Books Reviews for Meme :) #'s 1-9
"Percy Jackson and the Olympians" series - Rick Riordan
1. The Lightning Thief
2. The Sea of Monsters
3. The Titan's Curse
4. The Battle of the Labyrinth
5. The Last Olympian
This was a fun series. I actually really liked it, despite the few hang ups here and there. It's pretty much about a boy named Percy Jackson who is the son of one of the great gods of ancient Greece. At the beginning of the story it jumps right into the fact that Percy is different - he's constantly getting into fights and getting kicked out of one school after another until finally, at his recent-most school, he's attacked by a monster and it's revealed he's a demi-god. Which god he's the son of is one of the big reveals (for those who know nothing of the series), so I'll keep my lips sealed, but the series really is a bunch of fun. Especially if you love Greek mythology.
My only hang ups with the series are the main pairing - for my own personal reasons - the fact that Percy is supposedly 12 years old when the series begins (which is a big wtf fact for me since he acts like he's 17 - and so do the other 12 year olds) and around 3/4ths of the way through the series Riordan kind of has a mid-series crisis where he realizes that omg, his series is ending! and starts messing with details he had originally explained in the beginning solely for the sake of writing another spin-off series. For example, in the beginning of the series, one of the characters explain that the gods move to wherever the power is in that era - which so happened to be America. Consequently, the gods were constantly renamed for every culture that believed in them and so the reason why there are so many gods throughout multiple cultures/lands is because the power kept shifting and they just kept moving/changing names. So in reality, there were only those set of gods - Jupiter is Zeus, Juno is Hera, Mercury is Hermes.
Etc.
3/4ths of the way through, Riordan completely messes with this and says that there were the Greek gods, oh and there were also Roman gods too - but the reason they weren't around is because they retired. Which not only opened up a whole new can of worms that messed with everything, but also cleared the way for a spin off series which I'm not touching.
6. Remembering Raquel - Vivian Vande Velde
I've always loved Vivian Vande Velde's works. I've noticed in all her books she's always more focused on the character, their interactions with other characters and what those interactions lead to rather than the pay off (ie: a relationship). For that reason, I checked out Remembering Raquel and was happily surprised with the result. The book is about a girl named Raquel who is pretty much an absolute zero in the eyes of her classmate - she's sarcastic, not interested in make up, more inclined to play video games and (the sinker), she isn't skinny. So this book starts out with Raquel's teacher delivering the news that Raquel was killed in a car accident and throughout the chapters we're shown the different reactions of the people left behind.
The first couple of chapters are fairly slow, mainly because they're her classmates and other people who didn't know Raquel at all, but because her death was oh so terrible and because they'll miss her so much! they attend the funeral anyway to give Raquel's father their best wishes. The way these chapters are written really make me love Vande Velde even more because while reading these outsiders' POV about the tragedy there is really nothing moving about why these people are there. It's all selfishness, and the text reflect that and make it impossible to give a damn. It wasn't even until I thought back to them that I even realized it either, at first I just thought it was going to be a boring book. But then a few chapters in I reached the POVs of the people who actually knew Raquel and who blamed themselves for what happened and kept going over all the 'What Ifs' for the night she died.
That would be around the time I started bawling. Thanks a lot, Vivian.
7. Heir Apparent - Vivian Vande Velde
This was actually a re-read for me, so yes, I'm going to gush again. Sorry. :P
This book is about a girl named Giannine Belissario who, while playing an immersible virtual reality video game, gets trapped in the game when demonstrators protesting against video game violence for kids damage the equipment. She is then told by the game programmer that in order to get out of the game without frying her brain she must find a way to the end of the game. Basically the bulk of the story is Giannine trying to work her way through a Choose Your Own Ending type video game where everything she does opens up different scenarios (ie: if she kills the peasant, the peasants family get mad and come after her vs let the peasant live which make the guards think she's too soft to be Queen and they possibly come after her later in the game) and she has to combine the different scenarios in order to get out alive.
I'm pretty sure this was the first book by Vivian Vande Velde that got me hooked to her work. One of the main things that got me so attached besides the character building being her main focus is that Vande Velde also has a very fun sense of humor and she's sarcastic, too. From the very first chapter alone the main character gets annoyed at the smart bus she's on and tells it, with a Queen Victoria wave, that its mother was a toaster. It only gets better from there.
