Renegades, by Marissa Meyer

Ms Meyer is the author of the very successful Lunar Chronicles series, her marvellous ‘adaptation’ of our most beloved fairy tales (see review below); this time she tackles SuperHeroes with the same gusto and flair – reading this was like racing through an exciting, fabulous comic without the illustrations – and with Ms Meyer’s writing talent, who needs pictures?

In a future riven by war and anarchy, a group of Super Prodigies restores order where there was chaos, justice and laws to combat criminality, and peace to a fractured world society. They call themselves the Renegades; each have a particular power of their own and they have used these gifts to triumph over the Anarchists, groups of criminal gangs who reduced the country’s population to poverty and starvation. As the Renegades’ power and success grew, so did a mantra: ‘If you need them, call the Renegades: they will come’.

But that is not always true, as six year-old Nova Artino discovers when hitmen from the Roaches gang murder her parents and baby sister because her father refuses to make weapons for them anymore. She has called for the Renegades but no-one came except her Uncle Alec – too late to save her family but in time to save her and kill the assassin. Nova’s childhood ends that night, but her Uncle keeps her safe; he is her island in a sea of sadness, her protector even though he is known as Ace Anarchy, leader of the Anarchists and sworn enemy of the Renegades. (Still with me? Pay attention, it’s worth it!)

During the decade that follows, Nova meets other Anarchists, all prodigies as she is, all with a particular super talent: the Detonator can make bombs from blue light issuing from her fingertips; Queen Bee has complete control of bees, hornets and wasps, guaranteeing some very nasty stings, and no-one would ever want to meet Phobia, ghostly instigator of your worst nightmares. They have all sworn to destroy the Renegades, especially since the defeat and loss of their leader, Ace in the last great battle that the Renegades won. But how?

Until the plan to infiltrate the Renegades’ echelons takes shape: Nova can enter the Renegade Trials which are held every year for Prodigies; if she is successful she can undermine the organisation from within, become a Super Spy for the Anarchists and provide enough information to mount successful assassination attacks on Captain Chromium and the Dread Warden, the Renegade leaders: ah, revenge will be SO sweet – until her successful integration into the Renegades reveals that not all of them are villains. She finds the double game she is playing dangerous indeed, especially when team leader Adrian starts to show his feelings.

The action is non-stop and there are even some curly moral questions concerning the nature of good and evil, and what really makes someone heroic. Like all Ms Meyer’s stories, ‘Renegades’ is a page-turner extraordinaire; the story ends on a cliffhanger, and the concluding volume will be published at the end of this year. Can’t come soon enough!

FIVE STARS

Cinder, by Marissa Meyer

Our Children’s librarian recommended this book to me and as she’s seldom wrong in her reading choices, I’m happy to give this the ravingest (ravingest??) endorsement possible: WHAT A STORY!

The tale of Cinderella – yep, Cinderella, her nasty stepmum and the two stepsisters – is transferred hundreds of years into the future. Cinderella is now Cinder, living in New Beijing with a family who are, to say the least, most reluctant guardians. She is a mechanic (truly!) and a Cyborg, to her shame, having been fitted out with a steel hand, leg and inbuilt computer screen after a terrible childhood accident. Cyborgs are the future’s Untouchables, considered fit only to perform the most menial and degrading of tasks, but Cinder is such a good mechanic that a Royal prince visits her to have his tutor android repaired, and after that visit she and the reader are lost: she to alien romantic impulses (she is not programmed for this!) and a reluctant involvement in a life and death experiment - and the reader to being nailed to one spot until they have reached the last page.

To add insult to injury, the hapless reader finds that after a thrilling journey at a breakneck pace through more clever plot twists than a pretzel, there are three more books to come – and they haven’t been written yet! To say I feel cheated is an understatement and the withdrawal symptoms are dire, but I also say with complete confidence that ‘Cinder’ will be the next big Blockbuster book/movie series: you read it here first. 

FIVE STARS

Scarlet, by Marissa Meyer

FINALLY! The sequel to Cinder - this time a completely different take on Little Red Riding Hood, and not before time, I say.

Ms Meyer’s sequel to ‘Cinder’, her fabulous, futuristic version of ‘Cinderella’ was so good that this reader found it a real chore to have to wait for Book two – and I’m grinding my teeth to think that Book three won’t be released until next year: couldn’t Ms Meyer speed things up a bit?

