Book Review: Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Unwind by Neal Shusterman is a book about the future. In this future, at the age of 13 parents can have to choice to "unwind" their kid. Unwinding is when doctors will take all the child's organs and parts away and give them to different kids around the world. The unwound kid will still be able to have some control of the parts when with an other kid, but not all control. There is three different ways that a kid can be unwound. One is that the parent thinks that the child is beyond saving so they will sign papers to have them unwind. Two is that the government thinks that you don't have enough talent to stay in one piece. And three is that you are born to be unwound, this means that you are a tithe, in which the family gives 10% of everything to God, including their kids. The book is about three kids who try to escape the process of being unwound. The main character's names are Conner, Risa, and Lev. Conner's parents thought that he would be happier unwound so they signed the papers. Risa lives in a state house, which means that she lives with the government of that city. Risa is a musician, but the government feels like she doesn't have enough talent to live so they send her to be unwound. Lev; short for Levi, is a tithe and has always been ready to be unwound. But when Conner escapes and saves Risa and Lev, they find themselves running from the whole world. Will they survive with their lives?

Unwind is a very good book. The details are amazing, and you feel like you know the characters. The book switches from different points of views to the other, so you experience all the characters thoughts. There are four books in the series and they are planning to make them into movies in 2016. I enjoyed this book mainly because of the characters. You can picture all of them in your mind and you can imagine the pain they go through. As the story goes on, you really feel like the cops are going to take you away next. All the locations the characters adventure to, are amazing and dangerous, which make you feel like you are next to Conner and Risa. I finished the first book around two weeks ago, and now I'm around halfway done with the second one. The ending of the book makes you want more and makes you want to save the people being unwound. The action scenes are awesome and the villains make you curl your feet. I do have a favorite character, and every time something happens to hurt them, I get mad. Unwind tries to aim for teen readers, but I think that anyone who picks it up, will not be able to put it down.

-Siera    

Book Review: The True Meaning of Smekday

Aliens have invaded Earth and renamed it Smekland.  Wait, no, let's start at the beginning.  Gratuity (Tip for short) Tucci is writing a report on the True Meaning of Smekday, which may or may not be included in a time capsule.  So this story starts with her and when her mother was abducted by aliens.  And then, later, the Boov invade Earth.  All the humans are supposed to be sent to Florida, but Tip decides to drive herself.  There are a variety of problems with this, the biggest two being that 1.) she's eleven years old and 2.) she's supposed to be on a Boov-approved rocketpod, not driving a car across busted highways.  Also, she has her cat (named Pig) and a runaway Boov named J.Lo in tow, which makes things complicated.  Then it turns out that another alien race is planning on invading Earth.  And then it gets weird(er). 

I love this book by Adam Rex.  It is hilarious, wonderful, quirky, and smart.  And it has great illustrations and some very funny cartoon strips drawn by J.Lo the Boov.  There are rumors of a movie in the works, so read this book now before the waiting list starts!

~ Book Ninja

P.S.  If you like Adam Rex, read some more of his stuff here!  It's all a bit different, but funny!

The Madman's Daughter by Megan Shepherd

H.G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau is a classic science fiction tale about the titular doctor who strives to create a superior race of people through horrific experiments that result in half-man, half-beast monstrosities.

The Madman's Daughter by Megan Shepherd continues this chilling story through the perspective of Juliet Moreau, the doctor's daughter. She works as a maid in Victorian London, trying to forget the scandal of her father's experiments. When rumors reach her that her father is still alive, however, she embarks on a journey to the island to discover if he really is continuing to create creatures that are a terrible hybrid of man and animal.

The Madman's Daughter is a creepy horror story full of disturbing moments and shocking twists. Shepherd does a great job building off of Wells' original tale, and creates a love-to-hate villian in Doctor Henri Moreau. If you're sad to see Juliet's story end, never fear; the sequel, Her Dark Curiousity, is going to be released next year.

(Stupendously) Bad Trip

There are some people who are fantasy people. There are some people who are sci-fi people. Then there are people like Platte F. Clark who have decided why not have both? In the same book. At the same time. Which is one reason why "Bad Unicorn" has to be one of my top book picks this year.

Middle school is hard enough when your mom doesn't understand your gaming obsession and you have to watch out for a bully called the Kraken, but then Max Spencer discovers the weird book he's had for years is magic. Like, real magic. And he's the heir to the greatest sorcerer of all, Maximilian Sporazo. It gets even worse when he accidentally transports himself, his friends Dirk and Sarah, and his local gaming store owner Dwight hundreds of years into the future... Meanwhile, a sorcerer in another realm is looking to get a hold of Max and his book. He recruits Princess, the most feared unicorn in the realm, to help him. But how can you track someone who's time traveled? And how exactly does one get back to the right time let alone fight a carnivorous unicorn (in the past AND the future), especially when you've only just discovered you can do magic?

With a bad tempered zombie duck, man-eating unicorns, golf-worshipping monks, more zombies, scary dragons, robot reality TV, and a talking sentient centipede game, "Bad Unicorn" is hysterical and awesome in so many amazing ways. Go read it. Now.

Superhuman Immortals in Space!

Garth Nix's newest book, A Confusion of Princes, is a exhilerating space opera.  The main character, Khemri, is a Prince.  Which is pretty awesome as far as Khemri's concerned, except there's thousands of Princes in the intergalactic empire.  And he just discovered that they're all out to kill each other.  Khemri is going to have to work hard and stay ever-vigilant if he wants to survive.  He's got a lot of learning to do in a very short amount of time.  To make matters more complicated, he's also sent on a secret mission, so now even more people want to kill him, but for different reasons.  On top of all that, he's finding out that there's a lot of secrets and lies in the Empire - and a lot of them have to do with the Princes and their Priests and the Imperial Mind and Khemri himself. 

