The Blurb:

It’s been six weeks since angels of the apocalypse descended to demolish the modern world. Street gangs rule the day while fear and superstition rule the night. When warrior angels fly away with a helpless little girl, her seventeen-year-old sister Penryn will do anything to get her back.

Anything, including making a deal with an enemy angel.

Raffe is a warrior who lies broken and wingless on the street. After eons of fighting his own battles, he finds himself being rescued from a desperate situation by a half-starved teenage girl.

Traveling through a dark and twisted Northern California, they have only each other to rely on for survival. Together, they journey toward the angels’ stronghold in San Francisco where she’ll risk everything to rescue her sister and he’ll put himself at the mercy of his greatest enemies for the chance to be made whole again.

The Review:

I had mixed feelings about this book. It was a very interesting concept, and I loved the protagonist. But toward the end of the book it got kind of…. sick. Like graphically sick. The world building was interesting, but it didn’t feel consistent. I would expect society to have completely crumbled a year or two after an attack like this, but world-wide in a matter of months? Again, I don’t doubt the devastation the angels can wreak upon a society, but I think people, even defeated people, would cling to normal life longer and try to stick to a regular society before going completely nuts and becoming street gangs roaming in the darkness.

Or maybe they would, but I needed more background to see WHY it got so bad so fast. Especially because life alongside the angels in the city seemed semi-normal. Humans are way subservient, but life seemed semi-normal.

I don’t know. I’m going to give the second book a shot when it comes out, because the characters are worth it. But I just couldn’t get a firm grasp on the world and it got really really gross at the end.

Blurb:

Carina McKay is an outsider. With one parent of royal blood, she’s not nobility, yet not a servant either. The only comfort in her mundane existence is her love of Critons, the large fire-breathing creatures that protect the border of her homeland. But her destiny changes forever the day she catches the eye of King Marek Duncan.

Marek’s heart is closed to love. After an arranged marriage withers to a bitter end, he dedicates his energy to protecting his kingdom. Yet he’s searching for something more–the Caller of Light, the one who summons Critons.

Carina’s beauty and willfulness intrigue Marek, and he’s determined to have her. When his enemies try to come between them, he discovers just how much he will endure to protect her. Together, they can unlock a love that binds their souls, but only if they find the strength to follow their hearts.

Review:

Cinderella meets Dragonriders of Pern

I don’t know why I don’t read traditional fantasy more often. I always end up loving the books! Always! And Caller of Light was no exception. Shaw builds a completely unique world full of Critons, which are essentially dragons. The Critons bond with their riders but they sometimes need assistance from a caller. Unfortunately the last caller dropped off the face of the earth over a decade ago.

Meanwhile, Carina is our spirited underdog. Abused and treated as a servant in her own house she captures the heart of a King. Her evil half sister is willing to do whatever it takes to sabotageCarina and Duncan’s relationship. Meanwhile there’s political intrigue and looming threats of war in Duncan’s kingdom

The only thing I didn’t like, and yes, I know, this is crazy nitpicky, I didn’t like that Criton was capitalized. I get that their sentient super special cool dragon like creatures, but you don’t capitalize dragon, you capitalize the dragons name. I don’t think I would have noticed at all had I not just had to do a global edit for something very similar. But I did notice, and the word criton was used here about as often as the word horse would be used in a western so it just kept poking at me.

However, I just read a long book and my only complaint whatsoever is the capitalization of one word. I think that speaks volumes for how GOOD this book is.

Since I read this series in such quick succession, I’m going to review them all here because I’ve reached that point where it’s difficult to separate them into different books in my head. So if some of the details I post for book three are in book four, apologies 🙂

Maze Runner by James Dashner

Amazing book. It kept the suspense running the entire time through. I didn’t put this book down until I finished it. The pace was so fast and the story line was so tight that I was a bit out of breath when I finished. It’s not the best book in the whole world, but it moved so fast I honestly couldn’t tell you if there were flaws in the story telling. I highly recommend for anyone looking for a fun quick read

The Scorch Trials

And this is where the series starts to fall apart. Don’t get me wrong, I still finished this book very quickly and it was an enjoyable read but I absolutely couldn’t get past the premise. In this book it is revealed that the world the characters escaped to after solving the maze is devastated. Solar Flares have scorched a chunk of the planet and decimated the population, and as if that wasn’t enough a deadly virus was released called the Flare which pretty much turns people into zombies that aren’t dead. Reavers essentially.

The group learns that they are somehow the answer to this problem and the maze and everything else was calculated to get information based on their reactions. Then they learn they’ve been infected. If they want the cure they have to get through the scorch (a really bad patch of land where all the zombies live).