Anyway:

Cinder is in prison, having been captured at the the Prince’s ball – instead of leaving a slipper behind, she leaves her Cyborg foot! How’s that for a variation on the old tale? A? A? Sadly, the loss of her foot means that she was an easy catch and is now disabled in her cell – until a secret visit from professor Erland, a research scientist: he provides her with a new state-of-the-art hand and a top-of-the-range foot, enabling her to engineer (she’s a mechanic, remember) a daring escape from jail. And guess who he is? Yep, Ms Meyer’s version of Cinderella’s fairy Godmother.

She also takes with her another prisoner, Thorne, because he has a stolen spaceship hidden in a warehouse, and on their travels they link up with Scarlet Benoit, who has been looking for her beloved grandmother, kidnapped by a gang of wolves. Scarlet wears a red hoody, has a nasty temper and a reluctant attraction to a street fighter called – Wolf. Now. Who do you think she could be? And guess what happens to poor old Grandma imprisoned by the wolf gang in the bowels of the Paris Opera House, derelict and in ruins since the Fourth World War? (the Opera House, not Grandma!) Nothing good, that’s for sure.

As before, Ms Meyer has her readers in an iron grip and doesn’t relinquish them until the very last page: once again, the reader is screaming ‘but what happens NEXT! And once again, we’ll just have to wait and see. I’m sure all this suspense is hell on the digestion, but I’ll just have to tough it out. This is a great series.

FIVE STARS

FIRST GREAT READS FOR JANUARY, 2018

The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye, by David Lagercrantz

         What a pleasure it is to meet Lisbeth Salander again!  Her creator Stieg Larsson’s untimely death sent thriller readers into mourning;  surely no other writer could hope to reproduce Lisbeth’s brilliance, foresight and verve, not to mention the satisfying levels of clever plotting, action and suspense – until David Lagercrantz presented us with ‘The Girl in the Spider’s Web’ (see 2015 review below) and proved that the impossible can be done, and done well.

            This episode of Lisbeth’s story starts with a two-month prison sentence:   despite her heroic rescue of a little boy whose life was under threat, she is imprisoned for a minor infringement connected to his case, a classic example of being damned for doing something, or damned for doing nothing.  In true Salander fashion, she hunkers down to silently serve the time – until the terrible plight of a young Bangla Deshi prisoner being abused and bullied by the terrifying prison Top Dog offends her sense of fairness:  in due course the Top Dog is sent to hospital with shocking facial injuries – and Lisbeth’s sentence ends early for ‘good behaviour’. 

            She is free again, free to investigate more aspects of her horrendous childhood in orphanages and psychiatric hospitals and, with the usual expert help from Millenium Magazine editor extraordinaire Mikael Lindkvist, try to expose the perpetrators behind early psychological experiments on twins that all went shockingly, fatally wrong.  For Salander has a twin, Camilla – as evil as she is good, and they were both subjected to the same psychiatric ‘evaluations’.  Thanks to her guile and beauty, Camilla escaped and fled to Russia and a life of crime with their gangster father.  Now Salander feels that it is time to find out how many other cases of ‘separated’ twins are out there, and who authorised it – and most importantly:  why are people starting to die so that these ‘experiments’ may remain secret?

            As with the previous book, there is plenty of action;  Lisbeth is still a champion karate expert, not to mention the Queen of Hackers and a superior mathematician ( is there nothing this girl cannot do?  Yep!  She can’t cook – not that she cares – she adores junk food.) but this story has a couple of subplots that require a lot of characters;  it is as though Mr Lagercrantz had several causes he wanted to promote and tried to fit them all into one story.  That is a shame, for the plot slows, moving along by fits and starts:  the ghost of Stieg Larsson must be tsk-tsking and wagging his finger.

            Nevertheless, Mr Lagercrantz’s mastery of the complex character that is Lisbeth Salander is absolute;  he’s still a worthy successor to Stieg Larsson and if there are a few less subplots in the next novel that’s all to the good.  FOUR STARS

The Girl in the Spider’s Web, by David Lagercrantz,

Continuing Stieg Larsson’s Millenium series.

Swedish author David Lagercrantz has been given the daunting task of continuing Stieg Larsson’s blockbuster series of novels about Lisbeth Salander, ace computer hacker, mathematical genius and all-round general recluse and misfit, and Mikael Blomkvist, crusading investigative journalist, founder with his some-time lover Erika Berger of the high-end Millennium Magazine, their weapon against graft and corruption in high places.  They have many enemies;  those who don’t want their dirty secrets exposed, and colleagues from other publications who envy their stellar reputation.  Millennium is constantly under siege from those whose causes would be furthered if it became defunct, and when this story opens, Blomkvist and Berger are facing a takeover that has definitely turned hostile.

