I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore

I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore Levithan
Publisher : Harper

Pages :  440

Series : Lorien Legacies Book 1

Rating: 4/5

Nine of us came here
We look like you
We talk like you
We live among you - but
We are not you
We have powers you dream of having
We are the superheroes you worship in movies and comic books -
But we are real.
They caught number one in Malaysia, number two in England, and number three in Kenya.
They killed them all.
I am number four.  I am next.

I loved this book. It was way more than I expected.  I assumed that this book could not possibly live up to the hype it receives in my head but it surpassed that hype.  The roundness of the story, the way that nothing was lost and the development of the characters are perfect.

During the final battle of a war between the Mordagians and the Loriens, the Loriens send 9 kids and their Cepan, mentor, to earth to ensure the survival of their species.  A spell is placed on the kids that they can only die in order of their numbers as long as they are separated from one other.  However the Mordagians have followed these kids to earth and they are killing them one by one.  One, two, and three have already died, but number four, John, the protagonist, is still alive.  After moving to Paradise, Ohio his legacies, powers, begin to emerge and so do the Mordagians.

I loved the characters most of all. I really liked Sam and Mark.  I really lived how they were given time to develop and evolve as characters.  You also really have time to learn about all of the characters and why they are motivated which was great and something I don’t see a lot in what I read.  You get to learn about John before the Mordagians show up and before his legacies arrive and you get to see him uncover, train and learn to control his powers.  Also, Berni was also just a fabulous addition who is just perfect and if the author kills him I will cry.

I loved the antagonists.  The Mordagians aren’t jumping out of every corner attacking.  They’re a real threat. They plan and stalk and figure out the best way to kill the Lorien.  And when John actually fights them they aren’t easily killed which is nice when you consider how many books have a ‘huge’ threat above the protagonist’s head but when that threat arrives the protagonist has no problem killing it cause they’ve trained for it.  John had trained but he still has major difficulties and almost dies a couple times.  

The only thing I didn’t love about it was the romance.  It was entirely unnecessary in my opinion and it gets really obnoxious in the 2^nd book (spoilers?).  Yeah, the immediate love and cuteness really bothered me and I really wish it just wasn’t a part of this book because I Am Number Four would have been better without it.

Overall, you should definitely read this book.  It’s one of the best superhero/alien books I have ever read. 

Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Publisher : Knopf

Pages :  260

Series : N/A

Rating: 3/5

I've left some clues for you.

If you want them, turn the page.

If you don't, put the book back on the shelf, please.

So begins the latest whirlwind romance from the bestselling authors of Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist.  Lily has left a red notebook full of challenges on a favorite bookstore shelf, waiting for just the right guy to come along and accept it's dares.  But is Dash that right guy? Or are Dash and Lily only destined to trade dares, dreams, and desires in the notebook they pass back and forth at locations across New York?  Could their in-person selves possible connect as well as their notebook versions?  Or will they be a comic mismatch of disastrous proportions.

In Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares, when Dash looks up his favorite author he is surprised to discover a red moleskin notebook hidden away.  He is ever more surprised to find dares in the notebook.  These dares lead him to picking up books like The Joys of Gay Sex and Fat Hoochie Prom Queen.  Once he’s finished the dares he leaves the mysterious Lily with a dare of his own creation.  Soon Dash and Lily are trading dares and learning about each other.  But will their romance work in real life or is it restricted to the written word?

This is only one adjective to describe this book, adorable.  That one word perfectly sums up how I felt about this book.  It wasn’t sexy, hot, fantastic, amazing or cute, it was adorable.

Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares was much more innocent and contained then Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist.  In my mind, Nick & Norah’s is a huge rollercoaster that you rip right through with lots up ups and downs and circles where as Dash & Lily’s is more like the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland, calm, serene, thought provoking, and has a few surprises.

By far my favorite aspect of Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares was the setting.  I loved the feeling of Christmas time in New York, especially because you get to see it through two very different sets of eyes, Lily who loves Christmas and Dash who couldn’t care less.  I loved everything from the Santa at Macys to the street of crazy decorated houses.

