aliens

Armada

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by Ernest Cline
First sentence: “I was staring out the classroom window and daydreaming of adventure when I spotted the flying saucer.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: July 14, 2015
Review copy pilfered off the ARC shelves at my place of employment.
Content: There’s a lot of swearing, of all sorts. If you have a problem with that, then you probably shouldn’t be reading this. It’ll be in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of the bookstore.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite movies to quote was The Last Starfighter. (I know: there’s no accounting for taste.) I swear my brothers and I watched it over and over again the summer of 1985 or 1986) and there were lines that incorporated themselves into our everyday lingo (“I’ve always wanted to fight a desperate battle against incredible odds.”). But, when I tried to show it to my kids, I cringed: it’s a pretty bad movie.

So, when I started Armada by Ernest Cline, I cringed: he’s pretty much riffing off the idea behind Last Starfighter (and Ender’s Game): video games, believe it or not, have been training for the impending alien invasion, and since the mid-1970s (it’s set in 2017, as far as I could figure), the top players of the game Armada have been recruited to serve as the Earth’s Defense.

Zack Lightman is one of those players. He’s been obsessed with games, and specifically Armada, since was was old enough to realize that his father — who died when Zack was barely one — was a gamer and Zack wanted to emulate him. Zack’s crawled up the ranks in Armada, until he’s the 6th highest ranked player in the world. And then: he sees a spaceship, one straight from Armada. That’s when his life gets really weird.

Like Ready Player One, this one has a litmus test. If you like/get the following passage, this book is probably for you:

In that moment, I felt like Luke Skywalker surveying a hanger full of A-, Y-, and X-Wing Fighters just before the Battle of Yavin. Or Captain Apollo, climbing into the cockpit of his Viper on the Galactica‘s flight deck. Ender Wigging arriving at Battle School. Or Alex Rogan, clutching his Star League uniform, staring wide-eyed at a hanger full of Gunstars.

I won’t give away too much more of the plot except to say this:  it took a while to get into it, but I was glad I kept with it. I liked the direction that Cline took it in the end.  A good read.

Magonia

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by Maria Dahvana Headley
First sentence: “I breathe in.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There’s a bunch of swearing, including several f-bombs. It’s in the Teen section (grades 9+) but I wouldn’t be adverse to giving it to an 8th grader as long as they knew about the language going in.

Aza Ray has spent the nearly sixteen years of her life struggling to breathe. It’s a miracle she’s even lived this long, since she’s got a weird disease (named after her, unfortunately) that basically renders her allergic to air. She’s managed okay, with the help of her family, and her BFF, Jason. But, now, on the eve of her 16th birthday, things are getting weird. Jason maybe wants to be more than BFFs. It’s getting harder and harder to breathe. And weirdest of all? She’s seeing ships in the sky.

There are spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned. Because, for better or for worse, this is about to get REALLY trippy.

See: Aza Ray is seeing ships in the sky because there’s a country of bird people up there, called Magonia. And Aza is one of them. (Which is, duh, why she’s having trouble breathing regular earth air.) She was kidnapped as a baby and placed in a human home; whether it’s to punish her mother (according to her mother) or to save her (according to the bird-person who kidnapped her) remains to be seen. It’s really because Aza has this super-singing power that will either save Magonia or destroy the world. Or both. The problem is that she just can’t give up her human life (even though she DIED), and she just can’t quite kill off the humans.

I didn’t really know what to expect going into this, except that there’s a bit quote from Neil Gaiman on the cover and that everyone (at least on Edelweiss) is loving it. I completely — pun intended — missed the boat on this one. Seriously. I thought the premise was at best a drug-induced fantasy and at worst stupid. I thought the conversation was trying to hard to be John Green-esque and it sounded forced. I thought the plot was lame, even though it wrapped up nicely, and that the romance between Jason and Aza was forced. And even though I love fantasy, this just was NOT my thing.

But, as I said: it’s getting tons of love, so that may just be me not getting it.

