Science Fiction

The Ask and the Answer is the second book of Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking series. In this continuation, we see the original characters Todd and Viola venture farther from home as they try to outrun the lies of their previous lives. This book is a wonderful mix of brilliant, sad, courageous, and painful. As soon as I finished this book, all I wanted to do was pick up the next one. Ness's writing style is unique, and the characters are relatable and real. The events that transpire throughout The Ask and the Answer provoke a wide range of emotions, which makes it engaging. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who has read the first Chaos Walking book, which is called The Knife of Never Letting Go.
Reviewer Grade: 11

Partly due to the success of The Hunger Games , the Young Adult genre swerved into the survival/sci-fi/dystopian genres that also allowed The Maze Runner to have a ready and willing audience. With this being the case, I’d almost say The Maze Runner has more utopian sensibilities since the narrative encourages teamwork for survival, instead of a “winner take all” emphasis presented in The Hunger Games that valued selfish ambitions over communistic altruism. Plus, if you put 50 teenage boys in a box with no adult supervision, I think the logical conclusion would be more along the lines of Lord of the Flies instead of solving a deadly maze.

While the premise was interesting and allowed for a constant and steady pacing of inciting events, I felt there was not enough explanation in this first part of the trilogy, with very few questions being answered by the end and a lot of hand-waving to push the characters forward to a conclusion. In fact, having seen the movie adaptation, I was hoping the book was better suited to explain the ending, but it was equally as confusing. That being said, there were key elements in the book (like the telepathy) that didn’t make it into the movie.

Overall, the few main characters in The Maze Runner were interesting and unique, even if it took some of them two years to even figure out the simplest parts of the maze. Still, fear can be a huge hindrance toward progress, so I guess I understand their predicament. Additionally, despite using a euphemistic system of swears as part of the characters’ unique jargon, I couldn’t help but think that this book would have been a lot more inappropriate for a young adult audience if the actual swear words were used instead.

An interesting premise with engaging characters, I give The Maze Runner 3.5 stars out of 5.

Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment" by James Patterson is about a group of kids (called the Flock for their avian abilities) who were experimented on, but escaped. When one of their own is kidnapped, they go on a mission to get her back. I found the concept of this book interesting, and the characters had a lot of potential, but I feel there was an element missing from the story. Max, the protagonist, didn't seem to develop throughout the book. Nor did her love interest Fang. There were parts of this story that didn't make sense plot-wise either. But, I don't regret reading it
-- it's a fun adventurous story with lots of humor. I'd still recommend it regardless.

Carve the Mark" is by Veronica Roth, author of the Divergent series.
I really liked the Divergent books, but I felt this book wasn't quite as gripping as her previous work. The plot was slow-moving, especially in the beginning. I also found the world confusing, it was difficult to keep track of it all. The characters, I felt, were also a little one-dimensional. It had potential, but I felt it didn't live up to it. I'd recommend reading the Divergent books instead. Grade: 11

The concept is simple: a machine takes your blood and spits out a card with the means of your demise printed on it. In this collection of short stories, a variety of authors explore what this truly means for individuals, as well as society as a whole. Based off an idea by Ryan North (author of “Dinosaur Comics”), this anthology has plenty of different approaches to the concept that a machine could predict how a person will die. However, many of these ideas hit upon the same concepts and social implications, making the whole thought exercise seem redundant by the end of the book.

Part of me felt the idea itself was a little derivative of Death Note, but with a more ambiguous set of constraints. Each of the short stories included in this anthology had some unique twist on the idea, ranging from humor to romance to horror. Still, every author tended to agree: a machine of death would bring about a dystopian future in some form or other. From governments requiring a “death reading” to mitigate any national disasters to a school needing to know how their prospective students will die so they can save face, the real enemies of this idea tended to be the bureaucracies of humanity.

While I honestly enjoyed the stories included in this anthology, they all seemed to suffer from the “a priori problem.” With each story titled with some way to die, you half-expect the story’s main character to end via that method. The intrigue is more in the how and when; thus providing interest to the story despite practically knowing the ending before it even starts. Granted, that’s part of the appeal of the machine: the ambiguity is as freeing as it is constraining.

A morbid set of interesting short stories, I give Machine of Death 4.0 stars out of 5.

As time marches on, predictions of the future made in the past are tested against reality. In 1984, we didn't have George Orwell's dystopian government. In 2001, we didn't have Arthur C. Clarke's interplanetary travel. Sure, these authors did have a few interesting ideas that did come true, eventually. Still, they were writing well before the events in their books would come to pass. Robert J. Sawyer's Flashforward did not have that luxury. Written in 1999, Sawyer only imagines a future set a decade in the future. For those keeping track at home, Flashforward takes place in 2009, with a vision of a future 21 years ahead of that. Since 2009 has come and gone, there were a few things Sawyer got right, but many he could not have predicted.

The crux of this story is similar to that explored by Machine of Death: everyone in the world gets a glimpse of their future in 2030, thus causing everyone to react based on what they saw. Some were encouraged by what they saw, others despondent and suicidal. The people who had negative visions hoped the future could change, especially if their lives were on the line. Many of the "effects" of the look into the future were logical conclusions, which added an amount of interest to the story but with a cheap cop-out to keep from killing off all the characters. With all the different characters and POVs, it was somewhat difficult to follow along each time the
focus changed, since there was nothing to indicate a change of view.

