The Selection by Kiera Cass

Post apocalyptic romance novels. Yea! Where haven't we seen that one before?

Minus that, really interesting premise, it reminded me a little of Hunger Games mixed with The Princess Academy, both books which I love. Also mixed with the tv show The Bachelor, which I hate but it didn't bother me as much in the book.

It takes place in the future, where America has drastically changed and is now called Illea, and there is a royal family, and a caste system, and a bunch of things that we don't associate with America.

So just to make things confusing, the main character's name is America, and it was a little hard reading, because every time I read America's name, I thought of the country, and had to remind myself that it was a character, not the country.

So when a prince is eligible for marriage, they "select" one girl from each of the "states" to compete to be the next princess.

The girls can get nasty, and manipulative, which is why it reminds me a little of The Hunger Games, and also because of the futuristic part, also there are rebels and stuff.

So obviously, America gets chosen to be one of the girls to compete for the throne.

The book is really good, it has a little too much romance for my taste (I suggest Rosie G read this because she'll love it) and the main character gets really whiny at the end and I wanted her to just be happy because she was really lucky.

However, I still really like it, and I can't wait for the next book.

Fire by Kristin Cashore

Note: I've read an advanced reading copy, and don't know how much may change until the first printing.

Fire is the prequel to Graceling, Kristin Cashore's fantasy debut novel published in 2008 about a young woman unnaturally skilled in combat. It was a story about her alienation from society and her coming to terms with that, while also doing her part to better it.

In that way Graceling is very similar to its new prequel, whose heroine is named Fire. Fire is not graced; she lives in an land adjacent to the one we learned of in Graceling, where instead of Gracelings there are Monsters. Monsters come in the shape and mold of "normal" animals but are intensely beautiful; iridescent and multicolored, they create an insatiable desire in the minds of any people of weak constitution who lay eyes on them. For instance, there are monster bugs and cats that are generally harmless, but monster raptors will eat you.

Fire is the only human monster.

I'll just let that thought sink in a little.

Fire is in an almost constant threat of danger; she is especially irresistible to those monster raptors I mentioned before, as well as most men between the ages of 18 and 65. To put it frankly, Fire has to deal with "rape culture" at a whole new level. She has her friends, skills with a bow, and her mind reading/influencing abilities to help protect her, but she is never at ease.

To top it all off, her late monster father, Cansreal, took the title "monster" to heart and did all sort of horrible things to the world using the past king as a puppet. Yup. Those are not fun shoes to fill.

Beauty comes with a price.

Anyways, I think the author did an excellent job of defining Fire's character and how it evolved. A+ job.
Another thing that struck me was how she incorporated a lot of very human things that generally get glossed over in fantasy novels (at least that I've read), such as sex, puberty, the rigors of pregnancy, and sexuality. Fire's "monthly bleedings" are even a crucial element to the story, since the smell of her blood attracts dangerous monsters from miles around, putting her in some very tenuous situations.

The book is definitely worth the read, especially if you enjoyed Graceling.

Elephant Run by Roland Smith

Historical Fiction!!! YEA!!!


So this book was really awesome. I love historical fiction (cause it is awesome) and this was a very interesting spin on the over done historical time period of world war II.

So have any of you out there heard about what happened in Burma during World War II.

Do any of you out there know where Burma is?

Well I didn't until I read this book. It is about a boy with a English father, who is a plantation overseer-like person in Burma. (Not plantation how Americans think of it) His mother is American. The trouble between his parents starts when he is born, and when he is five, his mom takes him away from Burma and to America. He has been away from his father from 10 years, in America and London, and now with the bombs raining down on his London home, his mother sends him to Burma, thinking he would be safer there.

But if it was really safer in Burma, there wouldn't be much of a novel right?

This book has many twists and turns, a few predictable, but it still kept me wanting more.

A good read for a good story and a way to learn about a section of history unknown to history class.

Enchanted by Alethea Kontis

So this book was really a fun read. It was a quick read, not too hard, took me an afternoon, and it was really funny. So this book was about Sunday Woodcutter (don't you feel bad for her with that name?) and she is the seventh daughter of Jack and Seven Woodcutter.

So this book basically takes every single nursery rhyme and fairy tale, from Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Princess and the Frog, Jack and the Beanstalk, and so many others, and squishes it into one book.

This is going to be a quick review because it was a quick book.