8. Magic Can Be Murder - Vivian Vande Velde
This one was a fun one for me to read. I went in thinking it was going to be a typical 'woman has witchcraft, woman witnesses a murder and is consequently framed for the murder because she is a witch' and came out grinning.
The plot of the story is that a girl named Nora lives on the run with her mother who hears voices. The both of them are witches, so of course that complicates everything and they are inevitably run out of every town they come across. Then one day Nora witnesses a murder (magically) and she panics, believing that her and her mother are going to be framed for it because they were where the man was murdered just the previous night.
The bulk of the storyline has Nora going back and disguising herself as one of the household's servants in attempt to cover her own magical tracks and make sure no one tries to point at fingers at her or her mother. In the process she gets trapped in the investigation which ultimately leads her to trying to very subtly direct the authorities to the true murderer without revealing herself and also try to sneak away without getting caught in the process.
9. Stolen - Vivian Vande Velde
Stolen just so happens to also be about witches - what a strange coincidence. Aren't all her other books about witches or witchcraft or both? I get the feeling she likes magic. :|
xD In any case, this book was okay. It wasn't terrible, but at the same time it wasn't all that amazing either. I think this is mainly because I was expecting the twist because that's pretty much how Vande Velde writes. Nonetheless, the book wasn't predictable or poorly written, I just think the book itself was so much like her others that it doesn't stand out that much. Needless to say, I didn't know for sure if I was right about the twist - I had maybe two or three theories about what happened - and she still managed to surprise me with some other moments that I never thought of at all.
ANYWAY, the plot is about a girl who shows up in the woods with no memory at all of anything about herself. No name, no idea why she's running, nothing. A few pages into the story she's attacked by a group of hunting dogs and is rescued by their owner who takes the girl back to his wife where the two of them nurse her back to health. Of course, because she has no memory, everyone is quick to jump to the conclusion that she was bewitched by the witch that used to live in the forest who was caught snatching children and was run of town by the townspeople. The rest of the story is about the girl trying to remember who she was and where she belongs despite many people believing she was created by the witch to create havoc.
100 Books In A Year Masterlist
1. The Lightning Thief
2. The Sea of Monsters
3. The Titan's Curse
4. The Battle of the Labyrinth
5. The Last Olympian
This was a fun series. I actually really liked it, despite the few hang ups here and there. It's pretty much about a boy named Percy Jackson who is the son of one of the great gods of ancient Greece. At the beginning of the story it jumps right into the fact that Percy is different - he's constantly getting into fights and getting kicked out of one school after another until finally, at his recent-most school, he's attacked by a monster and it's revealed he's a demi-god. Which god he's the son of is one of the big reveals (for those who know nothing of the series), so I'll keep my lips sealed, but the series really is a bunch of fun. Especially if you love Greek mythology.
My only hang ups with the series are the main pairing - for my own personal reasons - the fact that Percy is supposedly 12 years old when the series begins (which is a big wtf fact for me since he acts like he's 17 - and so do the other 12 year olds) and around 3/4ths of the way through the series Riordan kind of has a mid-series crisis where he realizes that omg, his series is ending! and starts messing with details he had originally explained in the beginning solely for the sake of writing another spin-off series. For example, in the beginning of the series, one of the characters explain that the gods move to wherever the power is in that era - which so happened to be America. Consequently, the gods were constantly renamed for every culture that believed in them and so the reason why there are so many gods throughout multiple cultures/lands is because the power kept shifting and they just kept moving/changing names. So in reality, there were only those set of gods - Jupiter is Zeus, Juno is Hera, Mercury is Hermes.
Etc.
3/4ths of the way through, Riordan completely messes with this and says that there were the Greek gods, oh and there were also Roman gods too - but the reason they weren't around is because they retired. Which not only opened up a whole new can of worms that messed with everything, but also cleared the way for a spin off series which I'm not touching.
