I read 100 books in 2020, here’s why it’ll never happen again

Spoilers: it had and doesn’t have anything to do with the pandemic.

A few stats to start, because I love them and I expect a lot of bookish people love them too. I started really reading again and tracking what I read in 2015 when I was finishing up my graduate degree.

2015 – 37 books read out of a goal of 25

2016 – 50 books read out of a goal of 50

2017 – 78 books read out of a goal of 75

2018 – 83 books read out of a goal of 60

2019 – 85 books read out of a goal of 65

2020 – 103 books read out of a goal of 75

Those books amounted to over 38k pages and includes 7 DNF’s. Yes, I include DNFs in my stats, but even if you take those out I still read much, much more than I had previously (previous years also include DNFs but fewer than the 2020 numbers). More books were read in 2020 than my upward trend would predict.

Here’s the thing, I would love to read 100 books a year every year. However, there were several factors that allowed this anomaly to happen and the pandemic was not any of those reasons. Honestly, the pandemic likely didn’t factor into the equation much at all beyond delaying when books on hold came in. I was extremely lucky and fortunate in that with my work, my lifestyle and education** (more on why this is relevant below, if curious) life in the pandemic is and was almost normal for me, with a few small changes that didn’t result in more reading time.

So, what were the reasons I read so much more and why won’t they factor into me reading this amount again?

In 2020 I started a looooong series that was easy to read and kept my attention. This meant after completing a book there was always something else to pick up right after if there wasn’t strong feelings on the next read. This series accounts for 15 books, with 2 more partially read and 2 more in the queue.

Another several books of the 100 where taken up by a new favourite series I read in 2020 and then proceeded to immediately re-read because they were so good. This has only ever happened once before, in 2019. I never re-read immediately after initially reading. This series accounted for 11 reads (if you math, yes one of them was not re-read, but 5 of them were).

Every year about 10-20 percent of my reading is re-reads from previous years. This year I re-read a solid series that has numerous books making for an easy gains to my total. In past years I typically re-read single books, not series.

Audiobooks continued to be my most common method to consume a book, allowing me to do other things while reading. So if I wanted to dick around on my phone I could do so while also reading. I puzzled and read A Lot in 2020 as well. Audiobooks meant I didn’t have to compromise as much on what activity I wanted to do and forfeit reading time. Obviously this will be continued into 2021 and beyond, however, this alone won’t allow me to hit 100 books in a year.

This year was the first full year since I started my job where I wasn’t working 12 hour night shifts, meaning I wasn’t spending long periods of time trying to recover lost sleep. Additionally, I got more vacation time this year and actually forced myself to take it instead of hoarding it for the future times which is a bad habit of mine.

I also, weirdly, didn’t have my usual summer slow-down with reading and was pretty steady throughout the year. Not sure how this happened.

Finally, I really leaned into reading romance books and browsed the currently available audiobooks from my library frequently. This provided a numbers boost, however I really learned that most romances don’t really hit the mark for me. I like that they are easy to get through but most of them have something or other that prevents me from really enjoying the book. In 2021 I want to move away from reading and pushing through romance books for the sake of reading. It’s not fair to me or the authors of those books when I almost inevitably give them 2 or 3 stars.

In 2021 I am aiming for 75, like I did in 2020. Currently I’m on track to hit the goal, but it’s early days and I typically have at least one or two months in the year where my reading tanks.

How did you do in 2020 and what is your outlook for 2021?

** I have a Master’s in Microbiology and Immunology as so knew what was happening and what the ramifications would be, especially the impact on life for society, long before most people and was resigned to a minimum 2 year change of everything from early in March.

Fate of the Fallen by Kel Kade

Fate of the Fallen by Kel Kade is a book the first got my interest due to the cover.  The cover designer hit every spot for me.  The green grass with the juxtaposing red text and flower accents which draws your eye to the blood-stained bag in the strong and slightly mysterious figure’s hand.  The washed-out vaguely medieval stairs and cathedral.  The stylized foliage…  All of it just works for me.  

Second, the title got to me.  I was curious. 

After that I heard a few BookTubers discuss the synopsis of the book, which convinced me not only to grab the audiobook but to start it immediately.  I went on to finish it quickly and bought a hardcover physical copy of the book.  