In the end, I liked Dash & Lily but didn’t fall in love with it.  It was adorable and real, everything it should be but it was missing the spunk I’d be expecting from Rachel Cohn and David Levithan.  If you’re looking for a cute, young novel, give Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares a try.

Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker

Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker
Publisher : Bloomsbury

Pages :  273

Series : N/A

Rating: 2/5

     Sometimes you just know everything is about to change.  That you'll finally get your own moment in the spotlight.  This is that year for perennial good girl Lacey Anne Byer.
     With her driver's license in hand, Lacey has a little freedom from her protective parents now - or at lease more than she had before.  And as a junior, she is eligible to try out for a starring role in Hell House, her church's annual Haunted House of sin.  But it turns out Lacey doesn't need to play a role to have her moment.  What she needs is Ty Davis.  He's smart, cute, and best of all, new.  He doesn't know sweet, shy, good girl Lacey Anne.  With Ty, Lacey could reinvent herself and maybe get her first boyfriend.
     As her feelings for Ty grow, and conflicts surrounding Hell House intensify, Lacey finds reason to test her own boundaries - to question the faith she's always known to be absolute.

Small Town Sinners is the tale of Lacey Anne Byer who lives in the small town of West River.  Lacey’s Christian upbringing and pastor father have cemented her as the good girl in town.  Then she meets the new guy, Ty Davis.  Ty is perfect boyfriend material in Lacey’s mind.  The only thing standing in the way is Ty’s persistence of making Lacey think with her own words.  Ty, and other events, are making Lacey question her faith.  Suddenly Lacey has changed from seeing the world in black and white (right and wrong) to varying shades of gray.  What will this church girl do when forced to think about abortion, teen pregnancy, bullying and drunk driving without the input of faith?

I don’t know if I’m right but I keep coming back to the fact in my mind that I wasn’t raised in a faith driven house hold.  I have no idea what Lacey is going through, I can’t relate.  Therefore, I want to read about extremes.  I want to be told that growing up Christian is worse than growing up like I did.  I want to see the problems and I found the normalcy in Small Town Sinners tedious and boring.  I wanted Lacey to fight back and rebel because I would have found it interesting, not because it would help her character grow.  I don’t know if this is a hurtle I’ll ever be able to overcome but it definitely stopped me from enjoying Small Town Sinners.

Even with my own mental road block I still found Small Town Sinners okay.  I loved the exploration of Hell Houses.  Before I’d read this book I had no idea what a Hell House was. (A Hell House is like a haunted house but they scare you with grossly hyperbolized images the church believes are wrong.  For example in Small Town Sinners one scene in the Hell House is a Gay Marriage where after getting married one of the husbands dies of AIDS and it is implied that only gay sex results in AIDS.)  I found the whole idea of a Hell House shocking and at times unbelievable.  I wish the topic and the rights and wrongs of it had been explored in more depth.

Overall, I found Small Town Sinners to be an okay read.  I wish I could say it was fantastic and made me question my own morals but it really didn’t.  If you’ve read Small Town Sinners and were left with a different opinion, let me know! I want to know what others thought about this book.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Publisher : Knopf

Pages : 183

Series : N/A

Rating: 5/5

     Nick’s just seen the girl who dumped him walk in with a new guy.  What else can he do but ask the strange girl next to him to be his new girlfriend for the next five minutes?

     Norah would do anything to avoid conversation with the not not-friend girl who dumped Nick…and to get over the Evil Ex whom Norah never really totally dumped.  What else can she do but answer Nick’s question by making out with him?

      With one electric, unexpected kiss, the five-minute couple of Nick and Norah set off on an uncharted adventure called the “first date” that will turn into an infinite night of falling in and out (and in and out, and maybe in and maybe out) of love.  Theirs is a first date of music, laughter, heartache, confusion, passion, taxi driver wisdom, and a jacket named Salvatore.  And of course a killer soundtrack.

     As Nick and Norah wander through the middle-of-the-night mystic maze of Manhattan, they share the kind of night you never want to end, where every minute counts and every moment flickers between love and disaster.

I LOVED AND DEVOURED THIS BOOK! I started it last night around midnight and couldn’t stop. I loved everything about this book.  Everything, from the queer band members to Caroline’s drunken state to Tris’s nice but not attitude.

