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The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1-5)
The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke
Treason
First, you should know the author provided me with this book for an honest review.Second, you should know that I feel guilty about this because it's a book well worth paying for!!
It is a young adult book, with a Government-is-out-to-get-us theme. It also has a bit of a religious aspect to it. The writing was smooth and it was edited. It was a very easy read - I only started it this morning. My only complaint was on about 5 or 6 occasions throughout the book, it went from a regular font to a large size all in bold print for about a paragraph. This threw me out of the story a bit...like the author was yelling at me.
The story begins after a locust plague has devastated the food crops all over the US. People are starving and "The General" is now running things in the country. A decision has been made by the General to round up all children from 5 through 18 and send them to safety camps. Word had it that the girls were kept there for 'reproductive' purposes. This forces Dani's parents to send her off to hide with her little brother in their old cabin in the middle of nowhere. Once there, she learns that the area has been taken over by others who have chosen to hide and turned the area into a "tent city".
There was something at the beginning of the story that bothered me and stuck with me through the whole book. I couldn't understand why the Gov't would collect children for reproductive purposes if food is a luxury and the majority of the country is starving. This is answered. It all makes sense...but not until the very end.
You are given bits and pieces throughout the story that don't mean much until the last chapter. That's where it all comes together and the book changes from good to fantastic.
I'm sure this author will be one to watch having done such a great job with her first book.
This is an interesting take on the zombie genre. I can't tell you what makes it different - you'll just have to read it. It's well edited, well written and left me wanting more. Can't ask for much more in a book. Good thing I already have the second book.
There are few series out there that end as well as they started. The usual rule is that the first book is the most exciting, the one the author was really excited to get "out there", but then it's frequently like even they lost interest in the story.Not so with Light. All the books of this series were very good, but this was by far the best, at least for me. I can't think of one thing that Michael Grant might have missed.
There is no way to give a brief explanation of what happens in this book. If you have read the first five up to this point, then you know the kids of the FAYZ will be fighting for their lives. I can only say that I was very happy about how it ended and I was delighted that there were Aftermath chapters. I'm sad that I will not be part of their lives anymore but this series will be one of my all time favourites and I may even do the unimaginable for me, I might have to re-read them all.
How to Prevent Unicorns from Stealing Your Car and Other Funny Stories (Take a Break & Have a Laugh Series)
This was a very short book (34 pages) of even shorter stories. They weren't the normal type of funny. They were so ridiculous you couldn't help but be amused. I couldn't have read the whole thing if it was a regular length book but being so short, it was a cute diversion.
Holy Moly this book is grim. It's written from the point of view of the zombies, or at least from the point of view of the tiny spark of the person who they used to be. Interesting concept...their consciousness still continues even though they have no control over the body whatsoever. There really is no ending to this story. It's left to you to imagine what happens next. Frankly, if I wanted to do that, I wouldn't bother reading at all but I know lots of people like this kind of ending. It's an interesting take on the zombie genre and Howey really digs deep on what it would really be like, but it just left me with more questions. If they were dead and they are slowly rotting, how is it that their intestines and nerve endings still work? How do muscles still move?
We don't find out what started the zombie epidemic nor if it ends. It feels like "most" of a book was written and that's the reason for only three stars
In comparison to the prior two books, this one is grim. I mean really grim - it is utterly joyless. Too many horrors have happened for our group to be cheerful. They have only made as far as Nevada and all hell is breaking loose again. This time in the form of a religious cult...a death cult. We meet some new evil characters bent on the destruction of the remaining humans. All the while, Nix is still dealing with the death of her Mother. Benny is dealing with the death of Tom. Lilah has been seriously injured by zombie-infected wild boar and by the end, Chong ends up on the brink of death.There is some hope to be found though. They have discovered a place known as sanctuary which we learn has a research facility. In addition, they've recovered research papers from a downed plane that will aid (hopefully) in finding a cure for the zombie plague.
Will a cure be found? Will Chong recover, die or become a zom? Will they make it to the American Nation? So many questions. One final book in the series with the answers. My fingers are crossed. I hope everything works out for these kids - they deserve it for all they've been through.