Almost immediately after finishing the book I wanted to re-read it.  Then I proceeded to stalk the website of the author to determine when I could expect the next one. 

It’s been several months since I read the book and I still have mixed feelings on it overall.  

I loved, loved, loved the first 3/4 of the book.  The main character is one I could root for, having morals and thoughts similar to mine and a profession I love to see in fantasy books.  His profession and up-bringing also informed a lot of his choices which is something that I appreciate in characters and world building.  His banter with other characters, though ridiculous at times, still hit me the right way.  The premise of the book was one I was instantly drawn too, because why would you just throw your hands up and give up if the chosen one died?  Why wouldn’t you just keep trying anyway, because it was on;y one man? 

It all just worked for me. 

But something happened in the last quarter to leave me feeling  disappointed and this book which was going to be my newest favourite, was suddenly…not.  It’s not something I can talk about without spoilers, so I won’t here, but there was a turn and suddenly all the things I loved about the book were overshadowed.  The book I loved so much I suddenly did not.  

So, do I recommend this book?  Yes, absolutely.  I will be reading the next one as even after the ending of the book I could see how the events that happened would add a complex layer to Aslo in the next book and if done right it could be really interesting to see how he handles it all.  However, instead of this being a must read fantasy book, it’s one were if you are interested definitely check it out and if you are not then there are many other books to read that will be your new favourite.

What was the last book you read that you thought was going to be your newest favourite, but in the end is was not?

Best and Worst

The best and the worst of the year.  These are the posts most people love to read, because ~drama~.  Here are my lists (for the record, I don’t include re-reads on my list of best or worst, and pick the best of a series if I read more than one):

Best (ranking approximate):

7. Games Wizards Play by Diane Duane 

6. Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

5. The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh

4. Gemina by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

3. Brimstone by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child 

2. Warcross by Marie Lu 

1. Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia

 

My best books will never all have 5 star ratings and 5 star books will often not appear on my list.  Why? Because my rating system is a mess and my favourites are more about my feeling and less about technical things.  I remove stars for things like major inconsistencies (*coughwarcrosscough*) but I still love them. 

Worst (rank definitive, novels only):

3. (Tie) The Night Circus by Erin Morganstern, EVE: The awakening by Jenna Moreci, Nerve by Jeanne Ryan, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

2. The Viral Storm: The dawn of a new pandemic age by Nathan Wolf

1. Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

By novels only, I mean there were a handful of graphic novels I read for whatever reason that I don’t want to think about or list again. The 5 way tie I could not break because each book had something I absolutely loved about the book, but there was at least one thing that made them a 2 or 2.5 star read.  

The Martian by Andy Weir

I read this book and a few weeks later I watched the movie, so I will be commenting on both because I found that the movie influenced how I felt about the book.  I also listened to part of the audiobook and will comment briefly on that.  

The Book

Reviews on this book consistently talk about how it is very technical and most didn’t like that aspect of it.  Being a scientist I thought I wouldn’t mind this as much as non-scientists would.  However, I did find it very technical which slowed down reading.  I found the technical parts interesting as it made it vary clear the types of problems Mark had to face and how smart he was and how he had to think things through if he was going to survive, but there was one part where NASA spent an age describing what they wouldn’t do because it wouldn’t work before going into what they would do.  This does not seem like a thing NASA would do because they have a limited time to talk to Mark and they need to get to the point quickly.  Also my science brain wanted to look over all the calculations to see if they were right as I was reading them.  

Talking about how things would go talking to NASA, I found a lot of the questions asked (on both sides) were not very intelligent and would not have been asked as they did not add to the what you need to know right now to fix the situation.  That being said, I do like that there was a ‘daily Mark update’ news show in the book and that NASA was a part of it.  It is easy to imagine that this sort of thing would happen if it was real life.

I loved the characters, but did find Mark a bit too ‘happens to know the exact right thing every time he gets into a bind’.  He always seemed to know the exact right stats and information to figure out any problem.  Astronauts do need to be smart and train for this sort of thing, but it seemed a stretch with the sheer amount of knowledge he just knew without looking it up.  I did appreciate that Mark was allowed to be emotional about his situation.  He was allowed to cry when he got into contact with earth again.  At the time of reading the book I felt he was a little to unprofessional to be an astronaut, but reading ‘Failure is not an Option’ after I read this book, I am relenting on this a little.  The rest of the cast was surprisingly large and diverse, which I liked.  You also got to see some of the side characters develop over time.  Additionally, the way the characters react to the situation is very realistic.  