I think what I loved the most was that it was a love story but it wasn’t predictable.  And finding that is really hard for someone who has watched every romantic comedy on Netflix.  I find that whenever I read or watch a romance I can always tell when the inevitable fall apart then come together is going to be and I couldn’t predict that in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

This book has been on my shelf for years now and I’m so glad I finally picked it up.  Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is the only book I’ve ever read where I just wanted to reread it over and over and over again.  Don’t let this book pass you buy.

The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins

Raise your hand if you have read The Hunger Games.  Keep your hand up if you consider yourself a big fan of Suzanne Collins.  Okay, now keep your hand up if you have heard of The Underland Chronicles.  I bet you put your hand down and that isn’t right.

Before I go any further I suppose I should include what The Underland Chronicles is about.  But instead of trying to write a synopsis myself which will leave you confused I’ll just give you the synopsis on the back of the first book in the Underland Chronicles, Gregor the Overlander:

     When eleven-year old Gregor follows his little sister through a grate in the laundry room of their New York City apartment building, he hurtles into the dark Underland beneath the city. There, humans live uneasily beside giant spiders, bats, cockroaches, and rats – but the fragile peace is about to fall apart.
     Gregor wants no part of a conflict between these creepy creatures. He just wants to find his way home. But when he discovers that a strange prophecy foretells a role for him in the Underland’s uncertain future, he realizes it might be the only way to solve the biggest mystery of his life. Little does he know his quest will change him – and the Underland – forever.

For those of you who don’t know, The Underland Chronicles is a series Suzanne Collins wrote way before The Hunger Games. Yet you can still tell that it is the same author. The Underland Chronicles deals with many of the same issues and has the same themes that are present in the Hunger Games.  Gregor (protagonist of The Underland Chronicles) and Katniss both struggle with what they must do.  Gregor must become a warrior and Katniss is slated to be the picture girl of the rebellion.  Both do their fated jobs in the end, but with a sense of unease and dislike.

The most common theme in both of these series is tendencies of humans.  More specifically the human tendency to fall into historical patterns and believe that the best way get rid of your enemy is to kill them.  

1.       Historical Patterns

      ·         At the end of the Hunger Games, District 13 decides to have another Hunger Games, but this    

             time using Capitol kids. 

      ·         In The Underland Chronicles the humans can’t get over past differences with the rats and so they   

             are always on the brink of war.

2.       Killing Your Enemy

       ·         The Capitol believes that the best way to keep the Districts from rebelling is to kill two teenagers 

              from each District once a year.

      ·         The humans are known to the other animals as Killers because whenever they have a problem 

             there solution is to kill it.

Don’t let the giant bugs and slightly younger characters scare you away from reading this series.  You will be surprised at the level of intensity found in the later books.  I promise you that if you liked the Hunger Games you will like the Underland Chronicles.

The Throne of Fire by Rick Riordan

The Throne of Fire by Rick Riordan

Publisher : Disney Hyperion

Pages : 447

Series : The Kane Chronicles Book Two

Rating: 5/5

     Ever since the gods of Ancient Egypt were unleashed in the modern world, Carter Kane and his sister, Sadie, have been in trouble.  As descendants of the House of Life, the Kanes have some powers at their command; but the devious gods haven't given them time to master their skills at Brooklyn House, a training ground for young magicians.  And now their most threatening enemy yet - the Chaos snake, Apophis - is rising.  If they don't prevent him from breaking free in a few days time, the world will end.  In other words, it's a typical week for the Kane family.
     To have any chance of battling the forces of Chaos, the Kanes must revive the sun god, Ra.  But that would be a feat more difficult than any magician has ever accomplished.  First they have to search the world for the Cook of Ra, then they have to learn how to chant it's spells.  Oh - and did we mention that no one knows where Ra is, exactly?
     Narrated by two different wisecracking voices, featuring a large cast of new and unforgettable characters, and with adventures spanning the globe, this second installment of the Kane Chronicles is nothing short of a thrill ride.

If you haven’t read The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! It is amazing and hilarious and the book that precedes this one so if you haven’t read that, don’t read this and go by The Red Pyramid.

