Book Recc. Fools. Read, this took me AGES!
Ok, thank you all who actually ready my LJ post. so onto the actual book recomendations. These may be long, so only choosing 3 books which will include:
1. The Time Travellers Wife
2. The Secret History by Donna Tart
3. Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve
So, lets start with the basics shall weeeee?
Ok main points about this book is that it is more of a love story than a sci-fi story. Anyone who looks at the title and thinks immediately of doctor who or back to the future or even things like the butterfly effect have the idea all wrong. It's not about the how's of time travel, it's the complications it causes.
It all centers around the life of a man named Henry Detamble. Chicago born and bred who discovers at a tender young age that he unconsciously of his own accord time travels. His life is spent time travelling to the past or future and wherever he ends up usually has something to do with the past or present. For example he meets his wife Clare Abshire for the first time when he is 27 years old. However, she meets him for the first time when she was six and he was thirty four.
It's raw, and the romance is very well, alot of their time is spent in bed, but it isn't like "yayyy sex for no reason" it's more about what it means to them and ofcourse their families and the way this time travel aspect effects their daily lives is just a wonderful concept.
It is my favourite book of all time bar the Mortal engines series which I sadly don't own (but is reviewing next) and I will explain, thus. XD
To me "The Secret History" is a very different style of book. It's centered around a character called Richard, who signs up to go to a very posh college in New England where six classics students who study ancient greek who eventually set up a close knit friendship, and how the whole course of the story encounters dangerous twists and turns. The characters are an awesome group, and as I haven't read it in a while I will let wikepedia do the job for me:
"It consists of fraternal twins Charles and Camilla Macaulay, who are charming but secretive, as well as Francis Abernathy, whose secluded country home becomes a sanctuary for the group. The two remaining students in particular now become the central focus of the story: the "linguistic genius" Henry Winter, a studious intellectual with a passion for the classics and Plato, and the back-slapping Bunny Corcoran, a slightly bigoted jokester"
Firstly, my obession with characters called Henry is a sign for things to come, but none the less. It's a fantastic book, with great OMG moments and a superb read in general.
And last, but certianlly not least:
Now I havent read this book for a good two years now but it still seems rather fresh in my mind as I remember how amazing the idea was to me. This is the simpliest way to describe the concept of the very complicated idead again found on wikepedia:
"The book is set in a post-apocalypticsteampunk world, ravaged in ages past by a nuclear holocaust known as the "Sixty Minute War,"
So what happens after that is towns and cities live on sorta railway lines. They move. So London is a moving city, as is all the other big cities that are left. I believe Brighton and Manchester have appearences in the other book, and the cities hunt each other to surivive. Technolgy at it's coolest. Seriously, I would LOVE to make this into a film. So yeah, that's the concept. It's really set around two very different characters who are forced into a situation.
It starts off with Tom Natsworthy. fifteen year old orphan and how he's suddenly thrown into the world of politics, murder and how he and a girl called Hester, a girl who is violently ugly due to what was done to her as a child - a sword cutting at her face - and how they have to travel to get back to London whilst also being chased be a stalker.
Now a stalker is this:
The Stalkers were built by the Nomadic Empires that battled each other across the volcano maze of what was once Europe long before the Traction Era. They are seven feet tall, armoured from head to toe, have glowing green eyes and are also armed with sharp claws. They built these Stalkers by dragging dead bodies from the battlefields and bringing them back to a sort of life by wiring strange 'Old Tech' machines into their nervous systems and made deadly warriors by removing unnecessary internal organs, grafting on a metal carapace and implanting weapons, typically finger-glaives.
Just reminding myself of what a stalker is makes me tingle. XD They are by far one of the most interesting robots I've ever encountered in a book XD and I like robots. This book has everything for the average sci-fi freak and more. A hero, A heroine, goverment and politics, post apolocptic war, references to the 2000 lifestyle (eg. they use CD's as decorations cause they don't know what they are) and even some romance and really nice values for the reader to catch up on. This series, as there are four of them, is my favourite aside from the HP series. But that just answers itself.
And that's it. Please leave a comment, and I'll fill in any FAQ questions I can about any of the books, I promise you, if you like what you've read here you wont be disappointed on all three books ^^