Just thinking about the amount of money that was spent to get him back is staggering, yet at the same time, it’s not too hard to image that money being spent.  Perhaps not being forked out by the government, but being raised by private citizens?  I can imagine that. 

This book was super funny and had great ‘comedic timing’.  The book would switch between PoV when a polar opposite then what was expected thing was happening.   The writing was not the most sophisticated, but I got over that quickly and learned to love it. The book did drag in the middle and follow a trend of ‘something went wrong, Mark fixed it, something went wrong, Mark fixed it’ a bit too much for my taste, but again, realistic. I do think there were a few inconsistencies in the book, but nothing that really dragged the text down.  Finally, for the first third of the book everyone pinched their chin constantly, which was a great irritation to me.   

The Audiobook

I didn’t listen to much of the audiobook, but the main two things I have to comment on, was that the audiobook I listened to (I’m not sure if there is a different English version) did not match the text of the book.  That is the main reason I didn’t stick with the audiobook.  Finally, I did like the narrator of the audiobook, even if I didn’t listen to much of the book. 

The Movie

Weirdly, while I found the book too technical, the movie was not technical at all and that irritated me.  I felt the lack of the constant calculations and considerations in the movie didn’t show how dire the situation was and how much needed to be considered and how smart Mark was.  Also, while for the most part the movie followed the book, towards the end when they needed to cut things out for time they cut some of my favourite parts!  I wanted to see Mark deal with the sand storm among other things.  However, the final scene they added to the movie was lovely.  

Overall

I loved the book and I liked the movie.  The only thing I would have changed is to see how Mark’s parents dealt with certain critical situations.  

Review: Working Stiff

I was in the mood for a a non fiction book and this one happened to be one I was interested in reading for a while and available at the library (both ebook and audiobook).  Though I will admit, I was tagged by the lovely Zezee in a tag post a while back and  one of the questions was the last non fiction book you read, which was ages ago so I needed something more recent.  But!  Now I have read one and can do that tag!

Published: August 2014

Publisher: Scribner/Tantor Audio

Pages: 258 (hardcover)

Star Rating: 4

Genera: Non-fiction (science)

Series: no 

Source: Read was via audiobook through library Overdrive account 

TIGGER WARNING: EVERYTHING.  I’m not lying here, if you have triggers for almost anything, I would recommend not reading this book.  I was keeping a list but it was hard to include everything.  Here is an incomplete list of things that my trigger people: death, dead bodies, graphic violence, suicide, drug use, alcohol abuse, rape, assault, child abuse, terrorism, self harm, bugs/insects, airplane crashes, police incompetence.  The only thing I think it doesn’t have is animal abuse, but it’s been a while since I read the book so I might have forgotten if it did. 

My typical breakdown of the plot, writing, characters, and world-building does not really work for a non-fiction book, and I want to be more conscious of the fact that I was reading an audiobook and to review that as well (since narrators can make or break a book) so I’m experimenting in this review.

This book chronicles the a short period of time in the life of a forensic pathologist working as a medical examiner in New York City.  Basically, the person that does autopsies on dead people to determine cause of death.  It covers the span of time that includes the aftermath of 9/11, of which there is a whole two sections of the book devoted to that.  

Overall, I really liked this book.  It was interesting and informative.  I learned some things and heard some new and interesting stories.  The parts on 9/11 were particularly informative since I had never thought about the aftermath at all (Canadian, was young at the time and sheltered from it).  I do find it weird to rate a book about someone’s life, but I gave the book 4 stars for overall enjoyment, but there were a few things that I didn’t quite like.  

For starters, if you like to know the outcomes of all the cases talked about, this book is not for you.  There were a few cases I was particularly invested in, one was a child abuse case, but due to the nature of her job, Dr. Melinek does not get to know how the outcome for the cases she works on and this at times bothered me because I really wanted to know.  