Audiobook: Smek for President

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by Adam Rex
Read by Bahni Turpin
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: Nothing. Nada. Some fake swearing (“pardon my language”). The audio version is probably good for kids who have an attention span longer than 20 seconds; the book is in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

I loved the audiobook of The True Meaning of Smekday, so when I heard that Bahni Turpin was doing the sequel, I KNEW that was how I needed to experience this book. And I was right. Turpin is perfect for this. Seriously.

The story picks up a year and a half after Gratuity “Tip” Tucci and J. Lo save the world. The Boov have moved to New Boovworld, on one of Saturn’s moons. J. Lo and Tip are hanging on Earth, trying to get used to having Tip’s mom around. And, for J. Lo, trying to to fit in. They need a break, and so J. Lo soups up their car, Slushious, and they head off-world to check out the new Boov homeland. Since they saved the world, they’ll be welcomed as heroes, right?

Well, no.

Things don’t go quite like they planned. J. Lo is named Public Enemy Number One, and thrown into jail. Tip repeatedly avoids being captured, but only just barely. Which sends her on an adventure through New Boovworld. She meets and befriends a delightful flying billboard, whom she names Bill (of course), as well as several other Boov (and one human; Dan Landry’s son), in her attempts to free J. Lo and set everything right. There’s a lot of action, tons of humor, and a bit of time travel in the mix.

But what really made the book was Turpin. I adore her reading style, and it’s perfect for Adam Rex’s humor. I was chortling, guffawing on occasion, and I was thoroughly charmed by all the Boov voices (with their distinctive quirks). I was pleased to see that the Chief was back (if only in Tip’s imagination), as well as other favorite characters from the first book. I loved how Rex imagined New Boovworld. And it was satisfying (as a parent) to see that there were real consequences for Tip’s actions.

In short: I adored it.

Red Queen

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by Victoria Aveyard
First sentence: “I hate First Friday.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy brought back from the ABA Winter Institute for me by a co-worker.
Content: There’s a lot — a LOT — of violence, some of it gruesome. It’s in the teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore, and I’m going to leave it there, but I wouldn’t be adverse to giving it to a kid who could stomach Maze Runner or The Hunger Games.

This one is getting All the Buzz (at least in the bookselling circles). It’s got a great cover (seriously), and it’s another one of those vaguely apocalyptic books and so I think publishers are expecting it to do Great Things. I don’t know if that raised my expectations — it is a debut novel, so I don’t know how high they could have been — but this fell flat for me.

Mare Barrow is a Red. Which means, in this world (it was never clear if it’s Earth or a different world entirely), that she’s considered low. Base. A slave. Because her blood bleeds red. See, in this world, the people who have all the power are the ones whose blood is Silver (perhaps because they were aliens that invaded the planet hundreds of years ago? It was never clear.) and because they have powers that give them an advantage over those low Reds. Mare figures she’s going to spend her short life stealing to get by until she gets conscripted into the war that’s been going on for a hundred years, in which she will die.

And then her life changes: she meets Cal, a Silver, who gets her a job in the palace, and then during the Queenstrial (in which Silvers from the noble houses compete to become the prince’s bride), she discovers (quite by accident) that she has powers, like a Silver.

All this sets in motion political intrigue, betrayal, and a lot of fighting that will ultimately be Mare’s downfall. Maybe.

The plot doesn’t sound half bad: there’s a bit of a forced love triangle, and a twist at the end that wasn’t entirely unexpected. But the thing that kept pulling me out of the book was two simple words: smirk and sneer. EVERYONE smirked. EVERYONE sneered. And after the first 15 times, I noticed every time someone did. Then after the next 30, I lost patience with the book and skipped to the end. I did go back and fill in the middle, just to see how we got to the end, but I ended up loathing the book for two simple words. I couldn’t get past it. That’s just lazy writing and lazy editing (and the book would have been 20 pages shorter if they were all deleted). Sure, there were some interesting ideas about class and race and bias, but I couldn’t rise above the writing level to appreciate them.

Definitely for someone less picky than me.

