This week’s book talks 4/8-12

Monday

Be Prepared  by Vera Brosgol

Tuesday

Wire and Nerves by Marissa Meyer

Thursday

Legend: The Graphic Novel by Marie Lu

Friday

Birdie  by Eileen Spinelli

Warcross

You’ve probably seen or heard about this one

Publisher’s Summary:For the millions who log in every day, Warcross isn’t just a game—it’s a way of life. The obsession started ten years ago and its fan base now spans the globe, some eager to escape from reality and others hoping to make a profit. Struggling to make ends meet, teenage hacker Emika Chen works as a bounty hunter, tracking down Warcross players who bet on the game illegally. But the bounty-hunting world is a competitive one, and survival has not been easy. To make some quick cash, Emika takes a risk and hacks into the opening game of the international Warcross Championships—only to accidentally glitch herself into the action and become an overnight sensation.

Convinced she’s going to be arrested, Emika is shocked when instead she gets a call from the game’s creator, the elusive young billionaire Hideo Tanaka, with an irresistible offer. He needs a spy on the inside of this year’s tournament in order to uncover a security problem . . . and he wants Emika for the job. With no time to lose, Emika’s whisked off to Tokyo and thrust into a world of fame and fortune that she’s only dreamed of. But soon her investigation uncovers a sinister plot, with major consequences for the entire Warcross empire.

I liked Lu’s Legend series but couldn’t get into the Young Elites  series. I figured I had a 50/50 chance with Warcross. 

Although I have almost no interest in online gaming, I got into Warcross quickly and was carried along by the fast-paced writing.  I figured out who the bad guy was early on, but Lu planted enough red-herrings to doubt my theory, though I never really abandoned it. I like the strong, but flawed, female protagonist, and the diverse cast of characters.

Warcross  isn’t the best book I’ve read this year, but it was rather enjoyable.

2015 Hub Reading Challenge Check-In #7

It was a light week for the Hub reading Challenge, mostly because I finished 4 books for the Morris award. But I can’t tell you about those.

The only book I actually finished was The Young Elites  by Marie Lu. The first in a fantasy series.

I have to be honest, if I weren’t reading it for the Challenge, I probably would have abandoned it. Lu has certainly created a rich fantasy world, and yet, it smacks a lot of the dystopian world she created in The Legend  series, which I liked more, though I didn’t love it.

Both series have a disease. Both are narrated in alternating voices. Both have a characters on both sides of power and one of these characters goes over to the other side.

As much as I love things foreign and exotic, the names in this book drove me crazy. It is as though Lu sat down and asked her self, “What are the most pretentious sounding names I can think of for the characters in my new book?”

I’m reading All the Light We Cannot See now, a much better book. But more n that next Sunday.

A trio of trilogies : Part 2

If you haven’t had enough YA dystopian fiction, you are in luck.

Today’s trilogy is the  Legend series by Marie Lu.

 

Marie Lu began her career as a game designer and you can feel that active pace in these novels.   The series is set in  a futuristic America, which is split into two parts, Republic and Colonies,  following catastrophic flooding. 

Legend  takes place in a flooded Los Angeles, where the privileged and poor live very different lives and plague is a threat.  The story is alternately narrated in two voices. Fifteen-year-old Day, is a famous criminal, and  June  is the prodigious soldier hired to capture him. When they meet, they discover that they have a common enemy.

In Prodigy,  June and Day make their way to Las Vegas where they join the rebel Patriot group and become involved in an assassination plot against the Elector in hopes of saving the Republic. 

Finally, in Champion, a peace treaty is imminent, but a plague outbreak causes panic in the Colonies, and war threatens the Republic. You can probably surmise that June and Day solve these problems. 

I listened to all three of these on CDs in the car. The stories were good and moved along nicely, as long as you are willing to believe that 15 year olds can have this much power. The thing that drove me crazy was a particular grammatical construction that I hate. I’ve been noticing it a lot lately in the news, in writing and I can’t help but think that it is WRONG.

Lu would write comparisons and insert the word “of” in places that I don’t think they belong. Here are two examples:

“I’m ready,” I say with as genuine of a smile as I can muster.

as short of a summary

I think she should have written these as

“I’m ready,” I say with as genuine  a smile as I can muster.

as short a summary

Maybe it is being overly picky, but it really irritated me. I think I really took note of it because I listened to the series, rather than read it. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this grammar question.

In spite of that, the books were pretty good. The pace was pretty quick and the audiobook narrators were excellent.