There’s a betrayal that I really don’t understand. I really think the whole purpose of the betrayal was just to make me hate a character, but then it’s explained away and rationalized except that the rationalization makes no sense. It’s fun to read, but if you allow yourself the time to stop and think you’ll find yourself scratching your head and going…. why?

The Death Cure

Okay, and this is where the series implodes upon itself. All consistency and logic was lost. Sorry, but in what universe is

SPOILER

An airborne highly contagious plague released on purpose to eliminate a portion of the population after the bulk of said population was supposedly killed off by solar flares. Seriously? Rationale here? We’re really expected to believe some random scientific group went “oh by golly, humanity survived extinction, lets see if we can do it again.” Really? The people that are left are huddled in tight groups, wouldn’t it just be safer to drop a bomb? I could buy it IF the population hadn’t been destroyed yet with the flares, and the disease wasn’t intended to be contagious and just mutated. But that’s not the case as we see in the next book.

Then, THEN we’re supposed to believe that these kids are the answer because they’re immune (I’ll buy that) but that’s the reason for the maze and the trials. The scientists need to study their neural activity to see how it responds to what’s essentially torture and high stress situations.

I’m no scientist, but I’m pretty sure you don’t look for cures for diseases in neural patterns. Even if something in their brain made the disease not take root, that couldn’t be replicated anymore than you can give a person a photographic memory.

Also, why actually put them through a maze? Dose them with adrenaline and give them a rubix cube or something.

THEN the ending. Seriously? Seriously?

And the characters were completely lost in this one. They were never terribly developed to begin with, but one major character dies in what’s basically a throwaway line, another character (who was supposedly about Thomas’s age) works for wicked (the government) and is a nurse, oh and the other guy, again, described as being not much older than 16 in book 2, is a trained pilot.

Where are we getting the resources to put teenagers through nursing school and flight training in the midst of a zombie apocalypse and scorched planet?

The characters scattered memories also don’t jive with the picture painted of the planet. I guess life in the cities is pretty normal, but that certainly doesn’t seem the case in the next book. *sigh* oh well. It was a quick read

The Kill Order

This is actually a prequel, and no, it doesn’t give you Thomas’ story or Teresa’s, just random cranks who we never see again in the whole series.

This book starts with the government releasing the flare, and all the consistency errors I had in the other book here are quadrupled. So, they release this virus on purpose, and supposedly the mutation is that it takes longer to kill people. Originally it killed the victims in 24 hours.

So here’s my question. Government people, you have helicopters, you have weapons that can disintegrate people with a single blast, and to control the population you choose to release a virus in small pockets of people with the expectation that it will spread and kill within 24 hours of contact.

Wouldn’t it be easier to USE those weapons instead of flying settlement by settlement and shooting people with darts loaded with the virus? Half the darts killed the people by severing arteries when released. That seems a rather blatant waste of resources. Or, if they MUST use a virus, how about releasing one we have a known cure for. It’s not like the remnants of civilization have well stocked antibiotics.

Or, here’s another thought, why kill off anyone with a virus at all? If the resources are so scarce and you only want to worthy to survive, why not…. Use the planes, collect the resources, and keep the walled cities stocked in places like Alaska where they are based. Top scientists of the world, ever heard of Darwin? Or did all the GOOD scientists get killed in the flare. 2/3 of your population was just wiped out by a solar flare a year ago. The people left are living mostly in shacks struggling to find food and water. Nature may just balance itself out in a more natural way.

Ignoring all that, I would have found the characters much more compelling if any of the characters had been in the rest of the series, like I don’t know, this is 13 years before the maze and there’s a small child that “couldn’t be more than five” could they have cheated a year or two and made the girl Teresa instead of DeeDee? That would have explained Teresa’s fanatical devotion to Wicked.

I also felt this book went way overboard with the violence, and was just way too sad. I felt sick when I hit the end.

I was planning on doing the Maze runner series today but then I realized I had somehow missed this one!

I love Rick Riordin. I made myself wait until I completely finished Persephone and had an outline of the series complete before I let myself read Percy Jackson, just in case it was too similar. It was worth the wait. The first few books in the series were alright, but It really picked up in the middle then just kept going.

I was nervous about the new series. I didn’t care about Jason, I liked the old camp, and I didn’t think anything could top the epic battle that ended the original series

I was wrong. The Lost Hero, the Son of Neptune and the mark of Athena have been fantastic. I love the new characters, it’s fantastic to see them all together (finally!). It was really great getting to finally experience Annabeth’s point of view.

I really love these books but they are also the few young adult books that make me feel too old for YA. Every time things start to get heavy, some extremely silly thing happens (monsters chasing Percy with cheese balls?). But I’m not then intended audience, middle grade boys are. Riordin balances the needs of his actual audience with telling a great story really well.

I can’t wait for the next one to come out. Sadly, it’s going to be a long wait.