Cinder by Marissa Meyer // Reviews

This is a fairy tale retelling of Cinderella, where Cinder is a cyborg and works as a mechanic in the future New Beijing.

Genre: Dystopian, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, YA

Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

Publication Date: January 3, 2012

387 pages, paperback

series: #1 in the Lunar Chronicles

Synopsis: Goodreads

And this is yet another re-read! I have read Cinder in May 2014 and I loved it; my first review can be found here. I didn’t have the sequel, so that’s why I didn’t continue on with this series. Later that year I got Scarlet and still didn’t manage to read it. Now that I definitely want to continue with this series, I wanted to re-read it and I cannot believe I didn’t pick up Scarlet as soon as I have turned the last page of Cinder.

I am a big fan of fairy tales. When I was a little kid, my mother would read me fairy tales as bedtime stories. As soon as I learned how to read, I read fairy tales myself. I still enjoy fairy tales. And as soon as I heard about this fairy tale retelling I knew I had to read it (in this case: re-read it).

New Beijing fascinated me to no end. Although there wasn’t much backstory to how the world became like this, which I thought was a pity (but hopefully there will be more to it in the sequels), it was still a very interesting world the people lived in. The fourth World War is 126 years in the past, the people live in this world, where there is so much technical progress: androids, netscreens, hovercrafts, cyborgs. With this technological progress there is still an incurable disease, a plague that kills people within days.

Cinder is a seventeen-year-old girl who works as a mechanic on the market to fix netscreens, droids and other technical knick-knacks. She is part cyborg, but that’s not something she tells the people around her. She is ashamed of it because her stepmother and her stepsister are making her feel worthless. She has to do all of the technical repairs at the house as well as work in the market; not that she ever got a thank you or money for her work.
I loved Cinder and her cyborg parts. I just couldn’t understand how she didn’t think of herself as a superhuman, but a sub-human.

Prince Kai is the son of the emperor, who has also fallen ill with the plague. He knows that soon it will be his turn to rule the Eastern Commonwealth. He isn’t prepared for this at all and doesn’t want this responsibility. He feels too young for it, but he definitely wants the best for his people.
I liked Kai despite some things at the end of the book that he did. But as this is not yet resolved, I want to continue with the story and see what I think about him in the sequel.

Iko was the best android-friend that Cinder had. She had too much opinions for her own good, but that’s what made her so hilarious and likeable. I enjoyed how she fangirled about Prince Kai and how she wanted to go to the ball with the rest of the family. It was just way too funny.

Then there’s also the Lunars and Queen Levana. I couldn’t stand her from the beginning, but as a villain she definitely was a great character.
The Lunars are people who live on the moon and have established a superhuman power after generations have lived there. They have this glamour that can manipulate people to think and see and do everything the Lunars want them to do, which is quite scary.

I loved the technical aspects of the story as well as the political and scientific story line. It blended all very well together and I’m excited to see more of the above mentioned characters as well as the new characters and how each story will intertwine together.

The writing was smooth. Easy to follow and fast-paced. I loved how I had to read, read, read until I either had to really go to sleep or go to work. This was a rollercoaster of a story. Reading this for a second time didn’t make me want to slow down, I wanted to know what would happen next, although I still knew the main points of the story. It was a great start to a series and I really, really need to get on with the story.

Angelfall by Susan Ee // Reviews

Penryn’s little sister gets kidnapped by angels and she has to find and save her.

Genre: Dystopian, Fantasy, Paranormal, Post-Apocalyptic, Sci-Fi, YA

Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton

Publication Date: January 1, 2011

326 pages, paperback

series: #1 in the Penryn & the End of Days trilogy

Synopsis: Goodreads

I bought this book almost exactly one year ago before I finally read it and I’m a bit mad at myself because it took me so long to read this book. On the other hand the third book has now come out and I don’t have to wait ages to complete this trilogy (considered I will be reading the sequels soon).

Wow. Just wow. This story was so fast-paced and intriguing, I couldn’t put it down. I loved everything about it!

The world-building was amazing. Just weeks before the story begins the world has been as it is right now. Then the angels came and everything has gone haywire. These angels are not as friendly as one might think. They are rather vicious and hate the human race. The more I read about these angels, the more I wanted to know about the story behind every mentioned angel. It was all so interesting and thought trough. It seemed like Ee had done a lot of research on angels and archangels, which I admired.
This world was, after only a few weeks of chaos, destroyed by the angels as well as the surviving humans. The humans have divided themselves into different gangs and the stronger ones were the ones to survive.