The writing style isn’t anything special and it took a bit to get into, but at the same time the informalness of it works great for this book.  It was written in a way that listening to an audiobook was the perfect way to read the book, so I was glad I picked audio.  The narration was a little dramatic at times, sometimes it was repetitive, and it’s harder to skim over the basic science explanations  of concepts I know well as an audiobook as opposed to reading on a page, but overall I was glad I listened to the audiobook.  I will say, I wish there was a different narrator for this book.  Eby did a great job and I would love to listen to her again, but her tone was too cheery for this book.  While the author (Dr. Melinek) does seem to be a cheery person, when taking about the subject matter at hand the tone of voice used in this book didn’t seem right to me.  Also, I will be petty but the narrator COULD NOT pronounce the name Andres properly and it drove me up the wall since it was a big case the the name was spoken a hundred times. 

The structure of this books seemed a little weird at the start, since it’s not chronological.  However, once I got to the part about 9/11 I realized why that was.  It’s set-up where each chapter is more based around a theme, which works well and once you hit the 9/11 part you realize that everything she talked about previously was happening at the same time as the aftermath and it was just as important as 9/11 but would have been over shadowed if written more chronologically. 

I enjoyed learning about the path she took to become a medical examiner.  It’s something I love to hear about in people in general, but particularly in the science field (which I am a part of) because there are so many ways to get to the interesting jobs found int he field.  Also being in the field, it was neat to learn new information I didn’t know before.  Sure, I’m  not a doctor but I have learned about sickle cell anemia, but didn’t know that fact she told in the book.  At times the book did talk down to you if you have a background in science, but I know not everyone that reads it will be, so I didn’t mind too much.  Also, learning tox reports takes months is eye opening. I knew it took a while, not the 24 hour turn around seen on TV, but I was thinking weeks to a month, not 3 or 4 months and sometimes more talked about in this book.  It meant that final death certificates could take a year or more.  It was interesting to learn this.

This book is not for squeamish people.  I have a strong stomach for that sort of thing, often reading this book right before bed and not worrying about nightmares but there were times I was nauseous.  Mostly because maggots gross me out.  

Overall I would recommend this book if you are interested in it, but do realize it’s not for everyone and there are some gross and sad parts to the book.

 

Eve: the Awakening

Eve: the Awakening is my first self-published book of the year.  I will admit, I don’t tend to read a lot of them, but I do manage one or two in a year and would like to improve that.

Published: August 2015

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Pages: 547

Star Rating: 2.5

Genera: Urban Fantasy, upper teen to adult

Series: First book, only currently released 

Source: Read the first three chapters for free, bought the ebook on amazon after.   

Possible triggers: graphic violence

This book came onto my radar after discovering the author on youtube.  Jenna gives out writing advise and is really informative and funny.  When I noticed the first three chapters of her book were online, I started reading out of curiosity.  That was all it took, as I was hooked and bought the book after finishing the third chapter.  

This book had a great start that dragged me in and made me want to know more.  What let this book down was it really needed an editor in the back half.  I was reading the climax and was bored because it was overly descriptive and there was battle after battle after battle….  The climax of the story should not bore your readers.  Ever.  In my scribbles of my thoughts on this book I have that the book was slow, bored me, there were too many battles, etc written down over 5 times.  There is really a problem with you book if I can’t even remember that I wrote that already.  On top of that quite a few of the plot twists were predicable.  Yet the very end rounded things up quickly compared to the pace of the rest of the book when I would have liked an explanation.

The characters were hit or miss.  The ratio of male to female characters could have been improved upon and the majority of the female side characters were lumped into the villain side of things.  These female side characters were over-done, being more caricatures then characters with diverse thoughts and feelings.  However, the main character and her friends and the teachers (mostly male) were diverse in thought and characteristics and I greatly enjoyed them.  I did love that there was no love triangle, instead there was the gross super overprotective BF after a few weeks of knowing each other trope. 

I did like the writing outside of the battle scenes.  It was descriptive and informative.  It was the the PoV that I like most (3rd person).  There were some things that I would have changed (like the fact every character plays with their cuticles 24/7 and no one knocks) but it was good.  There were interesting and creative small details and ideas included int he book that I loved.  Diamond bullets, anyone?  Underground chimera worshippers?  There needed to be some sort of break between the dream scenes and the rest of the book, however, as it would be dream on paragraph and not dream the next and it would take a bit to realize this was not the dream anymore.  Also the slang for a future book was a little to 2010s, but it’s not the worse case of this happening in a book that I have ever seen. 