            Mr Lagerkrantz has done a formidable job of filling in the backstory from Stieg Larsson’s three wonderful books;  he is meticulous in the origins of Salander’s and Blomkvist’s relationship and has fashioned a credible, clever plot that every reader will find compelling, especially as Lisbeth’s long lost sister Camilla – as beautiful as Lisbeth is not – makes an appearance to equal that of her half-brother Ronald Niedermann, a monster impervious to pain.  It is very clear that the siblings’ awful father, Alexander Zalachenko has bequeathed some horrific genes to his unfortunate progeny, but Lisbeth is the only one with a conscience and a sense of what is right – which makes her a formidable opponent of her sister, whose hatred of Lisbeth is as deep as it is irrational.

            The reader has to concentrate;  Mr Lagerkrantz’s plot is not simple.  Professor Frans Balder, a technological genius and front-runner in the race to produce superior artificial intelligence is murdered by intruders but all they take are his computer and cell phone.  Unfortunately for the assailant, Balder’s 8 year-old son, August, witnesses the murder.  He is severely handicapped by autism – but he draws beautifully and it is absurdly easy for him to produce with photographic realism his impression of the death scene and the killer.  Which means that he has to die, too. 

            Enter Lisbeth Salander:  she literally comes to the rescue of August with a flying rugby tackle and the hijacking of an innocent motorist (who will never be the same again!) – she knew Professor Balder and has uncovered from her various hacking exercises (the National Security Agency has received special attention) that his worries about keeping his studies and conclusions secret were anything but unfounded.  She takes it upon herself (with the help of Blomkvist and Berger) to go into hiding with August, whose traumatic experiences Lisbeth identifies with completely. She is a formidable protector and once again the reader is swept up and borne inexorably on the waves of suspense to the end of a great story.

Mr Lagerkrantz is a highly efficient and meticulous writer;  he has covered every base, recreated Mr Larsson’s characters superbly and generated enough suspense for more than one novel – which I hope means that another won’t be far off for the beautiful, evil Camilla is still at large, and the NSA is still highly suspect despite being on the side of right. This is a very competent sequel and I look forward to reading the next one.  FIVE STARS              

LAST GREAT READS FOR DECEMBER, 2017

Hi everyone.  I trust you have all survived Christmas and are busy making those frail little New Year’s Resolutions to reduce the waistlines – and the carousing that enlarged them, so that you may face 2018 with strength and confidence.  Really?  Who am I kidding?  What we all really want to do is blob out on the beach in this amazing summer weather, and to that end I have compiled a little list of mighty reading culled from the year’s blog and guaranteed to satisfy all Great Readers. 

            So:  in chronological order only (very loud fanfare of trumpets)

JULIA’S TOP TWENTY!

Blue Dog, by Louis de Bernieres, reviewed January

I am Pilgrim, by Terry Hayes, ditto

A man Called Ove, by Frederick Backman reviewed February

The Pigeon Tunnel, a memoir by John le Carré, ditto

The Rules of Backyard Cricket, by Jock Serong, reviewed March

Hagseed, by Margaret Atwood, ditto

Carry Me, by Peter Behrens ditto

Leap of Faith, by Jenny Pattrick, reviewed May

Moonglow, a memoir by Michael Chabon, reviewed June

The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas, ditto       Young Adults

Saints for All Occasions, by J. Courtney Sullivan, reviewed July

Look Who’s Back, by Timur Vermes, reviewed August

Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders, ditto

Among the Living, by Jonathan Rabb, reviewed October

The Blood Miracles, by Lisa McInerney, ditto

The Force, by Don Winslow, ditto

A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towle, ditto

The Cartel, by Don Winslow, reviewed November

Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah, ditto

The Trials of Morrigan Crow, by Jessica Townsend     Junior fiction

            I’m sorry I can’t provide a link to each review;  my little blog was supposed to receive an overhaul by clever techno library staff but they have had to attend to more important library chores this year.  However -  in 2018 anything could happen!  ( I hope.)

            In the meantime, I wish you all a most happy, prosperous and HEALTHY New Year, and many hours of pleasure reading great books, and continuing, as always,  to be Great Readers.  

