Sky Without Stars / Jessica Brody and Joanne Rendell / 592 pgs

I was so lucky to get to meet the authors of this wonderful new book at my library last week. They told great stories about how they came up with the idea of Les Miserables in space and reading this book was a little like a homecoming for me because I love the movie (though I must admit I haven't yet read the book by Victor Hugo).

The story is about how humanity left Earth and 505 years later live in a system with three stars and twelve inhabited planets. Laterre is ruled by the Paress family where there are three estates (royalty, administrative, and the workers), much like how there were three estates in pre-Revolutionary France. The book mainly focuses on Alouette, Chatine, and Marcellus, who are stand-ins for Cosette, Eponine, and Marius in the original Hugo novel. In this far off future, humanity has mostly lost its ability to read the written word save for a few folks who must stay hidden and protect the last library on Laterre. Meanwhile, the Third Estate starves in a rainy, marshy environment while the First and Second Estates live, eat, and play in a massive biodome under a virtual blue sky.

This is the first book in the System Divine series and there are plans for more two books at least. I can't wait for the next one as I really got invested in the characters, especially Chatine.

Also, I don't tend to judge a book by its cover, but the first time I saw this book cover, I knew I would love this book. Isn't it gorgeous? Best Book Cover Ever!

Glass Sword/Victoria Aveyard/444pgs

This is the second book in the Red Queen series. We continue to follow Mare Barrow as she grapples with her powers and the idea that there are other “Reds” with superhuman abilities. As well as her place in the changing world. Does she really want to be apart of the rebellion she has unintentionally become the face of? Along the way shes also trying to avoid the new king that’s obsessed with her and doesn't care who and how many people he has to kill to get her back.

While reading this book I found myself very frustrated because of how frustrated Mare was. This was not my favorite of the series so far, but necessary to see where Mare is at in her head.

Red Queen/ Victoria Aveyard/ 388pgs

This is the first book in the Red Queen series.

The story follows Mare Barrow, a common “Red” blooded thief, as she is thrust into the worlds of the “Silvers”, high class people with silver blood and superhuman abilities, when she discovers she has powers as a Red. To cover up the fact that a Red has powers, the King and Queen of Norta give Mare a new identity as a member of a long lost Silver family and betroth her to one of the princes. What follows in an intense ride. One wrong move and Mares life, or her family's lives are at risk.

I didn’t see the ending coming until it started and I had to stop what I was doing and just listen. It was exciting, tense, and terrifying. It does have a bit of the YA love triangle cliche but honestly the romance kind of takes a backseat to everything else. This was a fantastic book and I look forward to more books by Victoria Aveyard.

Carve the Mark / Veronica Roth / 468 pgs

This was definitely a return to form for Veronica Roth after the disappointment of <i>Allegiant</i>. The story takes a few chapters to really sink in, since we are invited into a galaxy in which people develop gifts from the Current, a stream of energy that seems to travel along the galaxy and wrap itself around the several inhabited planets. The different planets, nations, people, and objects took a bit to fully understand, and I listened to an audio book, which sometimes hinders the process of understanding new world-building. Nevertheless, the story was very well done. It was original, and since I read so much, I highly value unique stories. I know I enjoyed the story, because at times I didn't want to get out of my car or shut my car's engine because I was so engrossed with what was going on.

The crux of the story is that in this galaxy where people develop Current gifts, one planet is divided between two peoples, the peaceful Thuvhe and the warrior race, the Shotet. When some Shotet soldiers kidnap the two sons of the Oracle of Thuvhe, the sons have to figure out a way to escape or else succumb to their fate, to die in the service of Shotet's ruling family, the Noaveks. Meanwhile, Cyra Noavek, the younger sister of the ruler of Shotet, is plagued by constant pain, a "gift" of the Current. Her older brother uses her as a weapon against his enemies and she's sick of it. Together with one of the sons of the Oracle, she might figure out a way to break away from her brother, Ryzek.
For those who enjoyed Red Rising, the Hunger Games, and the Divergent series, I highly recommend. Like those books, there's quite a lot of violence, but no worse than those books.