It is funny, entertaining, and a really interesting plot (not something I thought possible when combining a bunch of fairy tales)

I highly recommend it, for an afternoon read or for younger children, it is a good way to spend a rainy afternoon.

Hush by Eishes Chayil

First of all, I would like to supplicate this book's publisher to issue it a new cover, since my first impression was that Hush was some sort of dystopian novel. It's not. It is a story of a girl growing up in an intensely isolated Jewish community in the heart of Brooklyn. When she is 9 years old, Gittel witnesses her best friend being raped, an act that has no word in the Chassidim vernacular. Gittel is forced to remain silent about the act by her parents and teachers, for fear of dishonor upon either family.


The book contains a graphic hanging. Gittel's inaction eventually led to her friend's suicide.


The author, Eishes Chayil, wrote this book from her own experience growing up in this community. I found a lot of interesting commentary (and lots of critique) of her old society in the book, from the brainwash-level isolationism to the discrepancies between teaching and action. In school, the kids are taught that all goyim, or non-Jews, are really evil on the inside and that it's really just a matter of time before they begin a second holocaust. The men can spend nearly every waking moment studying the Torah only to come home and say hurtful things to their wife. The preachers constantly warn of the outside world's materialism, yet young brides buy thousand-dollar wigs.


But the book is not all black and white; during a sleepover, a group of girls naughtily peruse an Oprah magazine, which does an incredibly good job of corroborating the preacher's warnings of gaudy materialism. And just because many of the laws and traditions governing the community are really rather lousy, it doesn't mean that certain individuals can't have nuggets of wisdom. For instance, Gittel's mother extols the virtues of a husband who willingly takes out the trash. A wise Rebbe (rabbi) admits that sexual abuse is a real problem in the community.


All in all, Hush is a good, if unspectacular, book. I would recommend it to anyone seeking to broaden their cultural horizon.

For the Win by Cory Doctorow

The book caught my eye because I have read another book by Cory Doctorow (Little Brother, you should go read it right now) and I thought it would be interesting. I WAS ABSOLUTELY CORRECT!!!


This book has a scary looking cover, making you think it would be all about war, but it isn't really all about war.

This book was particularly interesting because I recently finished US History I, and one of the last units we did was the Industrial revolution and reform movements. This book took something in the present, video games, and brought in this historical aspect. I'm not sure if Cory Doctorow purposely made it like history, but it was awesome nonetheless. I definitely didn't expect it to have all these things that reminded me of my history class.

So I went into this book pretty clueless about the way most games work, I play basic games, but I don't have a lot of time for those cool games on the internet with the different worlds and stuff like World of Warcraft or whatever it is.

But this book explained perfectly how stuff like that worked, how people can make a living playing these games.

So what happens when there are millions of workers all over the world, working in terrible conditions for these bosses, playing games, but still in slums and they can be beaten for bad days and money taken away for no reason.

Simple, reform movements, strikes, lockouts, lock ins. All that stuff you hear about from the early 1900s.


This book was beautifully written, a little hard to read because you actually have to think about what they are talking about, but it isn't confusing.

Go read Little Brother, and then read this book. Now.

Girl in the Arena by Lise Haines

So I picked up this book because I thought it had something to do with The Hunger Games, like there are those books all about it like "The girl who was on Fire" and some others. So when I picked this one up, I was disappointed for a second, then actually read the description and it sounded really awesome.


It takes you to Boston, but in this book, there are gladiatorial fights on television like we have boxing and kick boxing fights. However these gladiator fights can go too far, like deaths and maiming.

So this story is told from the point of view of Lyn, and she is called the daughter of the seven gladiators. Her mother married a gladiator, had Lyn, and her father died, then her mom remarried and her step father died, multiply this by four and you get Lyn in her current predicament. Her mom has married to Tommy, who is Lyn's favorite father by far but he's really nervous about his next match.


So when Tommy dies, the GSA (gladiator sports association) orders that Lyn must marry her step father's murderer.

So what's a girl to do? Well you'll have to read it to find out.

So this book, instead of quotation marks, has - and it really bothered me for most of the book. Towards the end I kind of got used to it, but I still missed quotation marks.

The ending could have been better, but this book was definitely interesting, a take on our society with a "barbaric" sport from ancient times.

There was a sprinkle of romance, but despite the sound of the inside cover jacket, it is not what the entire book is about.

So really good, if you can get past the no quotation marks thing.