Tag: book blog

Scythe

3 Comments

 

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐.5
Author: Neal Shusterman
Genres: Science Fiction, Young Adult
Read: Dec. 2017

 

Scythe is another one of those 3-star books that is just so hard to rate. It raises a lot of really interesting questions and the second half of the book is pretty great, but the first half is such a snooze-fest!

I didn’t plan to read this series because it sounded pretty dark, but then I got a galley of the second book in the series, Thunderhead, so I decided to give it a go. Scythe is a utopian novel set in a version of the world where we’ve have basically perfected technology and solved all the problems of the world. Humans have reached the pinnacle of medical discovery and figured out how to make themselves immortal, as well as the pinnacle of technological advancements and have created a perfect artificial intelligence called the Thunderhead that now governs the planet. There’s no more sickness, no more poverty, and no more crime.

The only thing that remains outside of the jurisdiction of the Thunderhead is the Scythedom. Once humans obtained immortality, they had to find some way to manage population control, so they selected and trained an elite group of scythes to “glean” (kill) humans in order to maintain the earth’s population relative to the amount of available resources to continue living a comfortable existence. No one but a Scythe can permanently kill a human (if they die any other way they are just revived, Scythes carry out a permanent death). The Scythes are supposed to be live a humble existence separate from the rest of humanity and demonstrate compassion and justice in their gleanings. But over the hundreds of years of the Scythedom, some of them have started developing alternative opinions on the role of Scythes.

This story is about 2 teenagers, Rowan and Citra, who have been selected to apprentice to become Scythes. What I really liked about this book was how much it made me think. It raises some really great themes about living. In a world where we have made ourselves immortal and eliminated all forms of oppression, what really makes life worth living? We can’t really feel pain anymore and all of our accomplishments are meaningless because there’s nothing else left to be discovered or improved. In a world without suffering, can we really understand emotions like happiness and joy? Are these things humans can even experience anymore?

Then there’s the question of who deserves life and death? The Scythes all have their own strategies for “gleaning” and we are slowly introduced to several of them over the course of the novel. Should Scythes try and emulate the kinds of deaths that occurred in the age of mortality and target the same demographics? Should they look for people to “glean” who seem ready to move on or seem to have become stagnant in this life? Or just say ‘to hell with it’ and glean whoever they want? It’s up to Rowan and Citra to determine what kind of Scythes they want to be.

What I didn’t like about this book is that it took so freaking long to get going! I was really intrigued with the concepts, but Rowan and Citra are asked to basically give up their entire lives and to KILL people and it felt like it wasn’t even that big a deal. Where was the emotion? the drama? the angst?! They are 16 years old afterall and they just felt way too mature. I guess that is kind of the point though. They are selected for their maturity and empathy and in this new age where your emotions are constantly monitored and tweaked by “nanites” in your bloodstream, it’s almost impossible to emote in the same way that humans do now.

I get the whole exploration of how to be a Scythe, but I also felt like the whole thing was stupid and should have just been left to the Thunderhead to glean an appropriate percentage of old people every year. Why emulate deaths of the past when you don’t have to anymore? Why have to live in a world where children and young people die? In this world though, you have the option of “turning the corner” and returning your body to any age you want over the age of about 25, so there’s not really old people anymore and even though people are old in mind, they’re still able to have kids whenever they want. So theoretically, you’d still always be gleaning someone’s mother or grandmother, even if you didn’t glean children.

But I’m getting too far into the details. The second half of the book was happening! It has way more action and I found it hard to put down once I got past the halfway point. The plot reminded me a little bit of Hunger Games though. I feel like I’m going to be thinking about this book for awhile, so it’s definitely got that going for it, it was just a more detached kind of writing style. I tend to gravitate towards books that really emote and make me FEEL all the things. This book definitely made me think, but I always felt a degree removed from the characters and it made it a little harder to empathize with them.

Anyways, this is a much longer review than I thought I would write, but it did help me figure out some of my feelings on this book. So let’s call it a 3.5 stars. On to Thunderhead!