Penryn is a seventeen-year-old girl, who has to care for her sister Paige who is tied to a wheelchair as well as for her mentally ill mother. She feels trapped in her role as the protector and provider for her family. She wants to live a normal carefree teenage life. But since they live in the apocalypse, Penryn has no choice but to do the best she can to be there for her family.
I loved Penryn’s character. Although she wanted to break free from the responsibility that tied her to her family, she did what she had to do. She had also experience in self-defense and was a smart girl, who knew what things to look for to keep her family safe.
As her sister gets kidnapped, she immediately goes searching for her, she doesn’t even hesitates because her sister is who she loves the most and she has to find and safe her, no matter what. I loved her conviction and her loyalties as well as her being quite a kick-ass character.

Raffe is the broody fallen angel who loses his wings (or rather he gets them ripped from his shoulders) and tries to get them back on him as soon as possible. I really enjoyed his character. He was interesting in the aspects of angels, but he also cared for Penryn, although angels and humans hate each other.
Raffe was somewhat mysterious. Neither I nor Penryn would know what he planned to do next or what he may be thinking. It was difficult to see through him.

What amazed me was that in this story we deal with Penryn’s mother who is mentally ill. With the post-apocalyptic scenario, there isn’t much of the medication left that she needed. So Penryn is left with her mother sometimes in a dark place with her demons and others were she seems to be okay for the moment.
I really liked that this type of problem was taken into focus as the post-apocalyptic stories I read so far only dealt with mentally and physically healthy people.

The writing was beautiful. There were a lot of beautiful descriptions and although the story was fast-paced, I had to re-read some lines, passages or even pages to think about the words. Really beautiful and highly enjoyable.

In the last fifty pages or so a lot of things happened that were partly gruesome that I was shocked by it simply because I didn’t expect such an outcome out of a few situations. The shock of these revelations propelled me to read faster and read until I was done. Although these horrifying things that happened were shocking, they were like a car crash. I had to read and I had to know what the outcome of it was. This was, in my opinion, brilliantly done.

I am so happy to have finally read this book and I cannot wait to read more of this story in World After.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury // Reviews

A fireman in the modern world starts to question his function in society as well as his life and his perceived happiness.

Genre: Classic, Dystopian, Sci-Fi

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Publication Date: 1953

158 pages, paperback

series: –

Synopsis: Goodreads

Guy Montag is a fireman. But not a fireman in the sense of how we picture firemen nowadays: extinguish fires, save kittens from trees, etc. No, firemen in this dystopian novel are there to burn outlawed books. Firemen are heroes, but not because they save lives. They burn books. Books that have been deemed to have ideas that could be dangerous. So they get burned.

Montag is satisfied with his life as a fireman. Until he meets a young girl, his neighbour, and starts to question his beliefs and his way of life. He suddenly notices how empty he feels and that he needs to do something against it. I really enjoyed the inner conflict that Montag has. It shows his vulnerability quite well.

This world that Bradbury describes is believable and scary at the same time. There is some description how the world came to be this way and it didn’t seem far off to what could happen in our world. These are, in my opinion, the most compelling and interesting dystopian world buildings: if it is so real it could happen in the real world in the next few years.

The characters were quite frankly odd. I didn’t connect with any of them. They seemed overall too abstract for my liking. But the character that I really enjoyed reading about was Montag’s supervisor, Beatty. He was the antagonist of the story and I felt with Montag, when he was afraid of him; when Montag feared Beatty’s consequences. I thought that his character was really well done: complex and manipulative and definitely scary.

The writing was great. Very descriptive, beautiful and for a classic easy to get into. I will consider picking up something else by this author.

Overall, the message of censorship, suppression and the power/danger of knowledge was visualized in a great way. Although I didn’t connect with Montag, I understood how trapped he felt and how he wanted to escape.

The open ending was unexpected, but I highly enjoyed it. It leaves the reader to think what could happen next and in this case it fits perfectly with the whole story. I highly enjoyed it.

Mind Games by Teri Terry // Reviews

Luna lives in world where everyone practically lives in a virtual world. She is a Refuser, but there’s more to it than just teenage rebellion.

I received this e-book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. My opinion is in no way biased.

Genre: Dystopian, Sci-Fi, Young Adult

Publisher: Hachette Children’s Books

Publication Date: March 5, 2015

448 pages, e-book

series: –

Synopsis: Goodreads

This book reminded me a bit of Ready Player One, especially how the virtual world had taken over the real one.

When I requested this book, I was really interested in it. But then, after I received it, I didn’t even remember what the book was about and I never felt like reading it. That’s something I really regret because this reading experience was so amazing!

