It's been a while. A year, actually. Okay. So maybe when someone asks me how much longer I'm going to take putting make-up on,* and I reply "a while," no one expects me to take a year. Me taking a year might even surprise some. Some.
As ya'll probably don't know, I started high school last year. I don't know how I got the notion,** but I felt so under pressure that adding blogging to my plate would've cracked the plate. I tried some blogging last year, but blogging isn't much fun when it's eight at night I just got back from tae kwon do, and I have an AP history paper due the next day that I haven't started yet. I only did book blogging because I liked it. There is no point to posting reviews if it causes more stress than happiness.
My plate feels light enough for this right now. I forgot how much I loved it until I wrote a review of Angelfall for my school newspaper. Newspaper reviews are pretty to put on book covers, but writing online reviews gives me much more needed freedom. No one expects you to be so annoyingly formal all the time online. "Readers will enjoy Penryn's quick wit and kick-butt style." Nope. Not cool.
Anyway, I have SO MANY AWESOME BOOKS TO REVIEW! (See? So cool. So casual.)
Some of the books I need to get to include these beauties:
And so much more I have to find and dig out of the corner regions of my poor overstuffed bookshelf.
Bye! For now! Post again in a while!
Ha. No. I'll post back in less than a week.
(Now that I'm back on here I've realized that my profile picture looks nothing like me. Huh. Whatever. I'll fix it later.)
*Just kidding. I don't wear make-up.
**Yes I do: It was all that freaking messed-up YA contemporary I read in middle school. Thanks, Courtney Summers, thanks Laurie Halse Anderson. You guys are awesome suck. Plus the combined effort of all the middle school counselors telling us that we would either fail at high school or have no social life. Thanks. Again.
Since she’d been on the outside, she’d survived an Aether storm, she’d had a knife held to her throat, and she’d seen men murdered. This was worse.
Exiled from her home, the enclosed city of Reverie, Aria knows her chances of surviving in the outer wasteland—known as The Death Shop—are slim. If the cannibals don’t get her, the violent, electrified energy storms will. She’s been taught that the very air she breathes can kill her. Then Aria meets an Outsider named Perry. He’s wild—a savage—and her only hope of staying alive.
A hunter for his tribe in a merciless landscape, Perry views Aria as sheltered and fragile—everything he would expect from a Dweller. But he needs Aria’s help too; she alone holds the key to his redemption. Opposites in nearly every way, Aria and Perry must accept each other to survive. Their unlikely alliance forges a bond that will determine the fate of all who live under the never sky.
In her enthralling debut, Veronica Rossi sends readers on an unforgettable adventure set in a world brimming with harshness and beauty.
Review:
This Coke Zero commercial sums up my thoughts on Under the Never Sky pretty thoroughly. Thank you, Coke Zero.
I only got UTNS at first because it was at the library. When I saw it on the self, just sitting there all new and shiny, I was excited. I wanted to read a book with a bunch of positive hype, and there it was! I was afraid of buying it on my own because I didn't see the "and?" factor that I so love in post-apocalyptic novels. So what? Who cares if your world has been ravaged by storms that have decimated the population? And? You live in a bubble and he lives on inhospitable land? No. It's hard to find a big enough "and" to stand out when being compared to post-apocalyptic "and's" like love is a disease (Delirium) or 24 kids killing each other in an arena (If you don't know this one, the rock you are living under is currently residing in deep space. Might wanna get that checked out.).
I saw no mind-bending post-apocalyptic concept that would've drawn my attention in. That's okay. Enclave by Ann Aguirre survived with characters I cared about. That was Enclave's "and" factor. Aria and Perry were not characters I really even remotely liked. Aria spends the whole first part of the book complaining about everything. The POV was split between Aria and Perry, which meant I was super-duper lucky. I got to read Aria internally complain from her POV, and Aria externally complain from Perry's POV. Then something happened. Perry complimented her. That was it. No more complaining after that. After that she becomes a badass. No more prompting necessary.
Major confusion. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL. Perry and Aria's relationship proceeds much in the same manner. The first half of the book, the "loving" couple did nothing but hurl insults at each other. Aria was the talkative one, always trying to strike up a conversation. Perry stays dead quiet except, you know, the insults. After Perry compliments Aria on her badass manner of trying to save Perry with her dying self (Turns out to just be her first period. Lovely.), Perry stops with the insults. Aria still held up the brunt of the conversations they have. Most of their attraction was made out to be physical. Perry sniffs Aria; Aria kisses Perry. BAM. And a soul-mate was born. I almost wanted to say WOAH, GUYS. REMEMBER TEN PAGES AGO WHEN YOU CALLED PERRY A SAVAGE? Remember Perry barley said fifty words since? (You badass. You smell like pretty flower.) I felt like they built their relationship more on proximity than any kind of good chemistry.