I also appreciated the conversation this book had in regards to science and the many existing theories about the future. While this exploration of science also included the discovery of the Higgs Boson (which didn't happen until 2012), I was continually distracted by the narrator's pronunciation of "CERN," which sounded more like "sairn" instead of how I thought it was pronounced ("sirn"). I did appreciate the narrator's ability to mimic multiple accents, but that one pronunciation threw me.

A recent book about the "future" that gets a few things correct, I give Flashforward 3.5 stars out of 5.

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancy is a dystopian novel set in modern day. It follows the main character Cassie as she survives alone during the alien invasion of planet earth. I read this book in 8th grade and to this day it continues to be one of my favorite takes on the dystopian “genre.” I think what makes this book interesting to read in the fact that the author does not shy away from showing how awful Cassie believes her life is. Instead of focusing on hope and the characters figuring out how they are going to single handedly save the entire human race, Yancy instead makes his characters sarcastic, selfish, angry at the world and just overall very “human”. It makes the book feel less cliche and as realistic as the alien invasion of earth can I guess. For anyone who wants to read a dystopian novel (minus *most* of the cheesy romance and heroics) and I definitely recommend.

Reviewer: Grade 11

I decided to choose the book because it looked like it would tell a great story and it did. I liked the book due to its great lessons inside about the imperfections of our minds, but the greatness of them too. The part I enjoyed most was the journey f the main characters and how they didn't change their personalities and stayed focused on the topic. The part I didn't really enjoy was that the story went kinda slow. The book was pretty predictable, but the lessons and thoughts behind you need to think more about to get, so it was still entertaining to read. It was an amazing book to read and I definitely recommend it.
Reviewer Grade: 10

I’m not sure which is more boring in a book: a plot that doesn’t go anywhere, or a main character who is perfect. Unfortunately, Fire with Fire has both. I’ll first start with my qualms about the plot. This story started way too late, as it didn’t get interesting until halfway through.
Even when it did finally get interesting, it suddenly became bogged down in committee. Seriously? Didn’t we learn anything from the Star Wars prequels?
Adding politics to a story about traveling across space merely makes it tedious. This is also not to mention how heavy and clunky the exposition is, with almost every chapter being filled with information that isn’t important, and the jumps between chapters needing way more explanation.

Secondly, let’s take a look at “Mr. Perfect,” Caine Riordan. Aside from the egregious fact that the POV switched between 1st person and 3rd person within most of the paragraphs of his section (with no italics or indication that we were suddenly in Caine’s head), I felt this character was just the author’s way to show how smart he is. With the expansive repertoire of high-value vocabulary words and a character that always knows what to do all the time and has all the correct answers, I ended up not caring about any of it by the end. And I haven’t even mentioned the blatant and pervasive misogyny either.

Even the rest of the supporting cast was so flat and one-dimensional that I probably couldn’t tell you who they were or what their defining characteristics were (aside from that one mysterious guy who LOVED olives and feta cheese). Most of the time I was reading this book, I kept wondering, “Wait . . . what?” as what seemed to be major plot points were introduced then almost immediately forgotten until hundreds of pages later. I’m not sure how this book managed to get a series tacked on to it, or how it was even nominated for a Nebula Award, but it gives me encouragement that I could write something way better than this.

Antiquated sci-fi tropes in a recently written book, I give Fire with Fire 2.0 stars out of 5.

Certainly well ahead of his time, Robert A. Heinlein remains one of the definitive writers of the science fiction genre, even today. In The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Heinlein covers such topics as artificial intelligence, extraterrestrial colonization, and interplanetary warfare. Even today, most of these subjects are accurately depicted in the narrative, even if some of the technology has advanced past where it was thought to be in 1965. Part of me is almost jealous at Heinlein’s ingenious use of Earth’s gravity well, and I know any attempt I might make to replicate the idea will merely seem derivative in comparison.

As is the case with some of his other works, Heinlein makes many socio-political statements via his writing. His stance on taxes, revolutions, and independent governing bodies is a critical section of the plot in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and I can certainly see the theoretical benefits he puts forth in this context. That being said, his views on polygamy and polyamorous relationships are certainly on display again, with his previous work, Stranger in a Strange Land exploring these themes in greater detail. I can only assume the "free love" culture of the 1960's shaped these opinions.

Overall, the book wasn’t quite what I expected. The initial chapters made me hope the plot would center on the relationships between man and artificial intelligence (AI). If anything, AI is shown to be a powerful tool that can influence society in ways we can’t even begin to comprehend. At the very least, the main character was quite entertaining, if not hard to understand at times with his “accent.” If we do eventually colonize the moon, I can hope we do so peacefully and in a way that doesn’t lead to an uprising of its native inhabitants. After all, I do like living in a Colorado Springs devoid of meteoric bombardment.

A well-thought out sci-fi story decades ahead of its time, I give The Moon is a Harsh Mistress 4.0 stars out of 5.