artsy musings of a bibliophile

science fiction

Review: Avalon by Mindee Arnett

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MAA

ABOUT THE BOOK

Avalon by Mindee Arnett
young adult science fiction published by Balzer + Bray on January 21st, 2014
first book in Avalon duology

Of the various star systems that make up the Confederation, most lie thousands of light-years from First Earth-and out here, no one is free. The agencies that govern the Confederation are as corrupt as the crime bosses who patrol it, and power is held by anyone with enough greed and ruthlessness to claim it. That power is derived from one thing: metatech, the devices that allow people to travel great distances faster than the speed of light.

Jeth Seagrave and his crew of teenage mercenaries have survived in this world by stealing unsecured metatech, and they’re damn good at it. Jeth doesn’t care about the politics or the law; all he cares about is earning enough money to buy back his parents’ ship, Avalon, from his crime-boss employer and getting himself and his sister, Lizzie, the heck out of Dodge. But when Jeth finds himself in possession of information that both the crime bosses and the government are willing to kill for, he is going to have to ask himself how far he’ll go to get the freedom he’s wanted for so long.

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2015 YA Sci-Fi to Look Forward to

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It’s always fun to see what sci-fi trends are popular in a certain year. In 2013, it was mainly about time travel with popular releases like Cristin Terrill’s All Our Yesterdays, Kasie West’s Pivot Point, and Lauren Miller’s Parallel and a comeback of dystopia with Rick Yancey’s The 5th Wave, and Alexandra Bracken’s continuation of The Darkest Minds series with Never Fade and Amy Tintera’s Reboot.

In 2014, YA sci-fi releases had varying degrees of success, some were hyped too much others not at all and most involved a group working towards a common goal. Duology starters like Mindee Arnett’s Avalon and Claudia Gabel and Cheryl Klam’s Elusion failed to impress many readers while, Sophie Jordan’s Uninvited fast-paced story kept us hooked and Melissa Landers’ Alienated slowly build up to its finale. Others like Marissa Meyer’s Cress, Erika O’Rourke’s Dissonance and Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner’s This Shattered World have been included in the highly anticipated lists of many.

What does 2015 have in store for all of us? I compiled a list of top sci-fi to look out for next year.


Sci-Fi Series Starters

Series starters are roughly mentioned according to their release dates. I just hope the ones without any don’t get pushed back to 2016 because hello, awesome book blurbs!

Seeker by Arwen Elys Dayton – More fantasy than sci-fi, Seeker has already been optioned by Columbia Pictures. Seeker follows a female assassin who travels the globe from Scotland to Hong Kong. I expect great things.
A Darker Shade of Magic by V. E. Schwab – This is much more of sci-fi fantasy with magic, parallel worlds and time travel and a protagonist named Kell who’s a smuggler. Hello, new series with a treacherous main character, I think I’m going to love you seeing as the 150-page preview blew my mind.

Dove Arising by Karen Bao -Initially, this book had an awesome cover and I wanted to read it mainly because of that. Sadly, they changed it

The Cage by Megan Shepard – A half dozen teenagers trapped in a human zoo which is controlled by an otherworldly race known as Kindred.

The Leveller by Julia Durango – Fall into a brand new series about Nixy whose job is to be a bounty-hunter with a twist. Dragging kids from virtual reality back into real life should be easy enough but not when the game’s billionaire developer’s son, Wyn, goes missing.

After the Red Rain by Barry Lyga, Rob DeFranco and Peter Facinelli – This is probably going to be a series and from the intel I’ve gathered, it’s supposed to be a huge dystopian hit. I get Barry Lyga but co-authoring are a director and Carlisle from Twilight? Do I want to read this? From what we do know about After the Red Rain, it’s that the protagonist is a boy name Rose who lives in a world that’s environmentally collapsing and discovers he has inhuman powers. Pretty standard dystopia however, I will admit that anything with environmental in it gets me every time.

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff – There’s so much hype regarding Illuminae and for once, I think it’s well-deserved because have you read These Broken Stars and Stormdancer? Illuminae follows a hacker and her ex-boyfriend on a fleet who team up to uncover the the truth behind the plague ravaging it.

The Outliers by Kimberly McCreight – Already optioned by Lionsgate, The Outliers includes a psychological weapon called EQ Transference and the group which calls itself the Outliers and is set in a utopian world.