Julia's top twenty books from 2017

Click the links to read my reviews of the following books:

Blue Dog, by Louis de Bernieres (January 2017)
I am Pilgrim, by Terry Hayes (February 2017)
A man Called Ove, by Frederick Backman (February 2017)
The Pigeon Tunnel, a memoir by John le Carré (February 2017)
The Rules of Backyard Cricket, by Jock Serong (March 2017)
Hagseed, by Margaret Atwood (March 2017)
Carry Me, by Peter Behrens (April 2017)
Leap of Faith, by Jenny Pattrick (May 2017)
Moonglow, a memoir by Michael Chabon (June 2017)
The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas (June 2017) Young Adults
Saints for All Occasions, by J. Courtney Sullivan (August 2017)
Look Who’s Back, by Timur Vermes (August 2017)
Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders (August 2017)
Among the Living, by Jonathan Rabb (October 2017)
The Blood Miracles, by Lisa McInerney (October 2017)
The Force, by Don Winslow (October 2017)
A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towle (October 2017)
The Cartel, by Don Winslow (November 2017)
Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah (November 2017)
The Trials of Morrigan Crow, by Jessica Townsend  (November 2017) Junior fiction

MORE GREAT READS FOR DECEMBER, 2017

Hi everyone – I thought it would be a nice idea at this time of the year to suggest some Christmas reading for children as well as my usual recommendations for parents.  Our beautiful library has an excellent selection of famous and favourite authors guaranteed to absorb all enthusiastic young readers, from those just starting chapter books to the devoted followers of Heroes such as Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson, the Harry Potter series (of course!), and Tom Gates, cool artist dude and aspiring member of a band with his mate – as soon as they learn to play.

            As we know, it usually rains on Christmas Day – hard to believe after eight weeks of relentless sunshine, but any of the titles below will certainly make the time fly by for kids whether the rain falls or stays away.

            Have a most happy Christmas everyone, and a safe and healthy New Year.  My Top Twenty list will be in the next post.  CHEERS!  

BRILLIANT BOOKS FOR BRILLIANT KIDS.

The Brilliant World of Tom Gates, by Liz Pichon

This is the first book in this great series written by Liz Pichon disguised as twelve year-old Tom Gates .  He’s really good at some things, like Art and English (sometimes) – and thinking up very clever excuses to give to his teacher as to why he hasn’t done his homework.  He can’t say the dog ate it because they haven’t got a dog, so he blames his older sister Delia (‘she spilt her coffee on it!);  in fact he blames Delia for a lot of things (I’m late because Delia hogged the bathroom!’ when in fact it’s Tom who locked himself in there to spite her), and does his level best to get her into trouble with his parents – ‘Mum, Delia’s got a boyfriend.  She had him here in the house!’ –He also hides Delia’s sunglasses regularly.  Yep, Tom is a bit of a stirrer, but he is not all bad.

            He’s best mates with his neighbour Derek;  they are both practising to be in a band when they grow up – they’re a bit rubbish yet but hey, they’re only twelve.  When they get more ‘professional’ they will call themselves the DogZombies.  Is that a cool name or what?  And he has a Megacrush on Amy Porter, who now sits next to him at the start of the new term (WOW!  Could he be any luckier??)  Yes, because Mr Fullerman has put him in the front row ‘to keep an eye on him’ (NO, NO, send me to the back again where you can’t see me!) and on the other side is none other than Measly Marcus  Meldrew, the most irritating kid in the school.  He’s totally sneaky and uncool and should be sitting somewhere far, far away.  Like Australia.

            Tom and Derek are huge fans of DUDE3, the best band on the planet, and they can hardly believe that these mighty stars will be performing in their town soon. Book One deals with their attempts to get to the concert – that turn out to be touch and go, because Derek’s new dog (called Rooster) eats the tickets!  (Truly.)

  Coupled with her great illustrations and Tom’s truly imaginative solutions to all of his everyday problems, Liz Pichon has created a great character that all kids can identify with – and all parents, too!  FIVE STARS

Brilliant, by Roddy Doyle

  

 

        When the great Roddy Doyle wrote this story for children poor old Ireland was in the middle of a very low time in its economy – and its spirits;  so many people were losing their jobs – and their houses – because they had no money to pay off their bank loans;  thousands of people were in such a bad way financially that they started to lose hope:  the old Black Dog of Depression descended on Ireland, and Dublin in particular where the story opens, like an angry, evil cloud.

            Raymond and Gloria’s Uncle Ben has had to shut his business down;  at one stage he was so busy he didn’t have time to answer his phone.  Now the phone doesn’t ring at all, and he has had to surrender his house to the bank because he can no longer pay the mortgage.  He is living with Raymond  and Gloria’s Mam and Dad and is very sad indeed.  Their Granny (who has her own little flat by the side of their house but never seems to stay there) says the Black Dog has him;  in fact the Black Dog has Dublin’s funny bone, she says, and no-one will be feeling better until Dublin’s funny bone is given back.

