MICHELLE'S REVIEW: The Peculiars by Maureen McQuerry

Title: The Peculiars

Author: Maureen Doyle McQuerry

Format Acquired: Hardcover

Publication Date: May 1, 2012

Publishing House: Amulet Books

ISBN: 1419701789

Source of Copy: Purchased from National Bookstore

Summary: On her eighteenth birthday, Lena Mattacascar decides to leave her mother and grandmother, and their comfortable home in the City, to search for her father,who disappeared into the northern wilderness known as Scree when she was a child. Scree is an untamed part of the country that is said to be inhabited by Peculiars-people whose unusual characteristics make them unacceptable to modern society-as well as by folks who are "strange", have "unusual talents," or are outlaws. The local authorities and even the family doctor all believe Lena's father to have personality "flaws," which causes Lena to wonder if she is like him. Is he a Peculiar? Is she a Peculiar?

On the train north, Lena meets Jimson Quiggley, a young librarian who's traveling to Knoster, a town on the edge of Scree, to work in the private library of the inventor Tobias Beasley. En route, they cross paths with the handsome young marshal Thomas Saltre. When the marshal follows Lena to Knoster, she is unsure of his true motivations. In town,she l,earns more about the unusual Mr. Beasley; his mysterious home, called Zephyr House; and the strange folk who go there but never come out again.

But Lena still longs to go to Scree and find her father, even if that means confronting her deepest fears. This dark and thrilling adventure, with an unforgettable heroine, will captivate fans of steampunk and fantasy.

(Image and information courtesy of Goodreads; Summary lifted from actual book) 

Review:

There’s a saying that goes, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” My life pre-GoodReads often entailed that as long as the summary sounded awesome and the cover looked gorgeous, the book/s would end up coming home with me. As a result, the book/s, I eventually will find out, would either be a diamond (my first John Green book was The Abundance of Katherines when I was still in high school, which spurred my obsession with his books after the said book was finished), or a rhinestone (until this very day, I cannot get over Lauren Kate’s Fallen—now that would teach me to reach for books with pretty covers). I really thought that I had kicked the habit to the curb now that I have access to GoodReads, but this book still had me reaching for it when I was browsing my local bookstore. Before I knew it, receipts were signed and the book was already in my possession. On the ride home, I felt quite bad. What if it was a book I ended up hating? And I bought a hardcover too. Upon getting home, I immediately looked for its ratings on GoodReads, and I was horrified. Would this be Fallen Part Two? Over the next few days, I was quite sure I wanted to have it exchanged, but a little part of me was curious about the book as well. I was pretty sure I had to judge it for myself.

I am so glad that I didn't return it.

You have to remember I was approaching the book with bias, but I had to convince myself that I was doing the book a terrible unjustice. When I was about seventy pages in, I was still quite wary. I was waiting for The Part Where It All Goes Horribly Wrong. 

It doesn't come.

Lena was a tad annoying—an unforgettable heroine, indeed—but I had to remind myself that it is precisely because she is impulsive that there is a story at all. Although she was oftentimes impulsive, Lena is a character that readers can relate to, whether it’s her self-consciousness with regards to her long feet and spider-like hands, her insatiable need to reconnect with an absent father, or her insatiable quest for freedom. Even at eighteen, Lena was first introduced as a sheltered young snob because of her lack of contact with the outside world, but readers will connect with Lena as she tries to make sense of possible romances, and her eventual growth into a truly adventurous and accepting spirit. 

The pacing was good, and most of the characters were in their element. Mr. Beasley in the latter part of the book, however, has lost his credibility as a real, functioning character.   Sometimes, his character sounds a bit too mechanical. There were some parts in the book that I also found questionable, although I have filed it away as Mr. Beasley being too much of an easygoing eccentric.

All in all, however, this was a good read and thoroughly enjoying. Until then, I shall remain envious, Lena Mattacascar, of both your personal growth and of your possession of Jimson Quiggley's heart.

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The Twins on Thursday: Debris Dreams by David Colby

"The Twins on Thursday" is reserved for the Twins' joint reviews. It is a special feature of our blog that discusses books that we either both like, dislike, or have mixed feelings about. This is also the day where we post reviews for books (and ARCs/Galleys) that have been sent to us by authors/galley sites/publishing houses. And because we don't believe much in uniformity, we'll be trying to mix things up a bit by adding random stuff in relation to our review (well, mostly for books we purchased anyway).

Title: Debris Dreams

Author: David Colby

Format Acquired: eGalley 

Publication Date: November 13, 2012

Publishing House: Candlemark & Gleam

ISBN: 9781936460380
Source of Copy: NetGalley

Summary: 2068

1.5 million kilometers above the surface of the Earth.