The Infinite Sea

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by Rick Yancey
First sentence: “There would be no harvest.”
Support the local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: The 5th Wave
Content: It’s violent and intense; Yancey pulls no punches. There’s also a lot of (understandable) swearing, including f-bombs. It’s in the Teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore, but I’m thinking I might need to put a couple in our science fiction/fantasy section.

Spoilers for 5th Wave ahead. You’ve been warned.

I don’t even know where to begin with this. The first four waves of the alien invasion have happened, and the fifth wave is coming. Cassie and the rag-tag group of kids (including her little brother) believe they know what that is and with the help of the alien/human hybrid Evan Walker, they believe they can fight it.

And they are wrong.

I won’t go into the plot much here; it’s better if you just read it. I didn’t re-read 5th Wave first, and thankfully, Yancey dropped enough reminders throughout that I basically remembered what was going on. (I love it when authors do that, as opposed to a blanket summary up front.) What really impressed me, though was that Yancey spares nothing and no one. Everyone is suspect, everyone is vulnerable. Nothing is safe.

It’s intense, I can tell you that. I devoured it in one sitting because I HAD to know what was going to happen, what everything meant. And it’s deliciously complex: you peel back one layer and there are three more waiting for you. Just when you think you know someone — even Vosch, the Big Bad Guy — things are revealed that make you realize you know nothing. And in the best way. Yancy’s writing compelled me onward, made me want to know more. It’s the best of post-apocalyptic fiction: things are going completely, utterly wrong, and yet you can’t help but hope for the best. He does balance some positive things with the horrors; he hasn’t killed off Cassie’s younger brother (yet) and there is some humor along the way. But mostly, it’s an intense emotional roller coaster.

And I say that with all the love in my heart.

SO good.

Dangerous

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by Shannon Hale
First sentence: “The warehouse was coffin dark.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: March 4, 2014
Review copy given to me by our publishing rep.
Content: There’s some intense action, and a few characters die. But there’s no language (its all “bleeped” out), and no sex. I think it belongs in the YA section at the store (grades 6-8) but I’d give it to curious younger kids.

Maisie Brown has lived a quiet life. She has scientist (read: introverted) parents and is happily homeschooled in her community just outside of Salt Lake City. But she has a secret dream: she wants to be an astronaut. She doesn’t think this will happen: she’s missing one of her arms, after all. But her middle name is Danger (literally) and when she gets an opportunity to enter a contest to win a week at a space camp in Houston, she goes for it.

And gets in.

She arrives at the camp — run by billionaire genius (not playboy) Bonnie Howell, who built the first elevator into space — not knowing that this week will change her life. That she’ll meet the Boy of her Dreams (who’s more than a bit of a jerk). That she’ll meet friends and watch them die. That she’ll become truly Dangerous.

In many ways, this was a breath of fresh air. One gets bogged down in the current trends in young adult/teen literature (read: paranormal or dystopian/post-apocalyptic) and to have something that is honestly science fiction with high tech gadgets, spaceships, and alien lifeforms. With honest-to-goodness average people doing techy, fun, science-based things. It was wonderful. And I really enjoyed Maisie as a character. She’s Latina (her mother’s from Paraguay), she’s smart, she’s confident, she’s disabled and she doesn’t let it get in her way. (In fact, at one point, she makes herself a pretty cool robotic arm.) And Hale does a good job incorporating most of the various elements she throws at us. The “fireteam” is a hodgepodge mix of races and cultures, but none of them seem like stereotypes (to me) and there ends up being a reason for it in the end. And although the love triangle was pretty silly (I think Hale makes it clear that it’s supposed to be silly), I did like that the love interest wasn’t love at first sight.

I did have some quibbles: mostly (and I understand why she did this) that she created a character who swears a lot, but then “bleeped” out all of the swear words. Literally. It pulled me out of the story, every single time. And while I loved that the parents were good people and good parents, they were a bit… corny. Which (again) pulled me out from enjoying story.

But, even with the quibbles, Hale does know how to spin a tale. And I was kept guessing with whom to trust and the ultimate motives. And a Latina superhero girl who kicks butt and is awesome and yet vulnerable without being irritating is, well, awesome.