The Throne of Fire starts a couple months after The Red Pyramid ended and the calling card for new recruits worked.  The Brooklyn House is now full of kids training just in time for the impending threat of Chaos.  Carter is informed by Horus, the Egyptian god who possessed Carter’s body in The Red Pyramid, that in order to keep Chaos from breaking out of prison they needed Ra and to get Ra they must find the Book of Ra and travel through the Duat. So accompanied by their new friends Jaz, Walt and Bes along with some older friends, Anubis, Bast, Amos and Khufu, the set out on a new adventure.

I laughed out loud to my empty room more times than I can count during this book.  It was hilarious! I don’t know if Sadie and I have the same sense of humor but I was always looking forward to her narration.  Sadie always has the perfect comeback and is a great smart ass.  The fact that Bes was a dwarf god who killed things but looking ugly didn’t hurt the hilarity.

I know that the main attraction I find for Rick Riordan’s books is the mythological facts imbedded in the story.  History and mythology in particular is my favorite thing so finding it in a book is amazing.  The Egyptian mythology is perfect in both The Throne of Fire and The Red Pyramid. Although they do change the myths to become more age-appropriate because I’ve read many Egyptian myths and some are extremely weird and hardcore.  However, in The Throne of Fire, I especially loved how the story of Isis stealing Ra’s secret name was interwoven with The Throne of Fire and the importance secret names was given.  Also who doesn’t want a hot Anubis, god of death and funerals, showing up randomly?

The new characters in The Throne of Fire were great additions to the family.  Jaz, Walt and expecially Bes had great chemistry and fit into the story so well I can’t imagine them not in The Red Pyramid.  Although I didn’t really appreciate the little love triangle going on, but I won’t say who the people in the triangle are…it’s a bit of a spoiler.

All in all, I loved this book.  I can’t wait for the next book to come out. It’s also left me with an urge to go put kohl eyeliner on my eyes and practice my hieroglyphs.

Sleepless by Thomas Fahy

Sleepless by Thomas Fahy

Publisher : Simon and Schuster

Pages : 209

Series : N/A

Rating :
Beginning : 2/5
Ending : 5/5

     Someone else will die soon, she tells herself.  Someone else will die, and I'll be responsible.  A few days after the first time you walk in your sleep, you kill someone.

     Emma Montgomery is having trouble sleeping.  Every time she falls asleep, she sees horrible, gruesome things in her dreams - and when she wakes up, she isn't where she was when she fell asleep.  And she's not alone.   Her friends are starting to have the nightmares too.

     And that's when the murders start.

     First one kid dies in a car crash, his breaks mysteriously cut.  Then another girl washed up dead on the beach.  The deaths match the nightmares, and Emma and her friends must confront the awful truth - something is making them kill in their sleep.  Now they're in a race against time to keep themselves awake and figure out what's going on - before someone else turns up dead.

Isn’t the cover amazing! It caught my eye right away and I couldn’t wait to dive into the story.  But, in the end, I was disappointed with many aspects of the book but in love with other parts.

I’ve found that most horror novels I read start off horribly.  They’re incredibly boring and I have to force myself to read the book.  Sleepless was no exception.  Even right now trying to write this review, I can’t remember what the first half of the book was about.  I just read it.  I did soak up the main details and the important plot points but nothing else really mattered I just wanted something scary to happen.  Also, I was not a fan of the way the novel switched between telling the present and telling the past and the dreams.  I found it to be choppy and confusing.

That being said, the last half of the book was amazing.  It was scary with great twists, everything that should be in a good horror novel.  Best of all it was very fast paced nothing that was unneeded happened.  Also Fahy’s descriptive writing which I had found long and annoying in the beginning was greatly appreciated during the ending because it brought the story to life.

Even though, it took me a day to read the first 100 pages and an hour to read the last 100, I did enjoy the novel.  The ending was enough to redeem the book in my opinion. What do you guys think did you like the book?

In My Mailbox (4)

In My Mailbox is a meme hosted by the glorious Story Siren, if you don't know who this is, check her out! This meme is a way to share what books you bought, borrowed, traded, won, or in some random way received the previous week.  This week I traded books at a local used bookstore.  How is it that whenever I go to trade books I get more books coming home with me then I left with?