3.5 StarsThis was a very well thought out aliens-taking-over-the-world story. It was very descriptive and I could picture everything easily as it happened. I just couldn't go the full 4 stars, and the reason was Emily - the sole NY survivor. All was great for 3/4 of the book, but then I found out that Emily was an idiot. I had to remind myself that in a real-life scenario such as the one described in the book, it was more than possible for a stupid person to be the one to live. I say this because of a few reasons:
1. Emily fills a backpack with bike repair equipment, canned food, etc and rather than leaving it in the lobby of her building because her shoulder was hurt badly, she decided to carry it up 17 floors to her apartment. Everyone else was already dead. Did she think the aliens would really stop taking over the Earth so they could steal some of her canned corned beef?
2. She decided to drive her bicycle from New York to Alaska to meet the only other survivors she knew of. WTF!! I don't care that she never wanted to drive and never learned how. Did she learn how to read a map? Alaska is all the way on the other side of the country, then hang a right and head North. I don't think Lance Armstrong would take that ride and he's on steroids.
3. She's packing like she's going on vacation. What's with bringing half your wardrobe? New York is not the only place with stores - pick up what you need as you need it. And trust me, if she's trekking up north anywhere near the winter months, a wool sweater and a gore-tex jacket is never gonna cut it. Not even close
4. She's going to spend her days biking but she's limiting herself to a litre of water a day. Does the word dehydration mean anything to this girl? I sit at a desk all day and I drink about two litres. America, the land of the 7Eleven. They are everywhere. Just pick up some more water there...and put it in the car you should be driving.
I know this may sound like I'm bashing the book, I'm not. This was a good book...really it was. I liked Emily, but I was totally thrown off by the lack of common sense. Maybe she snorted too much of the red "dust".
This was a good story, but not as good as City of Ember. From reading the other reviews of book 4, it seems like this might be a bit of a bridge between the first adventure and the last - just to fill in some basic answers like what remains of civilization, how do people sustain themselves, how the Emberites learn to function in essentially a new world. I'm not going to bother with book 3 - I would be interested if it was about just prior to the City of Ember but it is from 50 years prior and I've read it has very little to do with the series.The Supremacy (The Supremacy, #1)
The human race has really screwed things up. The economy is non-existent, crime is rampant, everyone is starving, the world is on the brink......this is when the Supremacy steps in. They are a group with enormous power. They have fed the masses, eliminated crime, housed, clothed and provided jobs to everyone. They saved humanity – it’s just too bad the human race didn't know at the time that it meant they would become slaves with no hope of a future or freedom from their "Keepers".
It started off fantastic. The first five or so chapters were a whirlwind of info. It was very exciting, but then:
- The spelling errors started to become a little more apparent. The most predominant error was with a character named Brian. The name Brian cannot be spelled b-r-a-i-n. Being not just an error but an independent word, it is noticed immediately. Since it was spelled incorrectly about half the time the name was mentioned, it totally removed me from the story (I wish the 20-something generation would either learn how to spell or at least learn that spell-check doesn’t always put in the correct word).
- The conversations with the characters became a little less fluid and didn’t always make sense.
- Then (and this is the worst part), it became a soap opera. Yup, this book should only be read mid-afternoon. In classic soap opera fashion, we find out the main characters are related and yet falling in love. The step-mother was really the aunt, was married to one of their fathers and now married to the other father…. Frankly, it is a family to which you cannot draw the tree. It is more of a family tumbleweed.
I would still recommend this book – it does have an interesting story. I was torn between a three and a four star rating but being a newbie author, I have to give a little additional credit. The first is the worst. It’s just too bad that the author didn’t bother to find someone to edit this book properly. Without a good editor, a potentially incredible story is only mediocre.
This is only the second PKD book I have read and it has led me to a couple of thoughts about the man. One, he had an exceptional imagination. Two, he wrote a lot more than necessary to get his point across. The concept of this book, while totally original, was incredibly simple - what if Germany had won the war?
The whole story was regular life as it would be playing out had Hitler been victorious. There was only one wrinkle in this story...a man had written a book with the concept that Germany had lost the war. This man was known as the 'man in the high tower', describing his home which supposedly was a bit of a fortress for his protection. The book was incredibly popular and ultimately would lead to the Germans trying to assassinate him.
