Origin Review

Origin by Jessica Khoury

Title: Origin

Author: Jessica Khoury

Series: Origin #1 (Has a Short Story Companion)

Publisher: Razorbill

Publication Date: September 4, 2012

Genre: Science fiction; Mystery; Romance; Young Adult

Pages: 394

Format: Hardback
goodreads

Pia has grown up in a secret laboratory hidden deep in the Amazon rain forest. She was raised by a team of scientists who have created her to be the start of a new immortal race. But on the night of her seventeenth birthday, Pia discovers a hole in the electric fence that surrounds her sterile home―and sneaks outside the compound for the first time in her life.

Free in the jungle, Pia meets Eio, a boy from a nearby village. Together, they embark on a race against time to discover the truth about Pia's origin―a truth with deadly consequences that will change their lives forever.

Origin is a beautifully told, shocking new way to look at an age-old desire: to live forever, no matter the cost.

“We are limited only by the questions we haven’t yet thought to ask.”

Pia is perfect. Or at least that’s what everyone tells her. She had unbreakable skin, enhanced reflexes to match those of a cat’s, and incomparable speed and agility (but not strength). Oh, and she’s immortal. Her life expectancy is eternity. She is alone in that she is the first and the only of her kind. She dreams of creating her own race, her own Mr. Perfect, so she won’t have to be alone. Hidden away in the jungle, she has never seen the outside world. She is happy with her home and her family of scientists, never questioning her way of life. Until. One fateful day she escapes into the jungle and gets her first taste of freedom, and meets a boy named Eio. With the help of the natives, she learns the truth of her origin. And it changes everything.

I don’t know what I expected from this novel. A fun story, maybe, that I would quickly forget and never think about again. A filler of space and time that would entertain me and keep my boredom at bay. This book was all of those things. And not much else.

“‘No one should live forever,’ I whisper. ‘Isn’t that how it goes? ‘There must me be a balance. No birth without death. No life without tears. What is taken from the world must be given back. No one should live forever, but should give his blood to the river when the time comes so that tomorrow another may live.’”

While the frequently brought up questions of immortality and ethics were interesting and insightful, and it did add depth to the plot, this book could’ve been so much more. The characters, in my opinion, fell flat in terms of complexity and, well, character. There was only one layer to their personalities, and I wanted there to be more. Pia, for example, was supposed to be smart, agile, and perfect, but all I read was a normal teenage girl who couldn’t get paper cuts. She was raised as a scientist but was ironically incurious about what was going on behind lab doors. Eio, too, was flat and uninteresting. The romance between the two was border-line insta-love (just add water!). This book didn’t connect with me.

The only truly good thing about this book was the insightfulness of the questions it brought up, the creativity behind the science in the book, and the setting. It was just interesting enough that I kept reading until the end of the book, but, honestly, this book was way too long and had too many extraneous elements for what the author was trying to convey. A book this size should have more action, more suspense and climatic moments, and Origin fell flat.

Origin was not an entirely bad book. It was just sub-par to all the other sci-fy books I had read in the past. It had so much potential, and I wanted to love it, but I couldn't. In short: unimpressive, and only the slightest bit interesting

 “They all haunt my mind, waiting for me in the shadow of sleep. Reminding me how fragile this life is and how easily it can be lost. Compelling me to live and to live well, while I still can.

Because sooner or later, we must all face eternity.”

The Winner's Curse Review

The Winner's Curse by Marie Rutkoski

Title: The Winner’s Curse

Author: Marie Rutkoski

Series: The Winner’s Trilogy #1

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Publication Date: March 4, 2014

Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Young Adult

Pages: 355

Format: Hardback
goodreads

Winning what you want may cost you everything you love.

As a general’s daughter in a vast empire that revels in war and enslaves those it conquers, seventeen-year-old Kestrel has two choices: she can join the military or get married. But Kestrel has other intentions. One day, she is startled to find a kindred spirit in a young slave up for auction.

Arin’s eyes seem to defy everything and everyone. Following her instinct, Kestrel buys him—with unexpected consequences. It’s not long before she has to hide her growing love for Arin. But he, too, has a secret, and Kestrel quickly learns that the price she paid for a fellow human is much higher than she ever could have imagined. 

Set in a richly imagined new world, The Winner’s Curse by Marie Rutkoski is a story of deadly games where everything is at stake, and the gamble is whether you will keep your head or lose your heart.

“He knew the law of such things: people in brightly lit places cannot see into the dark.”