6. Remembering Raquel - Vivian Vande Velde
I've always loved Vivian Vande Velde's works. I've noticed in all her books she's always more focused on the character, their interactions with other characters and what those interactions lead to rather than the pay off (ie: a relationship). For that reason, I checked out Remembering Raquel and was happily surprised with the result. The book is about a girl named Raquel who is pretty much an absolute zero in the eyes of her classmate - she's sarcastic, not interested in make up, more inclined to play video games and (the sinker), she isn't skinny. So this book starts out with Raquel's teacher delivering the news that Raquel was killed in a car accident and throughout the chapters we're shown the different reactions of the people left behind.
The first couple of chapters are fairly slow, mainly because they're her classmates and other people who didn't know Raquel at all, but because her death was oh so terrible and because they'll miss her so much! they attend the funeral anyway to give Raquel's father their best wishes. The way these chapters are written really make me love Vande Velde even more because while reading these outsiders' POV about the tragedy there is really nothing moving about why these people are there. It's all selfishness, and the text reflect that and make it impossible to give a damn. It wasn't even until I thought back to them that I even realized it either, at first I just thought it was going to be a boring book. But then a few chapters in I reached the POVs of the people who actually knew Raquel and who blamed themselves for what happened and kept going over all the 'What Ifs' for the night she died.
That would be around the time I started bawling. Thanks a lot, Vivian.
7. Heir Apparent - Vivian Vande Velde
This was actually a re-read for me, so yes, I'm going to gush again. Sorry. :P
This book is about a girl named Giannine Belissario who, while playing an immersible virtual reality video game, gets trapped in the game when demonstrators protesting against video game violence for kids damage the equipment. She is then told by the game programmer that in order to get out of the game without frying her brain she must find a way to the end of the game. Basically the bulk of the story is Giannine trying to work her way through a Choose Your Own Ending type video game where everything she does opens up different scenarios (ie: if she kills the peasant, the peasants family get mad and come after her vs let the peasant live which make the guards think she's too soft to be Queen and they possibly come after her later in the game) and she has to combine the different scenarios in order to get out alive.
I'm pretty sure this was the first book by Vivian Vande Velde that got me hooked to her work. One of the main things that got me so attached besides the character building being her main focus is that Vande Velde also has a very fun sense of humor and she's sarcastic, too. From the very first chapter alone the main character gets annoyed at the smart bus she's on and tells it, with a Queen Victoria wave, that its mother was a toaster. It only gets better from there.
8. Magic Can Be Murder - Vivian Vande Velde
This one was a fun one for me to read. I went in thinking it was going to be a typical 'woman has witchcraft, woman witnesses a murder and is consequently framed for the murder because she is a witch' and came out grinning.
The plot of the story is that a girl named Nora lives on the run with her mother who hears voices. The both of them are witches, so of course that complicates everything and they are inevitably run out of every town they come across. Then one day Nora witnesses a murder (magically) and she panics, believing that her and her mother are going to be framed for it because they were where the man was murdered just the previous night.
The bulk of the storyline has Nora going back and disguising herself as one of the household's servants in attempt to cover her own magical tracks and make sure no one tries to point at fingers at her or her mother. In the process she gets trapped in the investigation which ultimately leads her to trying to very subtly direct the authorities to the true murderer without revealing herself and also try to sneak away without getting caught in the process.
9. Stolen - Vivian Vande Velde
Stolen just so happens to also be about witches - what a strange coincidence. Aren't all her other books about witches or witchcraft or both? I get the feeling she likes magic. :|
xD In any case, this book was okay. It wasn't terrible, but at the same time it wasn't all that amazing either. I think this is mainly because I was expecting the twist because that's pretty much how Vande Velde writes. Nonetheless, the book wasn't predictable or poorly written, I just think the book itself was so much like her others that it doesn't stand out that much. Needless to say, I didn't know for sure if I was right about the twist - I had maybe two or three theories about what happened - and she still managed to surprise me with some other moments that I never thought of at all.
ANYWAY, the plot is about a girl who shows up in the woods with no memory at all of anything about herself. No name, no idea why she's running, nothing. A few pages into the story she's attacked by a group of hunting dogs and is rescued by their owner who takes the girl back to his wife where the two of them nurse her back to health. Of course, because she has no memory, everyone is quick to jump to the conclusion that she was bewitched by the witch that used to live in the forest who was caught snatching children and was run of town by the townspeople. The rest of the story is about the girl trying to remember who she was and where she belongs despite many people believing she was created by the witch to create havoc.
100 Books In A Year Masterlist