The Alice Network

1 Comment

 

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ 
Author: Kate Quinn
Genres: Historical Fiction
Read: Oct. 2017 on audiobook

 

I listened to The Alice Network on audiobook, so I’ve slowly been making my way through this one for ages. It’s a historical tale set in France in both 1916 and 1947 and tells two stories simultaneously. In 1916, Evelyn Gardner was a British spy who operated in the french town of Lille, posing as a waitress and collecting information the German officers would spill over their meal. In 1947, Charlie St. Clair is searching for her cousin Rose who disappeared during the war. It turns out that Rose and Eve had a shared connection in that they both spied and worked under the same man in 2 different wars and Charlie pairs up with Eve to try and find her cousin.

I really liked Eve’s story. She was a part of the Alice Network, which was a real network of female spies in WWI, lead by Louise de Bettignies, alias Alice Dubois, or as she’s known to Eve, Lily. Louise was a real person and I found Eve’s story of spying on the German officers and how she would pass information fascinating. I don’t know how much of Lily’s character was fabricated, but hopefully not very much because she was an inspiring woman with her eternal optimism, humour, and spirit.

I didn’t love Charlie’s story. She was pretty annoying at the beginning of the novel (although I did feel for her and her predicament) and I found her story much slower moving. It only got interesting during the end and while I understand why Quinn decided to run their stories parallel, I felt that Charlie added very little to the story for most of the novel. I was disappointed at the end of each of Eve’s chapters when I knew I had to read a whole chapter about Charlie and I felt that little happened in her chapters to advance the plot. They went from town to town aimlessly and her story didn’t become engaging until the point when Eve started telling Charlie her story and they starting syncing up as Eve revealed more and more information to Charlie about her experience during WWI.

Definitely an interesting read though. I’ve read a lot of WWII books set in France so sometimes I get a bit fatigued with the “next big WWII book”, but I’ve read substantially less on WWI, which was another reason why I liked Eve’s story. That said, this was a well written book and I did enjoy it!

History is All You Left Me

Leave a comment

 

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Adam Silvera
Genres: Young Adult
Read: Aug. 2017 on audiobook

 

History is All You Left Me has been getting a ton of great reviews, but I had a hard time getting into it.

This was my second audiobook, and while I definitely enjoyed it more than my first audiobook, Beneath a Scarlet Sky, I still didn’t love it. However, my dislike for Beneath a Scarlet Sky had to do with the writing, while I fear my dislike of History is All You Left Me may have been because of the narrator. I really didn’t like the narrator for this audiobook. He was whiny and annoying to listen to and I felt like he didn’t get the tone of the book right. I almost want to read a hard copy to see how I interpret the tone, but I know I’ll never be able to sit through it again.

It’s definitely a sad book. Griffin is dealing with the loss of his best friend and first boyfriend Theo. He broke up with Theo prior to his death, but anticipated they would one day get back together and was still in love with him. In his grief, he turns to Theo’s new boyfriend Jackson for comfort, but forsakes his other friends who are also grieving for Theo.

I think this was a good book about love, loss, grief, and moving on. But it also had a side story about Griffin’s struggle with OCD that I couldn’t really get into. I’ve never had OCD, so I have no idea how well it was portrayed, but I felt Griffin’s struggle with OCD could have been a story on it’s own and I’m not sure it worked for me in this book. But maybe it’s inclusion meant a lot to readers with OCD, so I don’t want to dismiss it.

In the end I’m giving it 3 stars because I do think it was a decent book, but the narrator kind of ruined it for me, so I would definitely recommend reading over listening for this one.

Note: I moved this review over from my goodreads account. I have read several more audiobooks since I read this book and I’m finding that I don’t really like listening to fiction, so that may be a factor in my dislike of this book. I’ve switched to mostly listening to non-fiction and have found it a lot more enjoyable.