The world was interesting but there were some inconsistencies.  Chimera did seem a little too powerful and it wasn’t really explained how they came to be (they were kind of explained through genetics but they also come from non chimera parents??).  The aliens, again, interesting by inconsistent.  First they were hard to kill but then they were suddenly easy to kill in the climax, even using techniques (like melting) that they tried and failed with the first time.  

Overall the book started good but the ending dropped the rating for me.  I would still recommend people check it out, the first three chapters are free, after all!  Finally, a great quote to leave you with that is deeper then just the surface level meaning: 

“Everyone deserves to feel beautiful.  It’s your God-given right to look in the mirror and love what you see.  Never mind the imperfections-we’re all imperfect, after all.  But people tend to get so caught up in what they’re lacking, they forget to appreciate what they have.” 

The Thousandth Floor by Katharine McGee

I have a full review of this book on my Goodreads if your interested, but I had too many good comments on it while I was reading that didn’t belong in a review which I am sharing here!  If you have seen any of my ‘how do you review’ posts you will have an idea of what this is!

Published: August 2016

Publisher: Harper Collins

Pages: 448

Star Rating: 4 to 4.5

Genera: Young Adult, (older teens recommended), Futuristic contemporary?

Series: First book, at least one more forthcoming 

Source: Library Overdrive account, in ebook format

Slightly spoilery list of triggers/squicks/mature themes: drug use, underage drinking, sex, adopted sibling relationship

Note: this list has mild, expectant spoilers for the book, but is mostly just the random things I thought while reading this book. 

-Yes I had to do the math to see if the tower was realistic in dimensions

-No suicide nets to prevent the death fall?

-There was a girl falling to her death, but let’s make sure to let people know that she has curves for her dress to hug and that ‘she was more beautiful then ever before’ while falling

-Thanks to Orange is the New Black I don’t trust people named V, especially when drugs are involved

-I want to know more about AI incident that was mentioned in passing

-I really wonder how big that sucker is. The amount of resources needed would make it impossible yet there are 3 in the world.  It really would be a fascinating thing to see and live in.  I would hate it. 

-YOU CAN’T SEE STARS IN A BIG CITY!! Especially when there is a giant tower full of bright light nearby

-BI CHARACTER!

-The ‘contacts’ technology would be 1) annoying as all hell and 2) not actually work because of the small focal point range our eyes have.  However, it is super neat to think about how useful it would be.  I wonder at what age they get them

-Glad to see the power imbalance in that relationship acknowledged

-The church scene was calming and not preachy, which I appreciate

-That was the perfect person to end the book with. 

Book Review: Year Zero by Bob Reid

Published: July 2012

Publisher: Del Ray

Pages: 364

Genera: SciFi, teen friendly though words like ‘whore’ are found periodically

Final Rating: 2.5 stars

Series: nope, standalone

Source: Library Overdrive account, in ebook format

Other Disclaimers: Nothing of note besides a few gross minor ‘-isms’ I will discuss in the review

Summary:

Aliens are real.  And they devote all their time to the Refined Arts, which they are extremely good at, unlike measly, primative Humans.  However, the most revered of the Refined Arts is music and, well, aliens suck at making music.  So when it was discovered that humans are very good at making music Aliens go crazy and illegally download a tonne of human music.  Which happens to be against our copyright laws.  So now every Alien species out there – that humans don’t even know exist yet as they haven’t advanced enough to be brought into the Refined League – owes humans all the money in the universe and more.  Unfortunately certain Aliens don’t take this news well.  But how do you protect yourself against something you are not technologically advanced enough to understand?

Year Zero follows a copyright lawyer and he new Alien friends as they try and sort out this legal battle and prevent things from becoming deadly.

Review:

Ever read a book that starts out so great it makes you go “yes this is the book I need to be reading” and then within a very short time you realize that it just…isn’t?  I really hope you never have because it’s so disappointing.  That is what happened to me with Year Zero.  It had the most promising opening I have read in literal years.  Then by the end of the third chapter I knew it wasn’t going to be as good as it promised.