Passenger by Alexadra Bracken – The news about Bracken’s new series came at the right time as her highly acclaimed The Darkest Minds series came to an end this year. Passenger follows a modern teen’s accidental discovery of her ability to time-travel and involves a treasure hunt. Fun times ahead.

Futuristic Stand Alones

Everyone likes a standalone now and then and good stand alones are getting increasingly hard to find. Hopefully that won’t be the case next year.

The Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick – Spanning from seventeenth century to 1920s and ending in a spaceship voyage to another another world, The Ghosts of Heaven promises a lot of things. The fact that there aren’t many historical sci-fi in the young adult genre makes it all that more enticing to look forward to.
The Glass Arrow by Kristen Simmons – A sci-fi dystopia which I thought was going to be a series but apparently it’s not? The Glass Arrow takes place in a world where women are auctioned off to the highest bidder and must run to survive.
The Memory Key by Liana Lu – Lora Mint lost her mother five years ago and now she’d have lost her memories due to the Vergets disease, a viral form of Alzheimer’s, if not for the memory key. But when her it goes haywire, Lora remembers a moment that puts everything into question. Lu’s debut aims to question the significance and consequences attached with out ever-increasing need for technology.

Duplicity by N. K. Traver – Duplicity has hacking plastered all over it. It’s a digital hell for Brandon when his reflection starts moving with a mind of its own. Now that’s scary and exciting as hell!

Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley – Despite being primarily fantasy, Magonia has sci-fi elements as it takes place in a land of trading ships. With a gorgeous cover and a promising story, Magonia is set to enchant its readers.
5 to 1 by Holly Badger – Another futuristic The Handmaiden’s Tale-esque story where the ratio of girls to boys is 5 to 1. In a twist, the women decide to institute a series of tests for the boys to win wives instead of marrying them of to the highest bidders. Girl power, yo.

Illusionarium by Heather Dixon – Illusionarium follows an apprentice scientist who’s desperate to save his family. There are parallel worlds and humor and who doesn’t want to read a book like this.
Tracked by Jenny Martin – Tracked introduces rally racing in the world of science fiction. But really, what more do you really need when there are fast cars involved? The cover could’ve been better, though.

Armada by Ernest Cline – If you haven’t read Ready Player One yet, now’s the time to do it. The highly anticipated sophomore novel is releasing four years after Cline’s groundbreaking debut. Armada introduces us to Zack Lightman who discovers that the videogame he is so obsessed with is real and that Earth needs his help to defend itself from a possible alien invasion. I want.

The Good Ol’ Sequels

I thought about not including this category but hello, it just means that we all get to get excited about these all over again heee. Here goes.

Fairest and Winter by Marissa Meyer – The fact that there will be two Marissa Meyer books releasing next year makes it worth the wait. First we get Queen Levana’s story in January which sets the scene for Winter releasing in November 2015. Excite, much? Hell. Yes.

Firefight by Brandon Sanderson – The sequel to Steelheart got pushed back to January 2015 from its initial release date of November 20th, 2014. The good news is that the early reviews suggest it’s a classic Sanderson awesomeness.
Unleashed by Sophie Jordan – The action-packed duology finale to Uninvited finds Davy on the run from government agents. What will her fate be?
Unchanged by Jessica Brody – Unchanged promises to reveal the the reality of Diotech along with secrets, and enemies unheard of before.
End of Days by Susan Ee – If you haven’t read Angelfall and World After, you fail at life. End of Days is an I-just-know-it’s-going-to-be-epic finale to Penryn’s story and that’s all we really know. Here’s to more from the story in Raffe’s point of view maybe?
More series continuations and finales to look forward to are Aimee Carter’s The Blackcoat Rebellion’s third installation titled Queen, Lindsay Cummings The Death Code, Lydia Kang’s Catalyst, Erin Bowman’s Forged, Anna Jarzeb’s Tether, Mindee Arnett’s Polaris, Claudia Gabel and Cheryl Klam’s Etherworld, and Jennifer Rush’s Reborn.
What are you looking forward to in 2015 (which is only a month away eep)?