I should really stop reading the first book of a series right after it’s released. That should stop. Because, seriously? Now I have to wait a whole eight months before the sequel comes out. You think I would've learned by now, but no.

Kestrel is the daughter of a warlord, forced into a life she doesn't want. Arin is a slave, one of the conquered race that is now forced into labor. Their epic story begins when Kestrel buys Arin at a slave auction on a crazy impulse, not knowing the dark secrets Arin brings along with him. When secrets are revealed and a revolution begins, they are forced apart, even more than they were before. Will they ever be able to find a way back to each other again?

“Music made her feel as if she were holding a lamp that cast a halo of light around her, and while she knew there were people and responsibilities in the darkness beyond it, she couldn't see them. The flame of what she felt when she played made her deliciously blind.”

This book was fantastic. The characters were complex and intricate and the plot was even more so. Of course, the book ends just as its getting good. Instead of fading into black like how books are supposed to, this one reaches the epitome of the story line, and just ends. Just. Ends.

Besides the obvious problem of the Mt. Everest of cliffhangers, I would read this book again. And again. And again. It was that good. The romance? Perfecto. The plot? Suspenseful and enthralling. If you loved Graceling by Kristin Cashore, this book is more than just a must read for you. It is a have to read.  

Everything about this book was perfectly perfect. I loved the setting and the conflict. It was impossible to put it down. Reading this book was all I wanted to do. One piece of advice? Read it when the sequel is out.

“‘Happiness depends of being free’, Kestrel’s father often said, ‘and freedom depends on being courageous.’”

The Winner’s Crime

March 3, 2015

These Broken Stars Review

These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

Title: These Broken Stars

Authors: Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

Series: Starbound #1

Publisher: Disney Hyperion

Publication Date: December 10, 2013

Genre: Science Fiction; Romance; Young Adult

Pages: 374

Format: Hardback
goodreads

It's a night like any other on board the Icarus. Then, catastrophe strikes: the massive luxury spaceliner is yanked out of hyperspace and plummets into the nearest planet. Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Merendsen survive. And they seem to be alone. 

Lilac is the daughter of the richest man in the universe. Tarver comes from nothing, a young war hero who learned long ago that girls like Lilac are more trouble than they’re worth. But with only each other to rely on, Lilac and Tarver must work together, making a tortuous journey across the eerie, deserted terrain to seek help. 

Then, against all odds, Lilac and Tarver find a strange blessing in the tragedy that has thrown them into each other’s arms. Without the hope of a future together in their own world, they begin to wonder—would they be better off staying here forever?

Everything changes when they uncover the truth behind the chilling whispers that haunt their every step. Lilac and Tarver may find a way off this planet. But they won’t be the same people who landed on it.

I’ve been waiting for a good space science fiction book, and it looks like I finally got what I asked for. When I saw the quote on the front of the book broadcasting that Marie Lu liked it, I thought, by golly, if Marie Lu liked, then I better like it as well. Now that I’ve read it, I have to say Ms. Lu has impeccable taste in books.

Very reminiscent of Beth Revis’s Across the Universe, (you can find her praise on the back cover), this novel blends romance with cut throat survival and an enthralling plot. Lilac LaRoux is a legend’s daughter, untouchable by anyone, no matter their status. Tarver Merendsen (cool name, right? I thought so too…) is a war hero, a not-so-rags-to-riches storybook character. He is invited into the high-class parties, but he is not one of them. When calamity strikes the ship Icarus, it is only with the help of Lilac that they both make it off the doomed ship. Now they are stranded together, two people who don’t get along, and definitely would not be seen in the same room together in other circumstances, let alone helping one another. As their differences subside and mysterious secrets are unraveled, will they even accept the help of the rescuers they so badly wanted in the beginning?

I think the writing is what really sold me These Broken Stars. It is so simply elegant and surreal that you can’t help but love it. Written by two authors, it brings a writing style that is so beautiful and unique that you can’t, just can’t, stop reading it. The amount of time it took for me to finish this book? One and half days. Yeah…it’s that good.

While Lilac could be hopelessly helpless and frustratingly stubborn in the worst way, she grew on me towards the end (and thank god because I was about to hate the book just because of her). And Tarver. Oh my goodness, Tarver. If there’s one thing that Kaufman and Spooner know, it’s how to make a love interest to swoon over. Utterly unrealistic and probably never going to happen, of course, but a girl can dream can’t she?

I commend you Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner for putting on a performance I couldn’t stop watching and I enthusiastically ask for an encore. Bravo! Fablisimo!

This Shattered World

December 23, 2014