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What a fun, imaginative book Philip Webb‘s Where the Rock Splits the Sky is! Well, perhaps the word “fun” isn’t quite right, as there is nothing fun about the adventure Megan, Luis, and Kelly are having.  Basically, aliens have stopped the world from spinning on its axis, thereby plunging its surviving zones back in time about 100 years. Megan is on a quest to find her father, and learn the secrets of what is to come. Megan is brave, Luis is loyal, Kelly is a great “fish out of water”, the characters are interesting, and the premise is a great one. I read this book inRead More →

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A couple of weeks ago we saw “her“, the Spike Jonze film about the lonely man who develops romantic feelings for his artificially intelligent operating system.  I thought that one of the most fascinating aspects of the film was how the OS, who calls herself Samantha, grew from the basic program that Theodore bought into a complicated, dynamic, interesting, and fully-actualized “person.”  Questions of physicality aside, witnessing Samantha’s evolution beyond her original programming was like watching any human being discover, adapt, learn, and become who they are meant to be. As I was thinking about Samantha (and her relationship with her world and Theodore), myRead More →

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Forbidden romance – as old as the hills, right?  As timeless as the human condition indeed.  And in Ann Brashares‘ forthcoming The Here and the Now, reimagined in a mesmerizing, thrilling way. 17 year old Prenna James’ life is controlled by a strict set of rules, a community whose leaders know all about her movements and activities, and a deeply unsettling fear of exposure.  While she and the other community members partake in average, everyday American life in their Upstate New York town, they are nonetheless separate and secretive, limiting the ways in which they interact with “the natives.”  At first one assumes Prenna isRead More →

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18 years after a seemingly harmless virus was introduced at a theme park, all that remains of the United States east of the Mississippi River is a desolate, abandoned wasteland know as The Feral Zone.  No one knows what happened to anyone who was unlucky enough to have either been infected by the Ferae virus or left behind in the mass exodus West since a great wall separates The West from the Feral Zone, although rumors do circulate about exiled criminals, hideous man-beasts, and other nightmarish creatures. 17 year old Lane, who has lived her entire life in the West, is mildly curious about what’sRead More →

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More questions than answers. At the end of the book, that’s what I’m left with.  Who are SYLO? What is The Ruby?  What are those strange flying ships? Why is Pemberwick Island under quarantine? Who are all the people suddenly on the island?  What do Tucker’s parents know that they aren’t telling him?  What happened on the mainland?  Is there anyone Tucker can trust? Every single time you think you’ve figured something out, another mystery appears, confounding, frustrating, and driving you on in the vain hope that you can have at least one answer before the end.  But it is not to be.  Both theRead More →

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Early on in James Dashner‘s newest The Eye of the Minds, I jotted down: “Matrix“;  then a little later, “The Maze Runner,” and finally “The Truman Show.”  Dashner combines these and more pop culture influences in an imaginative, if not a wholly original, way to create a world within a world full of shadows, illusions, and shifting realities. VirtNet is an all-immersive virtual reality game.  After physically connecting to the interface, a player climbs into a “coffin,” the gateway into the VirtNet that induces a sleeplike state that keeps the player in suspended animation while inside the game.  Everything about Virtnet is programmed to beRead More →

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Just in time for the General debate of the sixty-seventh and sixty-eighth sessions of the General Assembly of the United Nations this September, Malinda Lo’s novel Inheritance, a sequel to Adaptation will release for publication.  Lo’s book explores the adaptation abilities of two seventeen-year-old debate partners, David Li and Reese Holloway, who are abducted from Noe Valley, California, by Imrians, aliens from the planet Kurra.  Although a car accident after a debate match renders them brain dead, Imrian scientist Dr. Evelyn Brand not only saves their lives but alters them to become what some consider “hybrid monsters.”  After their adaptation, David and Reese are ableRead More →

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Four teens who inexplicably survive the “end of the world”, brought together seemly by random chance who each have an undiscovered power and a deeply hidden pain, who together can set the teetering, ravaged city of Los Angeles (and perhaps the whole world) back on its axis . . . Icons by Margaret Stohl?  Not even close, actually.  Instead, this tale of destruction, survival, and the power of love comes from Francesca Lia Block and is as different in tone, imagery, and execution as day from night.   In Love in the Time of Global Warming (August 2013), Block again crafts a story wherein herRead More →

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In Anna Jarzab’s book Tandem, Book One in the Many-Worlds Trilogy, readers will find some of the spirit of Libba Bray’s Going Bovine–which features multiple scientific and literary allusions–and some of the wonderings of Alisa Valdes’ The Temptation–which invites questions about parallel universes and presents a paranormal romance.  Given those qualities, a convoluted plot, and characters like Sasha Lawson, Princess Juliana, and secret agent Thomas Mayhew who invite connection and whose stories involve intrigue, this science-fiction romance provides tremendous reader appeal. Tired of her arranged and orchestrated life in the United Commonwealth of Columbia—of being a pawn in someone else’s game—Juliana decides she wants a normalRead More →