Luna lives in a world where everyone has access to a virtual world. The possibilities in this virtual realm seem infinite: fun and entertainment, jobs, education. Almost everything is done in this virtual world.
Luna cannot access this world because of two things that she keeps hidden from everyone around her. So that she can stay safe.
I loved Luna’s character. She didn’t give in to peer pressure, she was a character who stood up for herself, but who also sometimes felt like she was powerless to society, to her parents, to authority. Her character simply felt real and authentic.

There’s this test where everyone, who has fairly good grades, is invited to. The test decides what kind of job the kids will do after graduating from school. Luna wasn’t expecting an invitation. She wasn’t bad at school, but she wasn’t the top of the class, either.
The entire testing environment and the test itself were vivid and exciting. I wanted to know why they chose this or that kind of test and how that determined their future careers.

Then there’s Gecko, a boy she meets at the testing facility and who brings turmoil into Luna’s life. He’s convinced that the government’s/corporation’s actions were not for society’s good, but rather for profit and that this massive corporation is more dangerous than anybody thinks.
Gecko was a fun and intelligent character. I liked him with Luna, although the romance aspect was very subtle. I would have liked to see more of it, although I do understand why the situation wasn’t suitable for a romance or the lack of it.

The whole world building was fascinating and interesting, I couldn’t stop imagining how this was not very far from reality and how something that might have started out good, turned out to be more bad than anyone could have possibly thought.
The virtual world, the tests, the government; everything was fascinating although frightening at some point.

I loved the writing. It was fluent and the story was fast-paced. I couldn’t get enough of it. Every time I put this book down I thought constantly about it until I picked it up again. I simply wanted to know what would happen next.

There were a few scenes at the end that I did not see coming. They were gruesome and scary and those scenes definitely threw me off. I wasn’t expecting the big reveal to be so…disturbing. It was not absurd, it was completely cohesive. I just wouldn’t have thought that this was what was going on. I am still reeling when I think about these last few pages. Only for these last few pages it was worth reading this book. Although I would recommend reading the whole book to have everything in context and understanding everything that goes on during this rather bizarre adventure.

This is the first book I have read by Teri Terry and it will definitely not be the last one.

Insurgent by Veronica Roth // Reviews

This is the sequel to the highly acclaimed novel Divergent. The story continues right where the first book ended.

Genre: Dystopian, YA

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books, an Imprint of Harper Collins

Publication Date: May 1, 2012

525 pages, paperback

series: #2 in the Divergent trilogy

Synopsis: Goodreads

As this is the second book in a trilogy, it may contain spoilers for the first book. So if you haven’t read it yet, do not continue to read. If you’d like to see what I thought of Divergent, I posted my review for this book here.

This sequel was great! Although it took me a bit longer to finish than Divergent, I highly enjoyed it.

I loved that Tris and Tobias “visited”/found refuge in other factions. There was a lot more inside information on the Amity, the Candor and the factionless as well. It was so interesting and I especially loved Johanna, the non-leader of Amity as well as the scene with the truth serum in the Candor faction.

Tris is almost suicidal in this book. The deaths of her parents and her shooting Will out of self-defense let Tris go to dark places. Her actions are hazardous, her behaviour almost irrational. She acts before thinking how dangerous the outcome may be. But she doesn’t even seem to care. Although I hoped to see more of a happy Tris, I thought that her feelings are understandable. She lost her parents in one night and it that same night killed one of her best friends. She has to grieve, but there isn’t much time left to do it because of the crap that the traitors of Dauntless and the Erudite pulled off and the aftermath that follows.

Her relationship with Tobias wavers because she completely shuts off and withdraws from him. She doesn’t tell him that she is responsible for Will’s death and keeps everything bottled up inside, hoping that these feelings will pass or that she will die without dealing with the consequences. That seemed very realistic to me and I liked how it was shown that nothing seemed to be going great for Tris. She’s a rebel, everything has gone to shit and she has to pick up the pieces.

The other characters, especially Peter and Marcus surprised me quite a bit. They showed that there was more than one side to them. They were both not purely evil and they did things the way they did because they believed that this was the right way.
I loved how the authors showed me a different side of a character and then made me sympathize with said character that was moments ago someone I couldn’t stand or even understand.

The pacing in this book was fantastic! Although it didn’t grip as much as the first book, I still loved the pacing. There was action, emotional moments and surprises I wasn’t expecting.

One thing that bothered me was the massive information dumping with no further explanation as to why things are the way they are. I hope that these questions are going to be answered in the last book of the trilogy.

The ending was…wait what? I really didn’t expect this. The cliffhanger in this book was massive and I cannot wait to dig into Allegiant and find out what will happen next.