Drusilla Xao has only seen a tree in movies and vid-games. She has never breathed air that wasn't recycled, re-filtered, and re-used a hundred times over again. She has never set foot on Earth.

And now she never will.

When a terrorist attack by a radical separatist group on Luna destroys the space elevator that had called so many - including her parents - to live permanently in space, Dru is cut off from any hope of ever reaching Earth and her beloved girlfriend, Sarah. The Chinese-American Alliance declares immediate war on the rebels and conscripts everyone they can get their hands on... including Dru.

Cast adrift, forced to become a soldier, trapped in a nightmare of vacuum and loneliness, Dru's training will help her survive, but only Sarah will be able to bring her home.

(Image, information, and summary from GoodReads)

Review:

What we expected from Debris Dreams was an action-packed thriller filled with intense combat scenes and a whole lot of emotional trauma, because the setting’s in a warzone and it’s nearly impossible to escape it unscathed without any emotional or psychological repercussions. What we got was a whole lot of information dumps, confusing world building, uninteresting characters, and a rather confusing flow of events.

The story is told in Dru's voice. She's a proclaimed lesbian living in space who has a girlfriend who lives on earth. She's obviously taking the whole long-distance relationship thing to a totally new level. It was hard to get a feel for her character and we initially thought that she was male. We felt that her character was bland and monotonous, that her emotions were unreal and fake. Her character was woefully underdeveloped and the way she adapted to the abrupt change in her lifestyle was unbelievable. Since this is a war, and it's quite sure that Dru will lose friends, where’s the emotional trauma that Dru should have felt with the loss of said friends? The pain? How is it possible that she recovers so easily from the loss of her friends and sometimes seems to forget that she's fighting an actual war and it's not all fun and games now? It was hard to take this character seriously.

Then there's Sarah, Dru's girlfriend, in the summary it is said, and I quote, "...but only Sarah will be able to bring her home." We did not find Sarah's character to be of any significance to this story, we could not understand what she was to Dru, aside from being her girlfriend. What did Sarah do to bring Dru home? Send her e-mails and racy pictures of herself? Sure, Sarah may be the symbolism of Dru's yearning to go to Earth, but we actually expected more from Sarah.

It's hard to get into a story where one cannot connect with the characters. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened to us. We were indifferent towards Dru and her friends and whenever one of them is shot, injured or killed we could not muster up any sympathy for them.

A flaw in the story was that readers were not given an insight as to why Luna and Earth are fighting at all. There were only brief mentions of oppression on the side of Luna, and yeah, that's pretty much it.

We had issues with the characters using Mandarin Chinese along with the English command. (Other languages like Cantonese and Swahili were made us of less often, ergo less annoying.) Being Chinese-Filipinos, we pretty much had a gist of what Colby was referencing to, but other readers may not have the same experience. Even we found it annoying that they would speak in this manner. From the eGalley given to us, we didn't find any English translations that would make it convenient for the reader to at least follow on what Colby was trying to come across. There are words in Chinese that don't make much sense given the context, but this (we guess) could be excused as the copy we have did mention that the 'gramatically inaccurate mix of languages reflect the vernacular'. We still found this weird, because these were people who were early on type-casted as being part of the Chinese-American side. So, the characters can fluently cuss in Mandarin, but are kind of off in using actual Mandarin at times? Fair enough. 

Another point against it was the frequent mentions of sex. Bearing in mind that the main protagonist of this book is a lesbian and a self-admitting virgin engaged in an intergalactic war in freaking space where the opponents attack randomly and claim her friends one by one, Dru often thinks about how hot/sexy her seductive captain is, all the while admitting to her girlfriend on Earth that she is feeling hot and bothered - to which Sarah, the all-American saint that she is, has no qualms in giving her the signal to go for it. (Wow, Sarah. Really?) Sometimes, Dru was more of a Drew. Monogamy is depicted as backward and prudish. Sex appears to be as trivial as a handshake, or as a high five. We are confused as well as either to allude this rampant obsession with sex to the fact that Dru is a lesbian - which would then trigger more issues as to how people perceive gay people - or because it is a sign of a life where people are in the middle between life and death, emotionless sex is the only equivalent of fun.

There were scenes in the book where Dru is almost automatically promoted, and these usually happened when she was either unconscious, bleeding and hurt, or when she betrayed the entire system she was working for. (What.) 