Archaelogy: The Definitive Guide by Barnes and Noble Books

Beautiful by Amy Reed

Grosse Pointe Girl: Tales From a Suburban Adolescence by Sarah Grace McCandless

Sweep Book 8: Changeling by Cate Tiernan

Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick

Luna by Julie Anne Peters

The Black Book Diary of a Teenage Stud: Girls, Girls, Girls by Jonah Black

Thats it for me! I hope you guys had a great week and got some awesome books to read in your mailbox!

Book Of Shadows by Cate Tiernan

Book Of Shadows by Cate Tiernan

Publisher: Speak

Pages: 176

Series: Sweep Book One

Rating: 4/5

"Something is happening to me that I don't understand. I see things, feel things in a new way. I can do things normal people can't do.  Powerful things.  Magickal things. It scares me.  I never chose to learn witchcraft.  But I'm starting to wonder if witchcraft is choosing me."

I must admit, this series is one of my guilty pleasures.  I’m firmly against Twilight and books of that nature but yet I still love Sweep even though it contains the some of the same, for lack of a better word, problems. Although there is not stalking! At least not that I remember…

Book of Shadows starts on the first day of school.  Morgan and her best friend Bree are entering junior year of high school and everyone is gaga over a new senior named Cal.  Cal has this ability to get along with everyone and within a week he has invited most of the upperclassmen to a party in a field.  At this party Morgan participates in her first Wiccan ritual and suddenly she finds herself obsessed with learning more about this culture.

This is my second time reading Book of Shadows and I loved it just as much the second time.  Granted, the first time I read this book was approximately four years ago so I wasn’t remembering the plot while I was reading.  I find Morgan incredibly relatable with her non-existent boobs and beautiful best friend who gets all the guys.  I was replacing myself with Morgan throughout the book. In her place I would have made the same choices and said the same things.

Cal…how can you not love the sexy, perfect, mysterious, new kid? That is exactly who Cal is. Even after finishing the book I have no idea who he is but I still want to follow him into the Wiccan religion.  However, I thought Cal was flat.  He always did what he should, never spoke up and never really showed any personality.  I hope that we’ll get to know him more in the later books, because right now he is just kind and hot.

While you will enjoy this book if you’re a big fan of mysterious, secretive, sexy, no-personality men I would definitely suggest this book, it would also be very informative if you wanted to learn more about the Wiccan beliefs, rituals and cultures.  In my opinion Sweep would be much more informative then The House of Night series. Merry met, merry part and merry meet again.

The Mediator: Shadowland by Meg Cabot

The Mediator: Shadowland by Meg Cabot

Published: 2005

Publisher: Avon Books (Harper Collins)

Pages: 287

Series: Book 1 in The Mediator

Rating:

5/5

"There's a hot guy in Suzannah Simon's bedroom. Too bad he's a ghost.

Suze is a mediator - a liaison between the living and the dead.  In other words, she sees dead people.  And they won't leave her alone until she helps them resolve their unfinished business with the living.  But Jesse, the hot ghost haunting her bedroom, doesn't seem to need her help.  Which is a relief, because Suze has just moved to sunny California and plans to start fresh, with trips to the mall instead of spectral visitations.

But the very first day at her new school, Suze realizes it's not that easy.  There's a ghost with revenge on her mind...and Suze happens to be in the way."

 I can now completely understand why so many people love this book and the series The Mediator.  Meg Cabot does a great job telling the story with truly compelling characters that I would love to meet.  Just take away the whole seeing ghosts thing. I couldn’t put this book down. I read it outside in the sun and didn’t even realize I’d gotten badly sun burnt. Ah well.

I, for one, can appreciate the setting of this book. It is set in a Northern California town called Carmel and the main character Suze, goes to school in a mission.  I live in Northern California and have been to Carmel more than once so I could really connect with the setting.  Also the mission was described true to what missions in California actually look like. Also the fog in the morning which burns off by noon is exactly how everyday is in north California.  Details like that showed me that Meg Cabot really knew what she was writing about.

