become pregnant. We go from feel-good romance, to family drama, to a scene from Saw V with literally no transition. There’s Bella innocently talking about her horrible ideas for baby names, when suddenly her spine snaps, her ribs break and her huge throbbing stomach is chewed open by her devoted husband in the most appalling C-section imaginable.

But, to tell you the truth, it wasn’t the sickening birth or even the rough vampire sex that was most appalling about this movie. No, it was the fact that even though this movie made $61.8 million dollars in one weekend, the special effects still looked like graphics from a cheap video game. It was appalling that even though they could have absolutely fit the entire book into a single movie, (anyone who has read the book knows that absolutely nothing happens in the second half. Or the first, for that matter), they had to stretch it out, doubling their profits by making two incredibly boring atrocities. I can think of at least 5 two and half minute long montages that were obviously only there so that they could drag this sucker out into a full-length feature. Hollywood should think about enforcing a montage cap, because this was just ridiculous.

So, if you’re looking to be appalled, then be my guest. If not, then I do not recommend seeing this. Not even for those “it’s so bad it’s good” lovers. It’s just a rollercoaster ride of bored, disgusted, bored, bored, AHHHHH OH MY GOD WHAT, appalled.

The Maze Runner Series

When I was a child, I got lost in a corn maze. And it wasn’t a happy fun corn maze like this:

They’re not even trying to emphasize this pun.

It was a shit-your-pants corn maze like this:

Let me just go change my pants.

So, obviously, I took every opportunity to tell the story of my near-death experience, and my quick thinking in an incredibly dangerous situation. Because bragging about your bravery is how you make friends.

What you’ve never heard of that?

Guess that’s why you don’t have friends.

So until last year I totally thought that I was a living legend surviving that maze unscathed. But then I read The Maze Runner.

Dammit. These guys totally stole my thunder!

So let me give you a rundown of the plot, here. This is kind of that classic storyline. You know the one where a 16 year old boy wakes up in a windowless elevator remembering nothing but his name, and then the elevator opens up into a glade where there are like 50 other boys who only remember their names, and they are in the middle of a giant maze that changes shape everyday and there are giant gooey monsters with metal spikes that like to really slowly and painfully pull apart teenagers?

You know?

There is a fine line between good fantasy and ridiculous fantasy. The very best fantasy is constantly testing that line. But James Dashner totally sprints right over that line, laughing, flinging off his clothes, and giving the finger to all those losers back there too afraid to cross it. He runs, free and ridiculous, like a nudist in an outlet mall, babbling about vegan cookies and hemp. You watch from a distance, may even for a second consider joining him, but then someone calls your iPhone, inviting you to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and you leave James Dashner, running naked in a field, spewing profanities and conspiracy theories, and you go and watch James Franco and some monkeys. Oh, I’m sorry; apes.

That extended metaphor does have a meaning, I swear.

Ok, let me rephrase. A few years back I watched 300. This movie contained a lot of the fantastical, but it was very clear from the beginning what the limits of this were. Though there were monsters and magic, man was still mortal and, though their arms were thicker than my neck, they were bound to the constraints of human physical capacity. Meaning they can’t throw a spear from a mile and a half away and have it go straight through someone’s chest.

Oh...wait...

Did somebody throw that? DAMMIT, 300!

I couldn’t respect the movie anymore. It had crossed the boundary of what I was willing to believe, and had gone into it’s own fantasy world, not bothering to bring the audience along for the ride.

And this is exactly what James Dashner does in The Scorch Trials.

As you can see, this is the sequel to The Maze Runner, and it just sucks. Which actually really shocks me. As you may have noticed, very few young adult books stand alone. They have sequels, prequels, companions, encyclopedias, fan fiction, you name it. And, (excluding fan fiction), every piece of the series is generally just as good as any other. Look at Harry Potter. There isn’t one Harry Potter book that is definitively better than any other.

So the supreme suckiness of The Scorch Trials really surprises me because I loved The Maze Runner. Loved it. It’s a flippin’ gem! And The Scorch Trials is one of the worst young adult books I have ever read.

Lemme go ahead and give you some examples.

I realized pretty early on that I was in for a headache. So, the main character, Thomas, wakes up in a hotel room in a post-apocolyptic city, with a crazed and diseased man trying to break through his window:

“Sores and scars covered his thin, sunburnt face. He had no hair, only diseased splotches of what looked like greenish moss. A vicious slit stretched across his right cheek; Thomas could see teeth through the raw, festering wound. Pink saliva dribbled in swaying lines from the man’s chin.

‘I’m a Crank!’ the horror of a man yelled. ‘I’m a bloody Crank!’”

Come on, James Dashner.

If you really want us to know about a cool (not that cool) word that you’ve decided to call those that are infected with the dumbass disease you’ve invented for this book, there are lot more subtle ways to introduce it than having a character yell it as they try to attack the protagonist. It’s literally the first thing the man says. That would be like if I was trying to rob a bank and I run up to the teller window and yell “I have slight anemia!”

...So that was dumb.

Also, this book was just gratuitously violent. Like, over the top with the teenager killing. In horrible horrible horrible ways. Yes, The Maze Runner is violent but not this violent. This level of violence makes me question Dashner’s sanity. I mean, at one part, a kid gets hit by lightning, his leg is blown clean off, all his clothes are completely burned off him, his eyes have melted out of his head, and the boy is still alive. Still. Freakin. Alive. And conscious. Another time, they were in a completely dark passageway, couldn’t see a thing, and a boy has a boiling blob of metal land on his head, burning his skin off as it drips down around his face, then hardens around his head like a bowling ball, and decapitates him.

Ok so I’m 20 and this gave me nightmares. This book is intended for TWEENS.

Dashner you go too far!

