CBR VI #1- The Giver by Lois Lowry

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I like how when you read the book, it doesn't really feel like the future. In fact, the setting seems positively retro with the bikes and the innocence, like the 50s or something. But its not. Jonas, he of pale eyes, lives in a Community where everything is regimented. Everything and everyone has its place and time. Your path is set from the moment you are born from your birthmother until the moment you are released from old age. Jonas is in the 11th year of his life and in the next ceremony, when he (and everybody born in the same year as him) will turn 12 and will be assigned their official jobs.  In the ceremony, Jonas is surprised when he is given a very special job.  He is to be the receiver of memory.  The job is a mystery to everybody, especially to Jonas, but it turns out that the job entails absorbing memories from the Giver, who was formerly the Receiver.  The memories are not just memories of a single person, but memories of their people.  Of a more colorful (literally) and chaotic past.  Hundreds of years of memories.  Jonas receives these memories, both the amazing and the horrifying.  It changes him (well that and the NO MEDICATION) and leads him into making a choice to either leave the safety and sameness of his Community or try his chances Elsewhere.

In reading sci-fi, fantasy, zombie or vampire books, I am always very interested in the world building.  I thought that the world, the Community was pretty plausible.  Feeling and emotion is erased I think chemically by drinking medicine everyday.  Everything is planned and organized meticulously.  I like how at first, the world seems utopian until Jonas digs deeper and well, you see the world as it really is.  There is peace, but what is peace without freedom?  The moment where it really hit me was when I realized that the Community had no colour!  I guess everything was in black and white?  That's my favourite thing about how the book is written, when you are slowly made to realize that this perfect world is anything but.

The thing that confused me a bit about the book was that I thought it was going to be pure science fiction but then there's Jonas with the special powers to see colour and to receive and feel memories.  I don't know, I guess it's not necessarily bad, just a bit disorienting.  I liked the book, but I was a bit disappointed that it was a bit simplistic, I guess.  Maybe because it's a children's book and it's supposed to be that way?  I just felt that the events leading to the ending were just.. that's it?  It gave me that sort of feeling.  But I actually liked the ending, in that Jonas was not able to magically fix or overturn the system.  The solution is smaller, more personal, but its effects still resound to the community and to the reader.

I live in a country where we didn't really have any public libraries and when I was a kid.  Our teachers didn't really assign us any books to read in grade school and brand new ones were pretty pricey for our family.  What I'm trying to say is, I think I would have liked this better if I had read this as the intended audience, when I was a kid.  As it is, I like it, but I wasn't really blown away.

PS.  Being a completist, my next three reviews will be the companion books.  The ending was sort of a cliff hanger so I was interested to know what really happened.

CBR IV # 23 The Positronic Man by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg

This story seemed a bit familiar and upon further research, I figured out that I have actually read the short story/novella this book was based on.  I love my sci-fi with a vengeance and Asimov has been the one to really turn me on to the genre.  I love Asimov, I do.

This book, as I've mentioned is based on the short story, The Bi-Centennial Man by the same author (and then it was made into the movie of the same name starring Robin Williams.  huh.).  This book I guess expands and gives more detail to the journey of Andrew Smith, the robot who wanted to be a real boy. 

Andrew was conceived to be an ordinary household robot given to a prominent family on Earth. However, he was made in the early years of robot manufacturing and so his positronic brain allowed for some surprises.  It started with an unusual ability for woodcarving, which almost seemed to be art, a very human endeavor.  Over the years and with the support of his human masters, Andrew freed himself and slowly transformed himself, or maybe developed himself more and more towards humanity. But will he become truly human?  And who shall decide who is truly human?

As is normal in Asimov books, there is no shooting of space lasers flying ships or scary aliens.  There is very little action, just a narration of Andrew's long life.  Aside from being good story, it, as is usual delves into some philosophical matters like as is obvious, what makes us truly human?  Can one transcend what one is originally created for (and is) and still be authentic to what he strives to be or now is?  

I also found it fun to read a robot book that still takes place on earth and very soon after it became mainstream.  It's like reading a little bit of history. Of course, even the earliest robots were subject to the three laws.  It was fun to see how robotics developed and how humanity spread first to the moon and to the other planets.