This all sounds incredibly good but in fact, I found most of the book rather boring. I loved the concept but not the execution. I'm not a fan of excessive writing although I know there are lot of people out there who do and will love this book for that fact.
If you love epic adventure books...If you love witty dialogue...
If you love getting the most amazing deal ever...
...you need to get this book.
At the time of writing this review, this book was selling on Amazon for about a buck. About 1/3 of the way into it, I did something I have never done and will probably never do again – I sent a message to the author telling him he was crazy for letting this book go so ridiculously cheap. I actually felt like I totally ripped him off. This book could rival anything put out by one of the big publishing houses and if it had a price of $10 - $15 on it, I still think it would be worth buying.
This is the first in a series, but it’s not like a lot of other series books. This one is pretty long and can be read as a stand alone...but after you read it, you will be glad there is more to come. I love the universe the author has created. The characters are amazing, the science seems plausible and the story did exactly what I most want a story to do for me – it played out like a movie in my mind and I got lost in it.
If I were to compare this to other books I have read, just to give you an idea of the genre it would be in and the quality of the writing because the stories themselves aren’t similar, I would say Percy Jackson, Artemis Fowl, and even Harry Potter (before the end when it just got so serious).
There is only small thing in the book that I didn’t like. There is a part in the story when our heroes have made it out of the pit, they have crept down the stairs and are before one of the Void Lord avatars. Rather than spouting something evil or setting off alarms, it proceeds to explains things to them. It was a bit of an infodump...not to say I didn’t like getting a little background, but this was too convenient and it didn’t make sense to me that this thing was telling them all of this. That’s it. A couple of pages in about five hundred. Everything else was, in my opinion, perfect!!
I put off reading this book for a long time. The reason is because this is one of my all time favorite movies, and you know that most times the movie isn't like the book. I didn't want the book to change how I saw the movie. I was finally talked into it and I'm really glad I listened. There were additional details in the book but the movie followed it pretty closely. It is a story that just makes me happy no matter how many times I watch it, and now read it.
It's been six months since Benny, Nix, Lilah and Tom came back from the Rot and Ruin. They've been working hard learning to fight, getting stronger and smarter, because they have a plan...they are leaving their little town. They say it's to find the jet that they all saw but really they each have additional personal reasons for leaving. They seem to have only walked a few miles from town when it all starts to go horribly wrong. Trap after trap...zombies...raging zoo animals...evil bounty hunters. All of this ends in a mighty battle and the loss of an important member of the group. It was a surprising and sad ending. And things are changing with the zombies. Weird things. Things that aren't supposed to happen. Is the zombie plague getting better or changing for the worse? We'll soon see.
The Spiral Effect: The Collector
** Update **OK, so the author has advised me that this book (short story) is the first in what will be a series. Good to know because it is most definitely not a stand-alone book. Regardless, I still feel a book, even as part of a series, should have a beginning, middle and end. It doesn't have to fully end but there should be a sense of completion of some aspect of the story.
The premise was interesting enough that this could have easily been a four-star story for me. There are so many things you could do when almost all of humanity develops telepathy and has the ability to take over someone's body by mental force. The biggest issue I had was that very little happened in this book. I would say there were about three chapters worth and missing the other seven.
This two-star rating could possibly go up in the future depending on the next books. I guess we'll just have to see.
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Original review from June 29, 2013:
WTF?? That was messed up. It had potential...a lot of potential. Unfortunately, potential just isn't enough. Not to mention there wasn't an ending....again. How do I find these books?
Silk (A Parody)
As the name says, it's a parody, so you have to read [b:Wool|12287209|Wool (Wool, #1)|Hugh Howey|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327889474s/12287209.jpg|17263666] to understand it. I didn't find it very funny. The wife was a big "Yo Mamma" joke and all of the comedy was making fun of her and her farts. A bit too low-brow for my liking.
Stellar Effects
Cute little story, and I do mean little. I think it's only 44 pages long. It could use some editing and my kindle version wasn't formatted very well. That aside, the story wasn't too bad. The captain of a cargo ship is forced to take on a crew member who is the nephew of the Vice-President. He is one of those lucky types that when things go wrong, it turns around on itself and goes very right. I got it for free so it was worth the price of admission.