So I absolutely recommend The Maze Runner. Definitely one of the better young adult science fiction novels I’ve read. But please don’t continue in the series. The third book, The Death Cure, (idiotic title) is coming out next month, but I’m not even gonna bother marking my calendar as I will certainly not be wasting my time with it.

Dashner, you disappoint me.

Oh and his blog is called “The Dashner Dude”.

COME ON.

Photo Cred:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dashner

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorch_Trials

http://edencubpack603.org/events.html

http://www.roblox.com/Scary-Corn-Maze-place?id=12109601

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Maze_Runner

The Leviathan Trilogy

Do you know that horrible sadness you get when you’ve just finished a really great book? I get that ALL THE TIME. Because I generally really like books. And I am obsessed with a genre that’s really really good at sucking you in, making you think that you’re part of that world, introducing you to characters that you think of as friends. And then it ends and it throws you out into the street alone. And it will never call unless it needs something. Like money. Or crack. And you just have to stand your ground. Don’t let it back into your life because you can’t be hurt like that again. You just can’t.

JK I reread books all the freakin’ time.

Like this one for instance:

I found it in the library when I was in a post-awesome-book slump and I thought it looked pretty promising. I mean, it has a pretty sweet cover, it says “#1 New York Times Bestselling Author” on it, and I’ve always kind of had a weird affinity for whales.

yeeeaeeeaaAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

And at this point, I just really needed something to pick me out of my slump. So I walked up to the front desk, checked it out, and immediately sat down and started reading it. (Side note: librarians frown upon this).

Now, remember when I listed all the promising things on the cover? I neglected to notice the tiny little words at the bottom. If I had seen them before I started the book, I never would have considered reading it.

The words say “illustrated by Keith Thompson”.

Ruh-roh.

I will gladly accept the fact that I enjoy reading books geared towards people eight years younger than me, but I find it a little hard to admit that I’m reading picture books. That is just a little bit too far below my age level.

Someone who had even an ounce of pride would probably put this book down, claim, “I’m too old for this shit” and storm off to read some Pittacus Lore.

But I’ve never been one for pride so I kept reading it.

And I finished it.

And I forgot absolutely everything about Leviathan.

I don’t mean to say that it is a forgettable book, it’s just that I don’t have the space in my brain to retain the details of every young adult book I read. I read SO MANY. You have NO IDEA. So I don’t even try to remember them because they’re really easy to re-read. And the part of my brain that remembers this sort of thing is already full. With every last detail and minutiae of the Harry Potter series. Do you want to play Harry Potter trivia sometime? I will OWN YOU.

This is me.

So last week I was in a depressed state after finishing the Trickster’s Choice series, and I needed another book to pull me out of it. I saw that Leviathan’s sequel was out and I kind of remembered liking it, so I checked out both Leviathan and its sequel, Behemoth.

It kind of worried me that both of the books’ titles are synonyms for “big”. Is Scott Westerfeld trying to compensate for something?

No, ladies. He isn’t.

This series is all sorts of well-endowed.

Even with the pictures! It took me a long time to come to terms with them but once I accepted the fact that they were there to stay, I actually realized just how useful they are. It’s really kind of hard some times to imagine exactly what Scott Westerfeld is describing, and having a freakin’ awesome picture right there is extraordinarily helpful. Usually I like to have my own interpretation of what characters or places look like, but Westerfeld’s places and characters are so weird that if the pictures weren’t there I would be TOTALLY lost.

Like this, for example.

So let me give you a little background on the story. This series is steampunk to the MAX. It’s a reimagining of World War I except the British and French are using genetically fabricated animals as weapons, and Germany and Austria are using machines that look like the ones from Avatar.

Except about 93% more badass.

The story follows Alek, an Austrian prince who’s parents’ murders start the war. He is being hunted because of his potential claim for the Emperor’s throne. We also follow Deryn, a Scottish girl who is posing as a boy in order to be a soldier aboard the airship Leviathan.

Oh, and one more thing.

Leviathan is a flying whale.

YEEEAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!

What’s shocking about these books is how accurate they are. A lot of the characters are based on real people, and the timeline of events is pretty much how it happened. And everyone knows that the Austrians rode mechanical horses that shot phosphorescent flares at their pursuees:

Like so.

Scott Westerfield wrote an afterward for both books explaining what in them is based on fact and what is made up. A shocking amount of it is historically sound so I definitely recommend this for parents who are concerned that their children don’t know enough about World War I. I know that that’s a rising concern in our country.

So I read both of these books in one week and then fell into my slump again. Who knows when the third and final book in the series will be released? I’ll have to reread them all again because I definitely won’t remember them by the time the third is out.

Then I remembered that there is such a thing as the internet, so I looked it up.

And guys, the third book came out YESTERDAY!!!!

This is probably the most excited I’ve ever been in my life.

I have been in possession of the new book for only a few hours, and in that time it has received love that would rival the Velveteen Rabbit. It’s called Goliath, which is a lot better than some of the titles I had guessed: Huge, Colossal, Brobdingnagian, Hulk, Huge Throbbing Member, etc.

I’m only a chapter in but I can tell it’s going to be a gem. As were it’s predecessors. GEMS ALL AROUND!!!!

The moral of this story is to never judge a book by it's age-appropriateness. It's also a plea for authors to write more books about whales. I have a serious fetish.

YEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!

PHOTO CRED:

http://boingboing.net/2009/10/06/scott-westerfelds-le.html

http://smokeandmirrorsblog.com/2009/10/30/free-willy/

http://sophieplayle.com/the-visual-appeal-of-steampunk-scott-westerfelds-leviathan/

http://themindislimitless.blog.com/2010/11/11/leviathan-by-scott-westerfeld/

http://www.applesofmyeyes.com/page/3/

http://scottwesterfeld.com/books/leviathan/