What this book promised from the start was a ridiculously funny and interesting read that took the subject to the extreme but didn’t cross the line into absurd.  For example, the discovery of human music was so big of an event that the Refined League reset the universe’s clock back to zero on the day and time of first discovery.  Silly, for sure, but not absurd.  Sure a few of the things brought up in the opening prologue used the set the scene and tone of the book pushed the boundaries of believability but it was never too much.  But all that fizzled as soon as the book hit chapter one.  Literally in the first chapter things start to go awry.

It started with a very racist joke.  Which, thankfully, didn’t extend past the first chapter and I didn’t see anything racist after that (though I’m white so I’m not overly sensitive to that sort of thing so I could have missed something).  After that, the book showed that it was clearly a British person writing an American.  I actually still haven’t checked if the writer is British, but there are certain words used in the book that are not New York, even if this is an AU version of NY.  In actuality, Goodreads is telling me Reid is American, but I wonder if he has spent time abroad because the word usage was just too off; it didn’t work in the location he chose to set the book in.

The author tried to do a few things to the book to make it stand out.  The humour was one thing, but it was very hit or miss.  Yet, when the humour hit, it hit well.  The giant Microsoft/Bill Gates conspiracy was inspired and I will forever think about it every time my computer crashes or isn’t running properly.  Or the joke at the bottom of this page, which I had to screen shot and share with friends from that side of the world.  The word usage was another, but I found it strange.  The footnotes thing was cute-for one chapter.  The book employed footnotes to add humorous little extras to the text that couldn’t really be added in line with the story.  After the first chapter they were more annoying then anything else.  Especially if you read it on an ereader so it was hard to flip back and forth so just read all the notes at the end of the chapter.  But if you didn’t read the chapter all in one sitting the notes didn’t make much sense.  Finally the song lists at the end of the book were only mildly interesting, but mostly just very stereotypical.

The other ‘ism’ I had an issue with in this book was the gross sexism.  It started with the whole ‘if you haven’t caught on during the entire chapter of me texting my crush I will now tell you that I’m a heterosexual man that has Feelings^TM for my neighbour when it was clearly obvious from the start of the book, after 12% and 3/4 chapters‘.  That was not really sexism, but is something you see in about 90% of books written by men with male leads.  It’s tired an boring.  Another thing you see in these types of books that was also present was the main female character was hot (shocker), a musician (yawn), studied premed in school (not unheard of but pushing believability) but was also working as a paralegal????  Is there any box that wasn’t checked in that list?  Looks, brains in both science and law and can play music and sing and liked the main male lead.  High standards of perfection, much?  Then there were two whole chapters that the second main female lead was described as a ‘tramp’ or ‘whore’ or other variations on that every time she was mentioned.  Gross. Gross. Gross. Gross.

I will say that for the most part, the world building in this book was stellar.  The things Reid thought up were creative and interesting, even though at the start there were essentially human-like aliens.  The book even poked fun of the fact that this is a tired and stale trope but then it went on to show other types of aliens and interesting worlds.  Perhaps those well read in SciFi wouldn’t be impressed with the world building as there are doubtless countless better example out there.  One of which (by Douglas Adams) I really want to read soon. 

Last Thoughts:

Overall my high hopes were dashed with this book.  It had good moments but there were a lot of issues with it and caused me to only give it a 2.5 star rating.  I’m not upset that I read this book and think that others would enjoy it.  It did give me quite a few laughs and was interesting enough.  However, it wasn’t as good as it initially promised and that disappointed me. 

How do you review (2)

When I started to review books I changed how I read.  Now when I read a book I have a piece of paper and a pen next to me so that I can write down any thoughts I have while I am reading.  Or I use the note pad in my phone.  From those often random thoughts and from my overall impressions and thoughts I build up an outline of a review which I then go back and edit to make it semi-readable.  I have a few times been too lazy to take the step to write a cohesive review and just typed up a list of thoughts I had while reading.  

However, many of the thoughts I have while reading are so specific or random they never make it into a review, and while I know they don’t I still need to write them down before I can continue to read.  So I thought I would write out a few examples of silly/random thoughts I have had recently that haven’t made it into a review.  If you like this post, let me know and I’ll do more!

