Review: Demon Girl (Rae Wilder #1)

Title: Demon Girl
Author: Penelope Fletcher
Series: Rae Wilder #1
Genre: YA Paranormal Dystopian
Age restriction? 10+?
Published: 7 October 2010
Recommended for: I wouldn't recommend it.
Buy: Demon Girl @ Amazon (Free Book)

What seemed like an interesting idea was ruined by lack of editing. Too bad, really.

DESCRIPTION (via Goodreads): Rae Wilder has problems. Supernatural creatures swarm the earth, and humanity is on the brink of extinction. Stalked by a handsome fairy who claims she is like him, demonkind, Rae thinks maybe it was a mistake breaking the rules by going over the Wall into demon territory. Plunged into a world of dark magics, fierce creatures, and ritual sacrifice, she is charged with a guarding a magical amulet. The changes to her mind and body are startling, but rather than accept her purpose she struggles against who she is destined to be. Throw in a big lust for a vampire who can't keep his hands off her, and life starts to get complicated. Rae is forced to make the ultimate choice: to live and die human, or embrace her birth-right and wield magics that could turn her into something wicked, a force of nature nothing can control.

REVIEW: I thought this sounded like a fun and original story and couldn't wait to read it. Sadly, I simply couldn't get through the egregious grammatical errors, homonym confusion, and general lack of editing.

This could be a great book, but I simply could not finish it. I have great respect for Indie authors, but this is one book that really needed a good editor. Besides the language issues, the plot needed some serious tightening up and the pacing - oh lawd the pacing!

It read like an unedited NaNoWriMo attempt, sadly. Most disappointing indeed.

RECOMMENDED FOR: I couldn't finish it.

Review: Delirium

 Title: Delirium
Author: Lauren Oliver
Series: Delirium #1
Genre: YA, Dystopian
Age restriction? None
Published: 1 February 2011
Recommended for:
Buy: Delirium: The Special Edition @ Amazon

Great YA Dystopian with a few minor flaws. A stellar idea executed very well overall.

Lena Holoway is counting the days until she can have her operation and be free of the curse of love forever. Unlike many of her peers, she doesn't resent the government's interference in her life - she welcomes it, counts the days until it can happen. Because love is dangerous. Love hurts. And love kills. Lena knows this first-hand - that's the reason she's living with her aunt and her two cousins.

Desperate to escape the "curse" her family must bear, the increased scrutiny, the whispers of them being sympathizers, eager to just be normal and happy and free, Lena doesn't even consider that things could be, (should be?), different. Until the day of her evaluations to determine her future partner and life course, when the Sympathizers stage a protest. When she meets him, and her entire life and everything she thought she knew gets turned upside down.

Well-written and captivating, Lauren Oliver's Delirium is a gentle look at identity, feelings and duty as well as being a decent love story and a terrifying glimpse into what might be.

One of the things I particularly enjoyed about Delirium was how every symptom, every justification given for the outlawing of love is made to make absolute sense. I mean, it's true: love is dangerous. Love has caused people to kill themselves and others. Love has driven people insane, it's shattered nations and leveled empires. It's irrational, unexplainable and uncontrollable. And yes, it freaking hurts! It hurts a lot, sometimes.

The only major problems I had with Delirium was that the romance between Alex and Lena seemed a little bit too "pat" and easy and the Authorities of this Dystopian world seem slightly incompetent and useless. I mean, if you're going to have a totalitarian government that wants to control people up to and including what they feel, you'd need to be stricter and it wouldn't be so easy to sneak out after curfew and so on.

Still, all in all this was an excellent and satisfying read with a memorable (albeit cliffhanger!) ending.

RECOMMENDED FOR: Lovers of YA and anyone with any interest in dystopian fiction.

Review: The Limit

Title: The Limit
Author: Kristen Landon
Genre: Young Adult (Middlegrades?) Dystopian
Age restriction? None
Published: September 7, 2010
Recommended for:Young readers, readers new to Dystopian, readers looking for something easy-going
Buy: The Limit @ Amazon

Good introduction to the Dystopian genre, incredible concept but lukewarm execution.

DESCRIPTION (via Goodreads): In a world not too far removed from our own, kids are being taken away to special workhouses if their families exceed the monthly debt limit imposed by the government. (...more)
 

REVIEW: A fun "quickie" to read when you're feeling a bit nostalgic for the times when you thought one administrator with delusions of grandeur who will stop at nothing, including exploiting children, was villainous and monstrous instead of... pretty damn ordinary.

Liked:

• Fast-paced and action packed.
• This is like Dystopian Lite. It's easy and fast to read and its a fantastic concept that so much more could've been done with.
• Tight writing with some moments of stunning brilliance.

Disliked:

• The plot and characters stay pretty shallow. I don't know if it's because of the target audience (middle school) but it seemed too damn shallow, never going below any surface.
• There were some plotting inconsistencies, the main of which being how did Matt's family overspend in the first place? I'm all about showing how easily one can find oneself buried in a mountain of debt without being a bad, lazy or unorganized person, but well, then that has to be actually shown.

RECOMMENDED FOR: Very young readers or readers new to the Dystopian genre, writers who are aiming at the middle school level maybe, and readers looking for a satisfying yet simple two-hour read.

Review: Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Uglies (The Uglies 1)

Title: Uglies
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Series: #1 of The Uglies
Genre: Young Adult, Urban Fantasy, Dystopian,
Age restriction? Teens, 12+
Published: 10 May 2006

 While this is a serious and thought provoking book, I just didn't enjoy the character or the story at all.

Description: Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. Not for her license -- for turning pretty. In Tally's world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there.  ...more

REVIEW: I wanted to enjoy this book. I mean, a critical look at and deconstruction of our appearance obsessed culture and a dystopian glance at the extremes to which it can be taken - YES PLEASE. As the mother of two very young daughters, my heart withers daily as I see the glorification of impossible beauty standards and the ridicule of those not conforming them, always knowing that this excessive obsession with appearance will damage them, the question is just how much.

However, I'm very sorry to say that I just couldn't get into this book. First off, I found Tally to be completely unsympathetic. While I understand that she is the product of her culture and society (aren't we all?) and I enjoyed her adventurous side, I found her cowardly, untrustworthy and just dull. Maybe if she was just a bit more like her friend, Shay, in the beginning at least asking questions or wondering about the status quo and how it's all supposed to make sense - because it doesn't, not really, how can a society like that function? - before being thrown into a situation where she's shown how it doesn't make sense, I would have felt differently? I can't honestly say.

I also found the plot desperately predictable and unsurprising and the writing mostly uninspiring. While I did enjoy the other characters Tally met during her stay at Smoke (Yay, Croy!) and the conversations with David about appearance, it was all very predictable and formulaic. Even the "shocker" cliffhanger-ish end was something I saw coming from miles away. 

I feel bad for giving it only two, but I really just did not enjoy the book at all.