# 47 - Ms. Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

X-men, Victorian edition (actually, 1940, but the pictures feel more Victorian). Present day, Jacob is a typical disaffected youth, pharmacy heir, and loner. Poor little rich kid he was. However, his close relationship with this peculiar grandfather proves a gateway to fantastical adventures. His grandfather always had weird stories (and even weirder photographs) for Jacob, which unfortunately, as Jacob becomes older seems more and more like just his grandfather's fantastical imagination.

His grandfather's death, though, leads Jacob to see the horrible monsters his grandfather has long been afraid of, and to learn that the stories may be true after all.

So there are kids with superpowers, time travelling and whatnot. It was an ok book but came eay below my expectations considering the creepy pictures. I was really expecting something a bit darker and deeper and creepier. Not so much the standard fantasy/adventure that this book was. The plot, as well as the monsters, just seemed a bit childish to me. Well, this is after all a YA book, so maybe, as noted in my Uglies review, I am too old for YA. I hope not.

But the pictures! Man, the pictures are the best part of the book, as well as how the author managed to make stories around the picture. That was cool, yeah.

# 43, 44, 45 and 46 - Uglies, Pretties, Specials and Extras by Scott Westerfeld

I read the series in the course of 2 days, when I was taking my MCLE (Mandatory Continuing Legal Education), that's two 9-hour days of lectures which are supposedly updates, but really was more like a review. I am not ashamed to admit that I love YA, and I am very proud that I like sci-fi. I was not initially drawn to these books which were ubiquitous in out local bookstore chain. I just seemed too glossy, like Gossip Girls or Vampire Diaries, only with extra sci-fi. But., I read a lot of positive reviews so I decided to try it out.

One thing I will say, it is definitely a fast read, and a compulsive one. Or maybe I was really bored in the aforementioned 2 9-hour days. Well, anyway, I did finish it in 18 hours, more or less, so that's something.

The story was interesting, but also a bit implausible (yes, I know it's sci fi). So in the far future, humanity has retreated to enclosed (but not, like, heavily guarded. or is it?) cities where everyone is turned pretty on their 16th birthday. At least, that's the case in the city our heroine, Tally Youngblood lives. She is a normal teenager, feeling grossly ugly and super excited to turn pretty. But things get interesting when she meets a rebellious friend and learns that there is a different life outside of the city walls and that turning pretty might not just be a physical thing. The first three books focus on Tally's story of being an ugly, turning pretty, and then becoming special. The fourth volume, extras, is a stand-along story with new characters and Tally and the gang showing up in the middle of the book.

Did I like it? It was ok. Not so much. It was a bit too YA for me. Although it dealt with issues which are good to think over and discuss with kids, it was too obvious for me. Like, kids, you are beautiful just the way you are! Kids, what is peace without freedom?! And everything was too pat sometimes. And as I said, I found the premise itself a bit unbelievable, as in, I cannot believe that that is one of the possible roads humanity might be taking. Extras, is a little more based on the present world where worth is ranked through how popular one is, and everyone is followed around by their own personal news feed. Sounds more like the present, yeah?

I got interested though, in the mythology of how the world got to be the way it was. I enjoy the big picture much better that the interpersonal drama of the characters.

All in all, it was ok. I didn't hate it. Just a normal YA book. Maybe I was spoiled on amazing YA that a pretty good one seems just ok to me. Or maybe I'm too old for this shit.

# 10 River Rats by Caroline Stevermer

I like YA fiction. I also really like post-apocalyptic fiction. I also really, really like rock n roll. But somehow, this book which combines the three is not really doing it for me.

It's post-apocalyptic America,where the population has been drastically reduced by an event the characters call the Flash, and further so by the pestilence, which kills quickly and terribly. Some cities survive, as well as small pockets of civilization, as do the Wild Boys, a band of kids who live in the infected wastelands, immune to the pestilence.

The River Rats are a group of kids living in a paddle wheel steamboat. Too rebellious to live in cities which must necessarily have a lot of rules in order to survive, but too level headed and organized to be wild boys. They go up and down the Mississippi, delivering mail, providing news and staging rock concerts in exchange for clean food and water. Life is almost routine for these kids (as routine as post-apocalyptic America can be), and they are surviving pretty well as a family. However, they encounter some excitement when they rescue King, an adult being chased by scary big guys,the Lesters, an unsavory family controlling a village. And so starts their adventure. Being chased, held captive and so on...