-in what world does a library in a boarding school close at 7 pm on a school night??

-[character] asks really stupid questions

-The constant comparisons to his parents make me think about nature versus nurture a lot

-[animal character] understands words there is no need to use magic!  You know this!  Use your head!

-that surprise was not a surprise 

-SciFi wannabe dystopian book 

-every method of magical transport makes you spin, because of course it does. 

-that’s a very articulate speech for someone without papers or a prompter in front of them

-and somehow, no guns!

-Fred and George are life

Book Review: Saga by Conor Kostick

Disclaimer: This is the second book in a trilogy of which all books have been released.  I will be writing this review without spoilers of the first book, however some expectant spoilers will likely exist (meaning nothing specific, just broad strokes and/or themes that show up that may be used to determine plot points to truly astute readers).  

Saga by Conor Kostick

Published May 2008 

Publisher: Viking Books

Pages: 384 (Hardcover)

Genera: Young Adult, SciFi

Result: 3 stars

Summary:

After the event of Epic a probe from Earth sent a new game, Saga, to the people living on New Earth, much to the excitement of the people of New Earth.  Oblivious to this, Ghost and her gang of kids living in Saga are living the life of hover boards and petty crime.  They don’t realize they are part of a game and that things are going to start getting interesting with the arrival of new people that can come and go at will and will be reborn after death.  No one knows the reason for the convergence of these two worlds but the Dark Queen, who has dubious plans of her own to fulfil. 

Review: 

I really loved the first book in this trilogy – in fact Epic is currently my top new read of the year thus far – so I wanted to read more.  I thought I had an idea about where this book was going to go, yet it didn’t go there.  On one hand this is a good thing as it didn’t follow the typical trend of a series.  However, this book – a sequel to the previous book – ignored important world consequences that would have happened as a result of the previous book.  I would have liked to have learned more about those consequences and the ramifications.  In the second book it seemed as though the world lived on like the big things that happened in the previous book did not happen. Thus this book is more of a companion book then a sequel.  

Instead this book follows a mostly new cast of characters: Ghost and the Dark Queen being the major players, though Cindella/Erik and a few others of the previous books show up as well.  The balance of male to female characters in this book is much more balance then the previous book, which I was happy to see.  The new characters were interesting and unique with their own stories to tell, which I liked learning about.  Also, the main character, Ghost was clearly described, at least twice, as being dark-skinned.  

This book rotated between 2 main and a one-off side character’s point of view, going from 1st (most of the time) to 3rd perspective.  It wasn’t that jarring and the 1st person was pulled of better then most novels.  However, sometimes the writing worked and sometimes it didn’t.  Erik’s perspective was ranged from good to awkward, the Dark Queen was interesting but often annoying to read and Ghost’s was good mixed with some really great passages.  The characters, Erik in particular during his speech scene, were more articulate then is natural.  

The slang of the characters in Saga was interesting but for a world that has had 2000 years to develop, it was stuck in the 90s punk stage, which was very odd.  There was hoverboards, I guess as a way to make it feel futuristic, but there were still billboards and card readers and chips for money making it an interesting mash-up for a setting which could be hard to get into.  This world also had the typical dystopian faction system, this time card colours dictated how you lived life and what jobs and money you got.  Interesting, but nothing revolutionary.  There was a distinct lack of world building between the three worlds included in this book and of how Earth exists now. I would have liked to learn more about how Earth developed over all that time.  

The probe and the RALs having sort-up humans thoughts and emotions was weird but interesting, however I mostly found it confusing as to how they got to be that way as the worldbuilding in that area was lacking beyond a general ‘it happened’.  However, the consequence of it happening was thoroughly and wonderfully discussed.  

Lastly, this book is mostly set in the ‘virtual’ world, which I didn’t like as much as the great balance of virtual and real world that occurred in Epic.

Last Thoughts: 

Overall, this book did not do what I expected.  It was interesting but also kinda ‘meh’ for me.  I wanted more worldbuilding and/or for things to be revealed faster then they ultimately were.  I do not think I will be continuing on with the last book as the plot is not really something I’m interested in seeing.

However, the idea of silent parties where everyone brings their own music and headphones to listen with and dance around to your own beat sounds so neat but it would be so creepy to see a large group of people dancing with no sound at all.