I want to tell you more because this book is so good, but everything else would be spoilers.  So read it - it's fantastic!

~ Book Ninja

Cyborgs and Humans and Plague, Oh My!

It's the year 2076, and the human race has been decimated by an airborne virus known as RM. Women are mandated to become pregnant as often as possible in the hopes that a baby will be born immune--but it's been ten years and no infant survives more than 56 hours. Teenage medic Kira is convinced that the cure for RM lies with the Partials, a race of engineered cyborgs who were responsible for the release of the virus in the first place. In order to find the answers she wants, however, she has to capture a Partial first.

Half medical thriller, half dystopian, Partials by Dan Wells follows Kira as she tries to unlock the secret to curing the disease that has claimed so many lives around the world. The intrigue deepens when Samm, the Partial that Kira has captured, gives an entirely different perspective on the war that has dragged on for so long between the Partials and the humans.

TIMELINE

Michael Crichton is a very creative author as he writes about science and medicine in great detail. You may be familiar with Jurassic Park, probably his most famous book and the movie by the same name.  His book Timeline includes time travel and adventure during the middle ages which he writes about vividly.  He gives a new spin on time travel or at least different from what I imagined and his portrayal of the Middle Ages is more violent than I had ever envisioned.  But it is a great story that grabs you from the beginning and keeps you engaged.  This whole adventure starts out in northern Arizona. 

Unlike Crichton's Jurassic Park DO NOT bother with the movie - it is not even close!

Ender's Game: Earth is Losing...

After decades of battle against insect-like aliens, we still haven't found a general who can defeat them.We're running out of soldiers, we're running out of spaceships, and we're running out of hope. But maybe, with the right training, one special boy can be molded into a hero.

Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, tells the story of Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, who's only six when he's recruited to Battle School to learn strategies to defeat the aliens. I'm excited to see the movie adaptation next year, but you should definitely read it first, so why not now, before the hype starts and you hear spoilers?

Teen Volunteer Dystopia Picks

Here at Flowing Wells Library, our summer teen volunteers kept busy with an art project based on their favorite dystopian novels and short stories.

The Giver by Lois Lowry was a striking visual choice for the collage. Black and white with poignant bursts of color illustrate a tale of a boy who learns there is much more to life than he has been led to believe. If you like this classic, check out its sequels, too!

Read on for the rest of their picks...

Eve, Terrified of Adam

Okay, I just finished Eve by Anna Carey, and I don't know WHAT to think. It started out like such a happy, idealistic book about the future. Eve was the happiest girl at her compound, accomplished in many languages, subjects, and surrounded by beloved friends. But then, when she was about to give her valedictorian speech and head off to a bright future learning a trade and having a glamorous life in the city, she found out that the future she was looking forward to was a lie.

Edgy Reads

I was going to do a best-of-the-year post, but when I looked back at the teen books I read in 2011, I realized that most had something in common: they were pretty dark and disturbing. Dark content in YA literature got a lot of press this year, but in the end, it's a personal decision. If you're searching for books that push the envelope and give you that unsettled, is-this-really-okay-to-read feeling, give these a shot!

• After by Amy Efaw is the raw, unflinching story of the person behind the headlines:  Devon did something terrible, something so bad she can't even quite remember or believe it, even in her cell in juvie, where she has all the time in the world to reflect.

Start at the beginning...

Steampunk and post-apocalyptic books may have only just starting getting popular but I think Alan Moore proved that heroines with shaved heads are awesome a long time ago. Thankfully Philip Reeve is rocking all three elements with "Fever Crumb,"the prequal to his Mortal Engines Quartet. If you aren't familiar with that series it is basically a post-apocalyptic steampunk rollercoaster of adventure awesomeness. After almost total destruction of the world from nuclear war, cities roll around on giant machines to escape the natural disasters that ensue. While rolling around the cities eat each other. Seriously. Big cities devour tiny cities, bigger cities devour big cites, and so on and so on. At the same time the cities are fighting a rebel group looking to get cities to finally stay put.

When One Book Isn't Enough

Believe it or not, every single one of the favorite teen books in this year's Summer Reading Program was part of a series. This is a great time to be a fan of YA series -- there are so many excellent ones coming out, and the library has a great selection! So if you're going to be bored over winter break, or forced to head off on a holiday trip, why not grab a series or three to keep you entertained?

If you loved Harry Potter, give Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain a try! Think Harry Potter's life started out rough? Imagine if he'd been a lowly Assistant Pig-Keeper, who got all muddled up in magic, battles, royalty, and epic quests! Start with The Book of Three.

Saturn Apartments

Science fiction writers don't seem to be very optimistic. I'm not judging, I'm just saying. The future is always more of the same human mistakes, just with spacesuits. And yet we keep reading it. It must be because mistakes are more interesting than perfection. (There, I've just handed you the perfect excuse the next time you mess up on something.) In Saturn Apartments , Hisae Iwaoko has written a science fiction manga filled with characters that could live next door to you, living with the same small joys and problems as we do now.

Welcome to the Future. It Stinks.

Awhile back, the New York Times ran an article about the "new" trend in YA fiction, novels set in a grim and terrible near future, otherwise known as dystopias. I'm sure they're good at any number of things, but the Times is a little late to the game on this one. In the past few years, dystopian fiction for teens has grown from a few books into darn near its own subgenre. Here, have a few of my favorites.

Delirium by Lauren Oliver - Ever had a bad breakup and wished you could just remove all those awful feelings forever? In Lena's world, they have. Everyone over 18 has been surgically relieved of their ability to love, and doesn't that make life just peachy? Strangely enough, no. (Psst! The library owns it in e-book format as well!)