Sometimes, we think that Dru even forgets that she's in an actual war, especially when she finds out about the 'new' technology that her side of the army will adapt. Will this 'new' tech  introduce brutal killing? Yeah. Is it merciless? Sure. Are you or are you not engaged in war? Uhh... Yes, we're pretty sure you are.

This book was actually hard to read, given the weird flow of events and the quick dissemination of info-dump after info-dump was too much for us to handle.

We're sorry, Debris Dreams, but we're giving you a flat-out one.

Rating:

MICHELLE'S REVIEW: The Other Normals by Ned Vizzini

Title: The Other Normals

Author: Ned Vizzini

Format Acquired: Hardcover 

Publication Date: September 25, 2012

Publishing House: Balzer + Bray

ISBN: 9780062079909
Source of Copy: Purchased from Fully Booked

Summary:

Given the chance, fifteen year-old Peregrine "Perry" Eckert would dedicate every waking moment to Creatures & Caverns, an epic role-playing game rich with magical creatures, spell-casting, and deadly weapons. The world of C&C is where he feels most comfortable in his own skin. But that isn't happening - not if his parents have anything to do with it. Concerned their son lacks social skills, they ship him off to summer camp to become a man. They want him to be outdoors playing with kids his own age and meeting girls - rather than indoors alone, with only his gaming alter ego for company. Perry knows he's in for the worst summer of his life.

Everything changes, however, when Perry gets to camp and stumbles into the World of the Other Normals. There he meets Mortin Enaw, one of the creators of C&C, and other mythical creatures from the game, including the alluring Ada Ember, whom Perry finds more beautiful than any human girl he's ever met. Perry's new otherworldly friends need his help to save their princess and prevent mass violence. As they embark on their quest, Perry realizes that his nerdy childhood has uniquely prepared him to be a great warrior in this world, and maybe even a hero. But to save the princess, Perry will have to learn how to make real connections in the human world as well.

Bestselling author Ned Vizzini delivers a compulsively readable and wildly original story about the winding and often hilarious path to manhood.

(Image and information courtesy of Goodreads; Summary lifted from actual book)

Review:

This would be my second foray into Ned Vizzini's writing, the first being Be More Chill. What initially drew me into purchasing a copy for myself was the premise of Perry's quest in the alternate world, alongside his ongoing battle with maturity and growing up. I mean, I already know how awkward it is when you're hitting puberty, but when what sounded like a kickbutt epic gamer-style quest gets thrown in the mix, I knew I had to pick it up.

Did I get what I was looking for?

Sadly, no. I ended up reading a story about a fifteen year-old boy whose idea of playing the game Creatures & Caverns is just by creating the characters. (Kinda like playing dress up with Barbies, if you think about it.) If you thought your life was sad, Perry's life is honestly sadder. His older brother's a teenage alcoholic and disturbed faux-rock god, his parents are divorced and are seeing their respective divorce lawyers, and Perry has zilch friends to speak of. When his parents get wind of his role-playing game obsession, they -including the aforementioned lawyers- unanimously agree to send Perry off to camp to be a normal teenager. It is after accidentally hitting, and getting beat up by one of the camp's bullies that Perry sees an actual creature from his game, and is catapulted into an alternate universe, and it is here where Perry learns that he has an actual mission back home, and that is to kiss the most beautiful girl from the camp opposite his, to save the dodgy creatures from the alternate universe he gets transported to by way of a car battery and magic mushrooms.

The best thing about this book would be Perry Eckert's narration. It gave a great insight on the thoughts of pubescent boys, and was actually quite believable. Some of the scenes are honestly quite unexpected; honestly, they're really quite random - so random, in fact, that I can't even determine if it's a good thing or a bad thing. However, I had a hard time thinking of the actual point of the book. I remember one of my college professors addressing those of us in his Filipino literature class, "Maybe there isn't a point. Why must we always look for an objective? Couldn't art just exist for art's sake?" But I don't think he would be referring to the likes of this book. Sure, Perry had a nice, easy transition in the end, but it somehow felt lacking for me. There was no epic quest, and I just really couldn't think of where "Perry realizes that his nerdy childhood has uniquely prepared him to be a great warrior in this world, and maybe even a hero." comes in, which is something that the blurb promises. The scenes were uninspired, and too convenient for the main protagonist to actually spur events to transpire. The contrived humor was off-putting, and oftentimes, Perry would actually make me cringe at how pathetic and hopelessly immature he was coming off as. 

I think I'm just really not part of Vizzini's target audience. I have no idea, however, if this would better appeal to male readers, so if you're into gaming, and ever fancy yourself a little getaway into a fantasy world like Perry's, maybe you'd be the right one to give this book a little whirl.

Rating: