The Gardener by S.A. Bodeen

The Gardener by S.A. Bodeen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Mason isn't supposed to know about the Greenhouse. He isn't supposed to meet the beautiful girl who is part of the experiment, and who doesn't need food or water to survive.

Now, Mason is on the run with the girl. And the Gardener who is the mysterious mastermind of an institution that grows humans, wants them both, dead or alive.

~~~~~~

This was an okay read. The idea was a good one, I just felt like the follow through came up a bit short. I tried to keep in mind that this is a book intended for older children/young teens, but it still seemed a bit immature to me.





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***My 14 year old dd read this first and she loved it. She insisted that I read it because she enjoyed it so much!

The Seer (Truesight #2) by David Stahler Jr.

The Seer by David Stahler Jr.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Young Jacob Manford grew up in Harmony, a blind boy raised in a colony of citizens dedicated to blindness as a way of life. Stricken with sight at thirteen, he escapes to the futuristic city of Melville, only to discover he has traded one hostile community for another.

Jacob's sight introduces him to a thrilling new world--vast landscapes, glittering skyscrapers, and flying machines--but he is unsure if he has finally found a place to belong. Will Jacob ever find what he is looking for?

~~~

While I enjoyed the first book in the Truesight series immensely, I found myself having a hard to time with this sequel. It follows Jacob as he leaves Harmony in search of Delaney. We do get to see some of the world outside of Harmony which was interesting, but I felt like the book started taking a different path in plot. We went from Jacob's struggle with his new sight and the implications that it brought to his way of life, into a more supernatural type heading, that to me did not really fit with the plot of the first book.

No question that you need to read the first book in the series to get anything from this sequel, but I have to wonder where the next book is going to take us.



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Wool 4 - The Unraveling (Wool #4) by Hugh Howey

Wool 4 - The Unraveling by Hugh Howey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The stories are getting longer, yeah!! In Wool 4 we follow two story lines. Juliette's and those in the silo. We follow Juliette as she discovers the a truth about the silo and we see what effect her 'cleaning' has on those left in the silo. We get to see things from both sides as the seeds for a new uprising are sowed. I am very much looking forward to the next book, but at the same time am hesitant to start because I know that it is the last one. (At least for now. I heard a rumor that there may be more in the future.)



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***Kindle edition

Wool 2: Proper Gauge (Wool #2) by Hugh Howey

Wool 2: Proper Gauge by Hugh Howey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A cleaning has been performed, and now the silo is without a sheriff. With only one good candidate available, Mayor Jahns and Deputy Mames set off for the Down Deep to recruit her in person. Along the way, they discover much about each other, troubling news about this candidate, and stumble upon fractured alliances that could spell the doom of a silo they've worked long years to protect.

~~~


A wonderful second chapter in this wonderful series of short stories. In this book we focus more on the world inside the silo. We get to know some of the characters that we briefly met in the first book and we learn quite a bit more about what life is like inside the silo.



Very much looking forward to #3.



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***Kindle edition

Wool (Wool #1) by Hugh Howey

Wool by Hugh Howey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


They live beneath the earth in a prison of their own making. There is a view of the outside world, a spoiled and rotten world, their forefathers left behind. But this view fades over time, ruined by the toxic airs that kill any who brave them.
So they leave it to the criminals, those who break the rules, and who are sent to cleaning. Why do they do it, these people condemned to death? Sheriff Holston has always wondered. Now he is about to find out.
~~~



Wonderful quick read. Now I see why they gave it away free. I am heading to Amazon now to buy the next short story in this series.



Imagine living in a silo where your only contact with the outside world is through viewing windows that show a brown world where nothing lives and the only thing that moves are the black clouds drifting across the dead world. Where the once great cities lay in ruins on the horizon.

Generations live out their lives in the silo, drawing a lottery to attempt to have children in the very limited space.



The ultimate sin is to wonder about what is outside the silo. Wanting to go outside is a sin so great that it meets banishment. But as long as you are going outside you might as well clean the lens that give a view of the outside world while your out there, right?



Very interesting concept and wonderful story. I am very interested to see what the author does next.



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***Kindle edition

Bar Code Rebellion by Suzanne Weyn

Bar Code Rebellion by Suzanne Weyn


From the Publisher
Kayla has resisted getting the bar code tattoo, even though it's meant forfeiting any chance she'd had at having a normal life. Without the tattoo, she's an exile. But when someone very important sets about to bring her back in again -- WITH a tattoo -- Kayla finds herself a part of the resistence, where her unexpected allies and even more unexpected enemies include three clones of hers.

An edge-of-your-seat, teen's-eye-view thriller that merges the headlines of today with the world of tomorrow.

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I definitely enjoyed this second book much better than the first one.

While this book continues the story of Kayla's stuggle against that Bar Code Tattoo, it also takes a much more interesting science fiction turn with the addition of cloning and nanotechnology to the storyline.

A wonderful read well worth making your way through the first book to get to this one.




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The Bar Code Tattoo by Suzanne Weyn

The Bar Code Tattoo by Suzanne Weyn


From the Publisher
The bar code tattoo. Everybody's getting it. It will make your life easier, they say. It will hook you in. It will become your identity. But what if you say no? What if you don't want to become a code? For Kayla, this one choice changes everything. She becomes an outcast in her high school. Dangerous things happen to her family. There's no option but to run . . . for her life.Indivuality vs. conformity.. Identity vs. access. Freedom vs. control.The bar code tattoo.

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a very interesting look into a possible future. Many of the things in this book are things that we are faced with in right now in society. So much so that this book has a ring of possibilities to it. Thought provoking.



As for the story itself, it was just okay. I found the concept interesting but the writing was not great for me. Too many things just happened out of the blue to make it realistic. The turn that the book takes towards psychic ability, while it is an interesting concept, seems out of place. Just another on of those things that happens too convieniently in this book.



I will read the next book just to see how it all works out, since these are quick reads.


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Maelstrom (Rifters #2) by Peter Watts

From the Publisher
An enormous tidal wave on the West Coast of North America has just killed thousands. Lenie Clarke, in a black wetsuit, walks out of the ocean onto a Pacific Northwest beach filled with the oppressed and drugged homeless of the Asian world who have gotten only this far in their attempt to reach America. Is she a monster or a goddess? One thing is for sure: all hell is breaking loose.This dark, fast-paced, hard SF novel returns to the story begun in Starfish: all human life is threatened by a disease (actually a primeval form of life) from the distant prehuman past. It survived only in the deep ocean rift where Clarke and her companions were stationed before the corporation that employed them tried to sterilize the threat with a secret underwater nuclear strike. But Clarke was far enough away that she was able to survive and tough enough to walk home, three hundred miles across the ocean floor. She arrives carrying with her the potential death of the human race, and possessed by a desire for revenge. Maelstrom is a terrifying explosion of cyberpunk noir by a writer whose narrative, says Robert Sheckley, "drives like a futuristic locomotive."

My Opinion
Like the first book in this series, Starfish, this book was good. It is a very dark look at a future society where energy is a very expensive commodity. Where people are bio engineered for better performance. Where regular citizens are drugged into submission and treated like cattle. Where the Internet has become an alien world where new lifeforms are evolving constantly.

I plan to find and read the next two in this series because it is quite a compelling story. This book was a bit disjointed like the first but I suppose that is this author's style.

Where the first book was more of an introduction to the Rifters, this book was about the Apocalypse. In the form of Lenie Clarke, who is a product of a terrifying future society. It is also an indepth look at this society that is capable of doing the things it has done in the name of survival. A very interesting book that is not great while you are reading it, but gets better the more you read (I know that makes no sense, but that is the best I can do to describe the way I feel about it.)

This is a book that makes you think and keeps you thinking even after you finish it.

The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

From the Publisher
Fields of white opium poppies stretch away over the hills, and uniformed workers bend over the rows, harvesting the juice. This is the empire of Matteo Alacran, a feudal drug lord in the country of Opium, which lies between the United States and Aztlan, formerly Mexico. Field work, or any menial tasks, are done by "eejits," humans in whose brains computer chips have been installed to insure docility. Alacran, or El Patron, has lived 140 years with the help of transplants from a series of clones, a common practice among rich men in this world. The intelligence of clones is usually destroyed at birth, but Matt, the latest of Alacran's doubles, has been spared because he belongs to El Patron. He grows up in the family's mansion, alternately caged and despised as an animal and pampered and educated as El Patron's favorite. Gradually he realizes the fate that is in store for him, and with the help of Tam Lin, his bluff and kind Scottish bodyguard, he escapes to Aztlan. There he and other "lost children" are trapped in a more subtle kind of slavery before Matt can return to Opium to take his rightful place and transform his country.

My Opinion
What an excellent book. This should be a must read for all high school students as it tackles some very interesting and scary ethics questions that our society could be facing one day soon.

We meet Matt who lives in a small house on the outskirts of Poppy fields owned by the biggest drug lord around. We soon discover that this story takes place about 100 years in our future and that Matt is a clone. In a world where medical breakthroughs have allowed people to live into their hundreds with the harvesting of clones for spare body parts, we meet one of these 'creatures'. Matt is a special case though as he is the clone of the richest and most powerful man in the world and thus was saved from a procedure that all other clones have done to them, when they are 'harvested'. Their brains are destroyed so that they have no intelligence. But Matt is raised like most other children by a servant who treats him like her own son.

Matt does not know that he is a clone until one day when he is 6 years old and some children wander up to the little shack where Matt has been hidden away and raised. It is with interaction with these children that Matt soon learns what he is. We then follow Matt through the next 8 years of his life as he faces many difficult times and tries to come to terms with his own existence. With the love of the woman who has raised him, a bodyguard given to him by the man that had him created him, and one of the young girls that first saw him in that shack, Matt grows to be a very intelligent and talented young man.

The book touches upon some very real and scary subjects such as cloning, longevity through the use of clones, slavery, and abuse. It even touches on some problems that we face in the world now days, like illegal immigrants.

It is quite a scary picture of what our world could one day face as a reality, but it is also the story of love and how it can triumph over evil.

I totally enjoyed this book and recommend it to all!

Nowhere on Earth by Michael Elder

From the back cover--

The year is 2173. Populations on every continent are expanding at alarming rates. Childbirth is thought of as an epidemic or plague. Society appears to be in the early hours of doomsday. Crushed like sardines into towering communal apartments, people are controlled by the Thought Police, whose main weapons are the Mediums -- telepathic individuals who can recognize and pinpoint any rebellious thought which might tend to diminish the power of the State.

Seems this is actually the first in a series of books--

Barclay series
Nowhere On Earth 1972
The Perfumed Planet 1973
as Flight to Terror, U.S.A. 1973
Down to Earth 1973
The Seeds of Frenzy 1974
The Island of the Dead 1975

My Opinion

I really enjoyed this book. So much so that I am going to look for the others in this series. I guess one of the reasons that I enjoy good sci-fi is because it can be very thought provoking.

In this book we meet Roger Barclay, just one of millions of people who live in a future that is way too overpopulated. To the point where everyone's lives have to be regulated in shifts so that there is enough room for everyone. When his wife goes into labor he is thrilled about the idea of becoming a father, but when he is told that his wife has died and that his daughter is stillborn, a very rare occurrence in this future world, he is devastated. That is until he receives a videophone call from his supposedly dead wife. Barclay begins on a journey that makes him question his entire existence and that of his world. He rebels against a government that wants to control it's citizens with the use of Mediums, telepathic individuals who can detect any thoughts that are not in line with what is considered 'good' for the people. He is sent off to a work camp where he spends the next 5 years preparing for the opportunity to rescue his wife and daughter, who was born a telepath.

In his journey of rebellion Barclay comes to realize that his world is in trouble. A realization that makes everything he has known and believed seem insignificant. Where that discovery leads is the beginning of a great journey that I am looking forward to reading about in the other books of this series.

#63 -- Shade's Children by Garth Nix

From the Publisher
The Key to Survival Rests in the Hands of Shade's Children

In a futuristic urban wasteland, evil Overlords have decreed that no child shall live a day past his fourteenth birthday. On that Sad Birthday, the child is the object of an obscene harvest resulting in the construction of a machinelike creature whose sole purpose is to kill.

The mysterious Shade — once a man, but now more like the machines he fights — recruits the few children fortunate enough to escape. With luck, cunning, and skill, four of Shade's children come closer than any to discovering the source of the Overlords' power — and the key to their downfall. But the closer the children get, the more ruthless Shade seems to become ...

My Opinion
This was a fantastic book!! Kind of made me think of a junior version of 'Battlestar Galactica', which is one of my favorite television shows.

The book takes place in a futuristic setting. One day all of the people over the age of 14 just disappear leaving behind nothing but children. Shortly after the adults disappear the children are rounded up and taken to dormitories where they are raised until their 14th birthday at which time they are taken away by creatures, to the Meat Factory. The Meat Factory is a holding area where the children are help until their brains and bodies are used to create more creatures, whose sole purpose is to participate in horrible war games for the enjoyment of 'overlords'. These overlords think of the children as nothing more than animals and treat them as such.

While most children are resigned to the fact that they will be taken away when on their 'Sad Birthday', some manage to escape, and try to stay alive, constantly running from the various creatures who hunt them down.

This book follows a group of 4 of those survivors who are taken in by 'Shade', a computer program that holds the consciousness of an adult man left over from before the Change. Shade shelters and trains the children to survive against the creatures, while at the same time, using them to gather information so that he can 'set things right'. His ultimate goal is to defeat the overlords and return the world back to the way it was before. But at what price?

This book is non stop action and I had a very hard time putting it down once I started it. What a fantastic storyteller Garth Nix is and I am looking forward to reading more of his books in the near future.