Just because I spent the last three paragraphs trashing everything about Under the Never Sky, from the annoying characters, to it not meeting my twisted expectations calling for about twenty-threeish children to die on a televised event or whatever, doesn't mean it was a complete loss. The world the book is set in was pretty amazing to read about. The descriptions of the tribe Perry lives in, and the virtual Realms Aria spent most of the book lamenting about not being there made me want to visit their messed up world. Not all of the characters were a total loss. Roar was the side character who made the last half of the book better then the first. He becomes a problem when I like him better then the two main characters combined. I would be ecstatic if Veronica Rossi wrote a book about Roar and his own killer forbidden romance with Perry's sister.
My point is, Under the Never Sky is plain Coke. Three and a half stars. It was good enough for a rainy day, but it was not Coke Zero. It was a dog with a helmet on a skateboard, cool on its own, but it preformed no tricks. It was pretty good on its own, but I don't think I'll be picking up the sequel.
I hope the Coke Zero analogy made as much sense to you as it did to me when I woke up at two o'clock in the morning with the uncontrollable urge to write "Under the Never Sky = Coke" on a post-it note.
Here is the link to the Goodreads page with the picture of the cover. For some reason, probably the new Blogger template (Seriously? I need to download Google Chrome for it to work? I barely have enough space as it is.), I can't publish anything with photos. Sorry for the picturless post!
Summary:
STOP. You should not have touched this flyer with your bare hands. NO, don't put it down. It's too late. They're watching you. My name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours. You may not want to know about the things you'll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the future. But it's too late. You touched the book. You're in the game. You're under the eye. The only defense is knowledge. You need to read this book, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why? You just have to trust me.
The important thing is this: The drug is called Soy Sauce and it gives users a window into another dimension. John and I never had the chance to say no. You still do. I'm sorry to have involved you in this, I really am. But as you read about these terrible events and the very dark epoch the world is about to enter as a result, it is crucial you keep one thing in mind: None of this was my fault.
Review:
John Dies at the End is one of my favorite books—probably making the least sense—I have read in 2012. I had never before with a book wished that the pages would flow slower or tried to read in small intervals to make a book last longer. The plot was second in importance when compared with the voices and humor of JDatE’s characters. I think no other book would have accomplished getting me to laugh out loud during a fetal pig dissection (thankfully, I had the option to opt out), while also making me mistrustful of the dead pig because possibly the pig’s internal organs might become external and explode when trying to kill me. Here’s the quote that let me know I needed to buy John Dies at the End immediately because a Kindle sample just wouldn’t cut it:
“Let's say you have an ax. Just a cheap one, from Home Depot. On one bitter winter day, you use said ax to behead a man. Don't worry, the man was already dead. Or maybe you should worry, because you're the one who shot him.”
David Wong, also the pseudonymly named author, is an amazing narrator. He has the whole “So. Paranormal stuff. That’s really weird. And it kinda sucks. Let’s go kick a meat monster’s butt. *Insert funny penis joke here*” vibe going on. It’s not every day you encounter that vibe from anywhere. JDatE has it down to a freaking science. The tone wasn’t so serious that the book lost its whimsical vibe, but the funny narration was presented in a way that the scary things going on still seemed real and scary enough.
It’s summer—in case no one noticed. It being summer means there’s no more school. There being no more school translates to no more homework. By no more homework I mean no more biweekly history assignments on writing, just an example, two page essays analyzing the significance of Justinian and Theodora’s mosaics. It was pretty cool to figure out I had it in me to prattle on about the significance of Justinian’s height in relation to his followers for half a page, but that prattle didn’t leave me much opportunity to do much else. Now that summer, the time of abundant free time, is here, I can go back to reviewing the normal at-least-one-every-week way.
And—omg—I have read SO MANY good books. SO MANY. One of the books just happens to be John Dies at the End by (pseudonym) David Wong. I’m planning to review it later in the week, but just one post does not express how much I fell in love with that book. No, it needs... one post... PLUS A COUPLE OF SENTANCES. So... here it is! Yay! SENTANCES. Yeah. I’m planning on saving most of my hard-core fan-girling for later.
And here is the link to the movie trailer for John Dies at the End if the below Youtube video is acting not nice. Only the best books get made into real live movies. Remember that.
P.S. Does anyone know how to see something embedded in an online photo? There is a alternate reality game going on the JDATE (Ha! Best. Abbreviation. Ever.) website that allows people to see a preview of the next book. Of course, only the computer savvy are open to such an opportunity. Seriously, what normal person knows what embedding is? Let alone how to see iHAIL KORROK.
