The Elite

Title: The Elite

Series: The Selection - book 2

Author: Kiera Cass

Rating: 4 stars

Genre: Young Adult Dystopia

Number of Pages: 323

Publication Date: 2013

Publisher: Harper Collins

Summary (from the back of the book): America Singer is one of the Elite and Prince Maxon only has eyes for her. If she wins the competition for heart, she will leave her pre-destined life for a world of luxury. But the outcome is less than certain; the threat of rebel violence just beyond the palace walls is escalating into war and bitter rivals are ready to take her down. And America's feelings for Maxon grow stronger, ex-lover Aspen waits for her in the shadows. Where do her loyalties truly lie?

This book is far better than the first one. The plot in this book is more thought out and the characters have started to develop some depth. One of the reasons that I think this happens is because America is finally invested in the story line. In The Selection America spends much of her time wanting to be anywhere else, to be living a different reality - and reading about a character who doesn't want to be in her own story is hard.

Which is what leads me to the thing I love the most about this book. Kiera beautifully crafted the emotional labour that someone would probably be feeling going through an experience like the Selection. With a premise like this book you end up putting the characters in some pretty emotionally hard places. First there is the love triangle between America, Maxon and all the other girls in the Selection and then as Aspen so nicely puts it: "Sometimes I feel like Maxon and I are in our own version of the Selection...and...Maxon doesn't exactly know we're competing". Naturally anyone put in a situation like this begins to get a little stressed which I was glad to finally see. For a moment I was worried that the situation wasn't going to bother any of the characters, they were all just going to go with the unrealistic flow.

All though this also lead to thing I hate must in any book: angst! I hate angst, it puts me in a really bad space and when I read about it...well I just want to put the book down and walk away. However, I did persevere and I was glad I did. Because having a bit of angst was the only way that Kiera managed to get America and Maxon to finally talk to one another. If I could have reached through the book and shaken these two I would have.

The angst did have one redeeming quality. It gave some really good insight into who America and Maxon were as characters. Obviously from page one it has been clear that America and Maxon come from two totally different worlds. America's family would go without adequate food and sometimes forfeit electricity and Maxon is a prince. There was never going to be a perfectly aligned relationship that these two assumed existed. America's fears are really brought into the light in this book. We see her struggle with not only her relationship but with her questioning if she is actually cut out for some of the hardships of being a future queen. With Maxon we see that being a prince isn't all charm and smiles but can sometimes be a cage of its own. We also get to see a not-so-perfect side of Maxon as well. The side that shows that he is an only child and a prince...so yes he is a little spoiled and good at hiding who he is really is.

The one thing that I would liked this book to have had more of was the rebels. It has been clear throughout both The Selection and The Elite that rebels are going to play some significant role. But as of yet, they haven't. I'm a bit concerned for how Kiera will play this out in the next book as I feel like all of sudden the rebel plot line could take over, when the fundamental story line is the Selection competition. I am also hoping that the next book looks a little more at the creation and structure of Illéa as I think this would give the book something more.

Queen of Shadows

Title: Queen of Shadow

Series: Throne of Glass - book 4

Author: Sarah J. Maas

Rating: 5 stars

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Number of Pages: 645

Publication Date: September 1st 2015

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Summary (from the back of the book): Celaena Sardothien is cloaked in her assassin's hood once more. She is back in Rifthold, but this time she is no one's slave. She must delve into her most painful memories and fight for her survival, while resisting a smouldering passion that might very well consume her heart. And she will face former master, the King of Assassins, again - to wreak revenge for a decade of pain...

I don't really know where to begin with describing how much I love this book...so I'll start with.. I LOVE THIS BOOK!! In fact I love this whole series, each book somehow manages to get better than the last.

I found this book to be a lot like Throne of Glass, that is more character driven than plot driven. But where I found Throne of Glass a bit slow for this, Queen of Shadows instead brought out some fantastic character development. 

The character that stands out in this book for most character development would be Lysandra. As we learn more about Lysandra's past we begin to see how similar she is with Celaena. The two become what would have been just one book earlier, an unlikely team, yet they work so well together and become and unstoppable driven force.