Strange the Dreamer

Leave a comment

 

 

 

 

 

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ 
Author: Laini Taylor
Genres: Fantasy
Read: Apr. 2017

I so wanted to love this book. I only recently discovered Laini Taylor and loved her Daughter of Smoke & Bone series. Taylor has a beautiful writing style and Strange the Dreamer was definitely very well written, but the story didn’t draw me in the same way.

The plot sounded bizarre from the synopsis and was just as bizarre in reality. There are two stories being told in parallel and they both focus on the mythical city of Weep. 200 years ago Weep was cut off from the rest of the world and it’s name was collectively forgotten by the rest of humanity (they call it Weep for its lack of name). No one knows what happened or what powerful force could make everyone forget the city’s name.

Miles away, junior librarian Lazlo Strange is obsessed with the city of Weep and can’t believe it when the godslayer and his warriors show up and recruit Lazlo to join them in search of the lost city. In parallel to Lazlo’s story, we learn about a family of blue-skinned gods who secretly live above the city of Weep and discover how they came to be there and what role they had to play in the lost city.

I loved Daughter of Smoke & Bone from the first page, but I found Strange the Dreamer slow moving and I didn’t find the characters very captivating or care what happened to most of them. I did enjoy the plot between Lazlo and Nero and I’m interested to see what happens with them, but I had zero interest in the gods/monsters and I did not enjoy the romance part of this book.

It seems like most people are loving this story though, so it might just be a personal preference. I definitely can’t find any fault with Taylor’s writing and her prose was just as wonderful as always! Unfortunately for me though, the purple prose wasn’t enough to make up for how boring I found the story.

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter

1 Comment

AKA: One Day This Will Matter
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Scaachi Koul
Genres: Non-fiction, Essays, Memoir
Read: Dec. 2017 on audiobook

 

I listened to this as an audiobook and I loved it! It is narrated by the author and I really enjoyed both her writing and narration.

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter is a series of essays written by Scaachi Koul, daughter of Indian immigrants who grew up in Calgary. She later moved to Toronto for university and I believe she currently works for Buzzfeed.

I didn’t really know what this was about before I picked it up. I selected it very quickly when I was looking for something to listen to on a run because I had seen some buzz about it and I like non-fiction audiobooks that are narrated by the author. I was thrilled to discover it was written by a Canadian and about her experiences growing up in Canada and the challenges of being the daughter of immigrants.

Scaachi is really funny and she is also very insightful. I can’t believe she is the same age as me, which made this book all the more impressive. Canadians like to be critical of America (especially in the Trump era) and we like to think we’re better and more progressive, but there is definitely still what Scaachi calls “casual racism” happening here. I wouldn’t say this book was necessarily “eye-opening” for me, but it was definitely a perspective I don’t hear very often and I really appreciated Scaachi’s observations.

She talks about what it’s like to grow up female and Indian. How she is envied for her lush, thick indian hair, but at the same time shamed for having hair everywhere else on her body. What it’s like to travel back to India and discover that while you don’t quite fit in Canada, you don’t fit here either and the life your parents so fondly remember doesn’t really exist anymore. How challenging it is to have to hide all your romantic relationships growing up and what it’s like bringing a white boy 10 years your senior home to your parents.

Her parents have had a large influence on her life and it was interesting to learn more about Indian culture – the stereotypes, inequities, and familial importance. I like to think I’ve learned a little bit about Indian culture since moving to Vancouver, but I was really interested in Scaachi’s thoughts on Indian weddings, arranged marriages, and the rites and passages of her culture. She has a contentious relationship with her father that I couldn’t relate to – I found her father very unyielding and sometimes even childish in his reactions – but she still made me like him and helped me to understand a little bit more about Indian families.

I think stories like Scaachi’s are important because they provide perspective and enable you to walk in someone else’s shoes to an extent. It helps when they’re really well written, which this was. Scaachi had a perfect blend of just enough humour to make it fun, but enough perspective to also make her stories meaningful.

It’s a quick read, even as an audiobook, and I would definitely recommend!