The story is told from the viewpoint of one of the rats, Tomcat. He is perhaps, the most irresponsible and "wild" of all the rats, but he's a good kid. They all are, actually, acting as family for one another in a world where family is scarce.

It is an exciting adventure story with interesting backdrop. The author's imagination of society after the apocalypse is pretty good with the aforementioned enclaves or good places, as the rats call it, amidst the destruction.

Why didn't I like it? I don't know, it just didn't speak to me. I mean, I don't hate it, I'm just meh about it. I guess it is a pretty good YA adventure, just not for me.

# 7 - I Am Legend (And Other Short Stories) by Richard MAtheson

That is an one ugly book cover. More so considering how much i was enraged, ENRAGED!, I tell you, when I realized how much they changed the ending of the film. It was, however, the cheapest copy I could find and I was really impatient to find out what the difference between the book and the movie was. So, I had to make do with Will Smith.

I saw the movie before I read the book and I actually quite enjoyed the movie. But that was before I knew that the book was really quite awesome. I mean, the movie was ok and all, but why didn't they just make another movie completely not based on the book? Changing the ending and even some details (like there are dead vampires and alive vampires, and that hello! they are sentient!) completely change the essence of the book.

Enough ranting about the adaptation and on to the book itself. It was good. Neville is the last man left on earth. All the other have been infected by a horrible disease that turns them into bloodsucking monsters. The first part was basically just about how Neville lived his daily life, in the face of vampire apocalypse. Surviving and protecting himself. It also tells his past, which is heartbreaking, through flashbacks. We stay with Neville as he goes through depression and excessive drinking (who wouldn't be driven to drink when faced with a nightly onslaught of scary-ass vampires) and eventually just deals. He tries to learn all he can about the origin of the plague and tries to find a cure. In the day, when the vampires are helpless, he goes out and systematically kills all that he can find.

All the "action" happens at the last third of the book when he finds a seemingly uninfected woman and takes her in. Eventually, he starts to suspect that she is infected, and that part for me was really thrilling. Like Neville, I constantly wavered between believing she was normal and thinking she was infected. And this propels the story until the end when Neville, in the final seconds of his life, realizes that he is legend.

The book, in making the vampires sentient creatures, elevated the book from being just a regular zombie apocalypse movie (like the movie version) and presents some thought provoking ideas on how human beings evolve and adopt. In having Neville as a SOLE survivor of the human race, it presents a compelling portrait of loneliness. Being truly alone.

So I gathered from research (wiki. shush.) that this book was the first time that vampirism was "explained" through science. That is, that it had a scientific, instead of a supernatural cause. It is also, I guess because of the whole wiping out humans stuff, the inspiration for modern zombie films. However, I think it is totally different from most zombie films, as I already mentioned. The fact that the monsters were sentient and are trying to build a new society is totally different from the zombies who just want to eat everybody.

Oh, there were other short stories included in this book, thus making it elegible for the cannonball read. The stories were ok, some twisty and scary, some were forgettable. Ultimately, none reached the depth Matheson reached in I Am Legend.

# 5 - Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

This is a weird one. It has a typically sci-fi premise, however, the story feels more like a period book, very old-fashion-y.

These kids live in what seems like a typical English boarding school. Only, they've lived there their whole lives and their future is certainly bleak. There is a "twist" if it can be called that, but it hardly matters. It's not all Shyamalan where the twist is the only thing there is. In fact, the twist isn't presented in a shocking manner at all. Rather, the truth slowly dawns upon the reader as they read the book. Actually, I already knew what the twist was before I read it and I wonder if the experience would have been very different had I not known the premise before hand. I think it would have enhanced the experience, but not by much. The book is much more than the twist. It's a mediation of friendship and love, and coming of age, only made much more urgent by the expiration date of the characters.

The book is narrated by Kathy, one of the lead characters, telling the story of her friendship with another girl, and a boy she loved. The narration is very matter of fact and over-analytical, seeming to find meaning in every little occurrence. Kathy is very slow and steady and loyal, while Ruth is fiery and manipulative at times. Tommy is a basically, a nice boy. I have to admit that I really hated Ruth. I hated her manipulation and her lies.

I really loved this book. It is so my thing, with the melancholy and the heartbreak. It is haunting and very engrossing.