The second character that makes some serious changes is obviously Celaena herself. First of all she now goes by her real name Aelin. Aelin begins to accept that she is the Queen of Terrasen and that she cannot keep running from her past. In this book we get glimpses of the queen that Aelin has the potential to be.

Chaol also makes some serious changes as a character. First off, Chaol finally realises that he has been blindly following his King for too long, which thank god! Chaol also begins to realise that magic is actually a part of the world and that he needs to stop thinking of everyone with magic, aside from Dorian, as a monster if they do. I have already seen many comments about how people found Chaol to be really different from previous books, but I found that this book revealed the person he has always been - as if for the first time we are truly seeing who Chaol is.

As I mentioned earlier I did find this book to be more character driven than plot but I actually thought that this was the best way this book could have been told. Like with Heir of Fire, Queen of Shadows is told from multiple perspectives and with in seemingly unrelated sub-plots throughout, but once again Sarah J. Maas has managed to makes all of these moments a part of the larger story that you don't necessarily understand until you get to the end of the book. The way that Sarah tells her stories shows how talented a writer she is, that she manages to remember and include the smallest of details to give the story so much more depth and complexity. 

Despite the fact that this book is getting up there in page numbers at no point did this book feel long and daunting. I picked this book up and flew through it. In fact I picked it up and got so lost in it that I didn't even realise that two hours had past.

My favourite part of this book would have to have been the ending of this book. Sarah's book endings always leave me with a certifiably insane need for the next book and waiting for an entire year is likely to give me an eye twitch but this book was different. I am not saying that this book did not leave me needing the fifth book because it did and I do. But it also left me with a sort of completeness and happiness...why?...because for once Aelin gets a genuine happy moment. Minor spoiler alert: Aelin gets to return to Terrasen. In fact the books last line is: "And at long last, Aelin Ashryver Galanthynius was home." I mean after everything that has happened does that not give you the warm and fuzzies. With a line like that I will be able to survive until the next book comes out.

Red Rising

Title: Red Rising

Series: Red Rising Trilogy - book 1

Author: Pierce Brown

Rating: 5 stars

Genre: Science Fiction

Number of Pages: 382

Publication Date: 2014

Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton

Summary: The Earth is dying. Darrow is a Red, a miner in the interior of Mars. His mission is to extract enough precious elements to one day tame the surface of the planet and allow humans to live on it. The Red are humanity's last hope.

Or so it appears, until the day Darrow discovers it's all a lie. That Mars has been habitable - and inhabited - for generations, by a class of people calling themselves the Golds. A class of people who look down on Darrow and his fellows as slave labour, to be exploited and worked to death without a second thought.

Until the day Darrow, with the help of a mysterious group of rebels, disguises himself as a Gold and infiltrates their command school, intent on taking down his oppressors from the inside. But the command school is a battlefield - and Darrow isn't the only student with an agenda.

Red Rising was not what I expected. When I first heard about this book I was intrigued but was not expecting to be amazed. I figured that this was just another book in which the repressed attempt to overthrow those that are the oppressors. Instead I was faced with a book that does this while also pointing out the faults in human nature and looking deep in to the mind of what fundamentally makes a person who they are.

Red Rising follows 17 year old Darrow, a Red, a miner of Mars, attempting to make Mars inhabitable as Earth's resources dye out. But then Darrow discovers that Mars has had people living on it for hundreds of years, and his life has been a lie - he is nothing more than a slave to the system. Following the execution of his wife, Eo, Darrow finds himself involved with a group of rebels who want him to help take the Golds down from the inside by pretending to be one of them after some intensive transformations.

The characters that Pierce Brown has created are perhaps some of the most well thought out and in depth characters that I have ever met, even if you only see them for a page or two. Each character has got a clear back story that influences their decisions and actions in the book while not coming across as an over bearing backlog of information.