            Raymond and Gloria hear about this because they are hiding under the kitchen table listening to the adults talk about these adult things because they think the kids are in bed;  it has been a game they both enjoy, sneaking under the table without being seen.  They are horrified to learn of the Black Dog of Depression but because they love their Uncle Ben and want him to be happy again, they decide to search for the Black Dog and wrench back the funny bone – by force if need be!

            And what adventures they have while they pursue that evil animal, and what a surprise to find that other children, hundreds of them, are searching for him too, because they want their Mams and Dads, sisters and brothers to smile again.    Animals they meet on the search suddenly start talking, directing them where to go, until finally after a frightening showdown the horrid Black Dog is vanquished and forced to give up Dublin’s funny bone, for children are immune to his power, especially if they chant one word – ‘BRILLIANT’, and believe in it every time they say it.  ‘BRILLIANT’.

            This is a lovely story and sure proof that Ireland’s funny bone is working perfectly.  Roddy Doyle is just BRILLIANT.  FIVE STARS

PERCY JACKSON ROCKS!

The Lightning Thief, and Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

Junior Fiction                                   ages 10 upwards

                Twelve year-old Percy (short for Perseus) Jackson attends a private school in New York.  He has almost lost count of the schools from which he has been expelled or ‘asked to leave’;  he has ADHD and Dyslexia and the private academy in which he is now enrolled feels as temporary as all the rest for, sure enough, on a field trip to an exhibition of Greco-Roman art at a big museum, he pushes the class bully into a fountain for picking on his only friend Grover.

            Grover himself is a square peg in a round hole;  his legs are strangely curved and he walks with difficulty – he’s EASY to pick on, until Percy defends him, only to be taken away by teacher Mrs Dodds to be punished, which is pretty much what Percy expects – until he realises that all is not well with Mrs Dodds:  she has transformed into one of the Three Furies of Greek myth and is there to kill him!  At the last moment, wheelchair-bound Mr Brunner, the other teacher with the party, throws him a ballpoint pen which miraculously transforms into a lethal sword, and the wild blows Percy swings at Mrs ‘Fury’ Dodds send her into a pile of dust.

            It goes without saying that it’s hard for Percy to get his head round all this life and death stuff, especially as the others in the class seem unaware of what is going on;  in fact none of them remember a teacher called Mrs Dodds.  There also seems to be a strange complicity between Mr Brunner and Grover;  for someone in a wheelchair, and another who doesn’t walk very well and ALWAYS wears a cap even though he has plenty of tight curly hair, they seem to always have his back – a fact that Percy finds comforting but mystifying.

            Needless to say, all is eventually revealed in Rick Riordan’s fabulous series, this book being the first, and published in 2005 – which means that I must be the last one on the planet to become acquainted with Percy Jackson – but better late than never, I say!

            It transpires that Percy is a ‘Half-Blood’, a demi-god, the child of a Greek god and a human, the human being his mother Sally, who has spent her life trying to keep him safe, to the extent that she has made a marriage with a cruel, crude and barbaric man who doesn’t care for either of them, but she feels that it is protection – of a kind, against the forces sent to kill Percy, for he is the child of Poseidon, the God of the Sea, one of the Big Three, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, who all swore an oath never to have any more children with mortals after the end of World War Two, for they felt that the conflict that nearly destroyed Western civilisation was their fault for consorting with humans. 

            Mr Riordan has created a winning formula with Percy and his adventures:  Grover turns out to be a young satyr;  his funny walk is because he has goat’s legs – those sneakers with the false feet just about kill him!  And he wears a hat all the time because of the tiny goat horns protruding from his forehead.

            Mr Brunner who travels everywhere in his wheelchair, does so because it is his disguise;  he is Chiron the centaur – he could hardly tool through the streets of New York with the torso of a man and the body of a horse.  Oh, this is a great series – especially when Percy discovers that he has been accused by Zeus and Hades of stealing Zeus’s Lightning Bolt, and The Helm of Invisibility, precious to Hades:  it is not easy to accept the fact of being the son of a god, then to find that he is on a hit list is just plain insulting.  He will have to fight back!

            So begins Percy’s  quests and death-defying adventures with other half-bloods who become his friends – and one who betrays them all.  And an extra pleasure for me was to find that the ancient myths that fascinated me as a child are alive and well and accurately portrayed in a modern setting.  Mr Riordan is scrupulously correct – and very funny - in his portrayal of all the gods and monsters he introduces to his stories – you should see what Medusa does to Percy’s stepfather!  Great stuff, especially when he introduces a young Cyclops and Jason’s Golden Fleece in ‘The Sea of Monsters’.    SIX STARS