I also loved the characters.  Suze was just perfectly feisty and independent but she still loved the fact that she fit in and was being invited places. Plus I loved that if a ghost doesn’t cooperate the first thing she does is punch them.  Jesse was perfect!  Okay, he did stalk her a little which is creepy but besides that, he is adorable.  And he’s really really sexy. And the banter between Suze and Jesse is just so cute and you know they want to jump each other.  Heather, the ghost who wants revenge, was also great. At times I really felt for her.  I could understand why she wanted revenge and how she had got to be so crazy. Plus all the other characters, Father Dom, CeeCee, Adam and Doc, were great and normal.  Plus the cuteness that radiates from Doc is amazing. I wish he was my little brother.

If you’re looking for a cute summer read with some ghosts thrown in read Shadowland.  Even though they do go to school, the beach is present and school work is put in the background.  I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series. Especially to learn what will happen between Jesse and Suze.

Dust City by Robert Paul Weston

Dust City by Robert Paul Weston

Published: September 30th 2010

Publisher: Razorbill

Pages: 304

Series: N/A

Rating:

3/5

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf? His son, that's who. Ever since his fathers arrest for the murder of Little Red Riding Hood, teen wolf Henry Whelp has kept a low profile in a Home for Wayward Wolves . . . until a murder at the Home leads Henry to believe his father may have been framed. Now, with the help of his kleptomaniac roommate, Jack, and a daring she-wolf named Fiona, Henry will have to venture deep into the heart of Dust City: a rundown, gritty metropolis where fairy dust is craved by everyone and controlled by a dangerous mob of Water Nixies and their crime boss leader, Skinner. Can Henry solve the mystery of his family's sinister past? Or, like his father before him, is he destined for life as a big bad wolf?

Dust City was not my favorite fairy tale retelling, not by a long shot. I’d much rather had reread any of Alex Flinn’s books.  But, the book wasn’t horrible. It was simply okay.  There were a few scenes and chapters that I really enjoyed but they weren’t enough for me to really like this book.

In the world of Dust City, fairydust is a drug.  It can do anything, from a concussion to raising the dead.  Everyone uses it and it’s very addicting.  But the fairies aren’t the ones with the dust.  The fairies disappeared when Henry was a pup and now a corporation called Nimbus is distributing the dust.  Henry breaks out of his wayward house to try to find out why the fairies left, if his dad is innocent and where Nimbus gets their dust.  He meets a whole cast of characters, many of them with their own traditional fairy tale background. For example, Jack;  Jack and the Bean stock; Detective White, Snow White; Skinner, Midas; Cindy Bella, Cinderella; among others.

One of the major problems for me was picturing the animalia.  In Dust City, many species of animals have evolved to stand up right, were clothes and talk.  Also, these animals are the size of humans. That means there are wolves, frogs, ravens, and foxes walking around as big as you and me.  This was incredibly hard to picture.  I pictured Henry and Fiona as humans all of the time.

On the character side of things, I thought the main characters could have been better.  They were a little flat.  I like the side characters much more, even the ones who are supposed to be Henry’s nemesis.  My favorite characters where Detective White and Tom.

What I can say positively is that I never guessed the twists.  They always surprised me. Also I LOVED the setting.  A city hooked on dust, it’s like a city hooked on drugs and what can be more interesting? I especially liked the gritty scenes when Henry was delivering dust to addicts.  I thought that seeing how hooked the city was on dust brought the story to a deeper level. However, I felt these parts should have been part of a different book.  One that delved deeper into the city’s connection to dust, because while Dust City did have these scenes they were never mentioned again and they would have been and should have been dramatizing to Henry.

If you have nothing better to read, and you find Dust City on your library shelf, I would say give it a try.  While very cheesy throughout most of the book, there are scenes that will make you think and wonder if our society is following the same path.  Also Dust City is full of non-stop action with a little wolfy romance slipped it.

This book is part of my Off-The-Shelf book challenge.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Introduction by Carl F. Hovde

Published: 1851

Publisher: Barnes and Noble

Pages: 628

Series: N/A

Rating:

4/5

"On a previous voyage, a mysterious white whale had ripped off the leg of a sea captain named Ahab.  Now the crew of the Pequod, on a pursuit that features constant adventure and horrendous mishaps, must follow the mad Ahab into the abyss to satisfy his unslakable thirst for vengeance.  Narrated by the cunningly observant crew member Ishmael, Moby-Dick is the tale of the hunt for the elusive, omnipotent, and ultimately mystifying white whale - Moby Dick."