Review: The Murder Complex by Lindsay Cummings

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LCTMC

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Murder Complex by Lindsay Cummings
young adult science fiction dystopia published by Greenwillow Books on June 10th, 2014
first book in The Murder Complex series

An action-packed, blood-soaked, futuristic debut thriller set in a world where the murder rate is higher than the birthrate. For fans of Moira Young’s Dust Lands series, La Femme Nikita, and the movie Hanna.

Meadow Woodson, a fifteen-year-old girl who has been trained by her father to fight, to kill, and to survive in any situation, lives with her family on a houseboat in Florida. The state is controlled by The Murder Complex, an organization that tracks the population with precision.

The plot starts to thicken when Meadow meets Zephyr James, who is—although he doesn’t know it—one of the MC’s programmed assassins. Is their meeting a coincidence? Destiny? Or part of a terrifying strategy? And will Zephyr keep Meadow from discovering the haunting truth about her family?

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Review: The Taking by Kimberly Derting

by

KDTT

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Taking by Kimberly Derting
young adult contemporary science fiction published by HarperTeen on April 29th, 2014
first book in The Taking series

A flash of white light . . . and then . . . nothing. 

When sixteen-year-old Kyra Agnew wakes up behind a Dumpster at the Gas ’n’ Sip, she has no memory of how she got there. With a terrible headache and a major case of déjà vu, she heads home only to discover that five years have passed . . . yet she hasn’t aged a day.

Everything else about Kyra’s old life is different. Her parents are divorced, her boyfriend, Austin, is in college and dating her best friend, and her dad has changed from an uptight neat-freak to a drunken conspiracy theorist who blames her five-year disappearance on little green men.

Confused and lost, Kyra isn’t sure how to move forward unless she uncovers the truth. With Austin gone, she turns to Tyler, Austin’s annoying kid brother, who is now seventeen and who she has a sudden undeniable attraction to. As Tyler and Kyra retrace her steps from the fateful night of her disappearance, they discover strange phenomena that no one can explain, and they begin to wonder if Kyra’s father is not as crazy as he seems. There are others like her who have been taken . . . and returned. Kyra races to find an explanation and reclaim the life she once had, but what if the life she wants back is not her own?

THE RATING

 

THE REVIEW

The Taking is an engaging read but only if you can get past the falling-for-my-ex-boyfriend’s-little-brother part. I couldn’t get past it and so, I’m really the only to blame for wanting to read The Taking. I read the summary, I knew she was going to fall for Tyler AKA the little brother but, I guess I just didn’t pay attention. Also, it kind of reminded me of Jacob imprinting on Renesmee and not in a good way (spoiler alert: there’s no good way).

What makes it so creepy is the fact that, for Kyra, it only has been less than a day since she was 16 and forever in love with Austin before she disappeared. For everyone else in her life, it’s been 5 years since Kyra disappeared and they’ve tried to overcome her loss and eventually moved on, because that’s life. However, for Kyra, that’s unfair because she was pretty much having the time of her life at 16 and now everything is a mess. Then there’s the mystery of what actually happened to her.

Much of the first part of the book is slow because it’s all about how Kyra feels alienated (no pun intended) from her parents and that is true. She does feel that way and no one around her seems to understand this except Tyler. So, she naturally gravitates toward him and immediately starts having all these feelings for him. Tyler, on the other hand, seems like has been waiting for something like this to happen ’cause he had a crush on her and now has a way of actually showing it which ew. I did like all those chalk drawings he did for her though, but that’s about it.

Kyra could care less about why she hasn’t aged and what happened to her which really made me want to shake her because man, why are you so disinterested in your own disappearance? Her father has all these theories about what happened to her and when he mentions it to her, she freaks out on him. Really freaks out. Her mother is another issue because she really has a hard time connecting with Kyra after so many years. Understandably, Kya is angry with her but thinking ‘she’d squeezed out her new kid’ about your mother? Not cool.

What finally pushes Kyra to investigate her disappearance is another character’s approach when he basically saves her life by warning her on time. I still don’t know how I feel about the whole alien abduction part of the story and the ending was, in a word, predictable. For the plot to work, that had to happen. It finally clicked, though, the reason why Kyra fell so fast for Tyler. Yet I just feel like the The Taking was planned in a way that it works for the story but not the characters themselves and that’s just disappointing.

THE QUOTES

‘Sometimes those few seconds of hope were worth the crash back to reality.’