The characters also balance with the story line of this book. There is nothing worse than when you get stuck with a character who doesn't quite mesh with the plot. The characters of Red Rising always have a purpose, no character is just there to fill in space. Each character is there to show you the fundamentals of who the Golds are as a group or to teach the reader some detail about the plot.

But be warned this book can be incredible dark and gruesome at times. When I read the summary and it said that school was a battlefield, I must admit I figured it was the kind of battlefield where people try to out play each other mentally...in reality, it's a battlefield...as in the kind where people slaughter each other or risk being slaughtered themselves. Yet despite this the book is still absolutely amazing.

This book gets an easy 5 stars.

Vertigo - TBR Challenge

For my August TBR Challenge I had to read a story that is published on Wattpad or Fictionpress. For my challenge I ended up reading Vertigo by Carmel March. I always love it when you find a gem on these websites, that one story that reminds you why keep looking and reading all the different works that people have created. 

Vertigo is one of those gems. The story follows a team of CIA agents who are trying to prevent an arms dealer from causing some major damage. Gemma Hart is the protagonist in this story, she is a smart and talented CIA agent who is pushed to her limits and forced to rise to the challenge when she is pulled from logistics and into the field. Facing not only trouble at a national security level, but also problems with her civilian boyfriends parents...and then there is the fact that she may or may not be developing a close relationship with her CIA partner, Boone.

One of the main things that I liked about this story was that the characters were real. Sure these agents are kickbutt, but at the end of the day you don't end up saying: "if only you could do that in real life" which many of these more action based (and movies) stories tend to go towards. 

The action in this story was another thing that I really loved. The action didn't dominate the plot line, it complimented the story as it was needed. The romance was another factor that I liked in the story for the same reason. Once again it seemed to fit seamlessly into the story without taking over the plot line and throwing it out the window. Everything in this story was one wonderfully woven flow of words.

To add to this amazing story is a sequel: Ricochet. Ricochet is still in the process of being written but Carmel March gets a new chapter up each month.

To this amazing little gem I give it a solid 4.5 stars and I can't wait for the September update.

All the Bright Places

Title: All the Bright Places

Author: Jennifer Niven

Rating: 5 stars

Genre: Young Adult

Number of Pages: 378

Publication Date: 2015

Publisher: Penguin

Summary: Theodore Finch wants to take his own life. Violet Markey is devastated by her sister's death. They meet on the ledge of the school bell tower, and so their story begins. It's only together they can be themselves. But as Violet's world grows, Finch's begins to shrink. How far will Violet go to save the boy she has come to love?

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven is perhaps one of the most incredible books I have ever read. There is nothing better than when you pick up a book and it completely moves you...that it consumes your thoughts and makes you think. This is exactly what this book does. It fact I was stumped for days on how to describe this book. Conversations by me went a little something like this: "Have you read All the Bright Places? No, well you should its...I mean its just..." Words cannot describe the true incredibleness of this book.

The best way I can give a summary of this book is by saying that this is a story about "a boy called Finch and a girl named Violet."

To be honest you really don't need to know any more than that. In fact the less you know going in, probably the better.

The writing in this book is beautiful and moving, it draws you in and doesn't let you go until well past the last page. It will give you warm fuzzy feelings, make you role your eyes, laugh, and it will make you cry.

I'm not a fan of contemporary novels, I hate how they reflect that reality can suck - and lets face all books have something go wrong in them at some point, its what makes the story. At least when something goes wrong in a fantasy its usually because of magic or some other uncontrollable factor, not someones stupidity. I have little patients for self inflected stupidity; it makes me cringe.

All the Bright Places manages a work around this. Bad things happen, put thankfully for a change of contemporary pace, its not because one of the characters makes a poor decision based on an inability to let go of the past (some serious contemporary generalisation - but you get the drift); instead the bad stuff happens because the characters are trying do the right thing in a bad situation. That and there was no angst which I loved.

If there was a book that I could erase from my mind so I could re-read it, it would be this one. This book is not just a story but it is a piece of art. If I could give this book more than my 5 star rating I would, but I can't...so I reluctantly give it 5 stars because it deserves so much more.