Now, I know this isn’t a book that you are going to run out and buy, and I don’t expect you too.  I had to read Moby-Dick for school and liked it a lot more than I thought I would.  I rated this book on a different scale then all other books that I read because I want to, not because I had too. If I didn’t have to read Moby-Dick, I never would have, but because I was required to read it, I actually enjoyed it.

One of my favorite things in this book was Herman Melville’s writing style.  Melville creates great metaphors that help to explain the complicated world of a shipping boat to my fifteen year-old mind.  I also liked how he was able to present complex human issues of mortality and madness without taking a side. But by far my favorite thing was the sarcasm I found every now and then. The sarcasm really helped me to finish this book.

Now, onto the actual story told in the book.  Overall, I really did like the story. It was interesting and shared great insights to humankind.  What I didn’t like was how Melville would go off on long talks about various equipment and rules of a ship.  While these talks did help me understand how a whaling ship works, they were tedious, boring, and at times, unneeded. 

Overall, if you’re looking for a classic with great writing technique and you wouldn’t mind long lectures on shipping, Moby-Dick is the book for you.

Demon Thief by Darren Shan

Demon Thief by Darren Shan

Release Date : March 31, 2007

Publisher : Little Brown

Pages : 244

Series : Book Two in the Demonata Series

Rating : 4

"The voice says something crazy to me.  I want to argue, roar at it.  But, as scared and confused as I am, I can't disobey.  I find my legs tensing.  I know, with sick certainty, what's going to happen next.  I open my mouth to scream, but before I can, a force makes me step forward - after the monster, into the light."

First thing first, don’t read this review if you haven’t read Lord Loss by Darren Shan.  Lord Loss is a wonderful, horror filled novel and this book I’m reviewing is its sequel, so go read the first!

One thing I love about the Demonata series is how the books, at least the first two, don’t seem to be related at all!  When you start Demon Thief you have just finished Lord Loss and you’re expecting the story to continue but it doesn’t!  It takes you into a completely different story with characters you’ve never met before, although Dervish does make an appearance.

The main character of this book is Kernel Fleck.  For as long as Kernel can remember he has been surrounded by lighted shapes in the air.  They’ve never bothered him, but when he concentrates he can move them around into patterns.  One day, he discovers that if he moves the pulsating pieces together, they form a window.  Unfortunately there is a demon trying to come out of the window.  Kernel manages to push it back but feels compelled to follow it through the light.  When he wakes up, with his brother Art in his arms, several days have passed and he cannot remember what happened after he went through the window. One night his parents bundle Kernel and Art home and drive them to their new lazy town called Paskinston.  In Paskinston, no one knows that Kernel disappeared and he is able to live a normal life.  Until he must find out what happened to him and what the lights are.

The only thing that made this book not as interesting to me as the first was that I knew exactly what would happen.  I think this is because I read the book a couple years ago and was drawing off that.  I knew who the demon thief was from the very beginning.  Because of this I was hurrying to finish the book and move on.  But never the less I found it to still keep me enthralled.

Shan’s horror is still ever present in this installment of the Demonata Series.  If you have a queasy stomach or rather not read a description of a head being torn of a body, this book is not for you.  But if horror is your thing, don’t pass this book by.   Once the action starts you won’t be able to put down this book, it’s a fast entertaining read.

In My Mailbox (3)

In My Mailbox is a meme hosted by the glorious Story Siren, if you don't know who this is, check her out!  This week I have bought 5 books.

The Demonata Book One : Lord Loss
by Darren Shan
My Review

The Demonata Book Two : Demon Thief

by Darren Shan

My Review

The Demonata Book Three : Slawter

by Darren Shan

Cirque Du Freak Book One : A Living Nightmare

by Darren Shan

The Au Pairs

by Melissa De La Cruz

I didn't realize how many books but Darren Shan I got.  Well he is one of my favorite authors and I want to own the Demonata series and Cirque Du Freak.  What did you guys get in your mailbox?!