Red Queen / Victoria Aveyard / 383 pgs

I just finished the first book in Victoria Aveyard's YA dystopia series. Red Queen has a lot of elements that other books in the genre have. Poor girl, Mare Barrow, is part of a group of people in the future who are oppressed by the elite. In this case, the oppression is due to some sort of human evolution that has changed the color of blood in certain people to silver. The silver-bloods are also blessed with X-Men type powers. Some can control fire, some can control water, some can turn invisible, some have superhuman strength, some can heal, some can control people with their thoughts, etc. These superhuman powers, however, seem to be family traits, so one family is full of water-controllers, while the other family is full of healers, and so on. The king of Norte and his two sons are fire-controllers. The Reds, those with red blood, are just normal humans who slave for the kingdom. Mare, it turns out, is something new, a Red with the power to control electricity. Like a lot of other books in this genre, there's a bit of a love triangle, or quadrangle, There's revolution and violence. There's infiltration and betrayal. It's Hunger Games mixed with Divergent mixed with Red Rising mixed with Cinder.

Despite a lot of YA dystopian tropes being thrown about, I found the series rather new too. I liked the twist at the end and it made me curious to read the next book. For those who love the books I mentioned above, I think you'll enjoy this one too, even if some of the elements are the same.

The Last Star (5th Wave Series, #3) / Rick Yancey / 338 pgs

I just finished The Last Star and really enjoyed it. I found it both less confusing than and better than The Infinite Sea but I still think the first book The 5th Wave was the best overall. My only complaint with this book is that there were too many "Oh, that's sad, this character died" moments only to find out a few chapters later that they somehow survived their seemingly fatal wound and now they're hunky-dory. This happens multiple times, so I am in no way spoiling the book, because people also die and stay dead as well. Have fun predicting who lives and who dies! Unlike some other reviews I've already read on Goodreads, I thought the ending was fitting even if it was a bit inconclusive.

In the last book of the series, Cassie, Evan, Ben, Sam, Dumbo, and Megan continue their fight against both the Others and those who have been programmed to believe they are the Others. The biggest question is how can humanity survive when you can no longer trust other humans?

What's Left of Me (The Hybrid Chronicles #1) / Kat Zhang / 343 pgs

I listened to this book on audio, and I have to admit, it bored me to tears. Had I not been using this book in my #ReadHarder challenge, to read a first book in a series by a person of color, I would have dropped this like a rock before hitting the halfway point.

The book is about a teenage girl living in some sort of alternate reality of Earth in present day. In this world, the Americas (North and South America) are one big country. Not a whole lot about the rest of the world is known since some huge Hybrid Wars occurred a century before. Computers are very rare and it doesn't seem like there's an internet. Everyone is born with two souls, essentially two separate personalities with separate names within one body. Through the early years of childhood, the souls take turns controlling the body, until the recessive soul eventually dies out or fades away, leaving only one soul to control the body. However, some people end up being Hybrids, where no settling occurs, and both souls remain. Those people are usually taken away to God knows where. The book's main character is one such person (or persons), Addie and Eva. They are also taken away to a hospital where experiments are done to try to remove the recessive soul, Eva. It is Eva who narrates the entire book.

This is only the first book in a trilogy, but I've read the reviews of the 2nd and 3rd books, and I know that the author, Ms. Zhang, does a horrible job of explaining how things work. For instance, if there are two souls in a body, how does the persons figure out what to do career-wise? What if each soul falls in love with a different person? What is going on in the rest of the world? Supposedly the Americas are the only country that bans hybrids, and most of the rest of the world is made up of only hybrids. How does that work?

I have no plans of reading the rest of the series. I don't recommend this book to those who are looking for YA Dystopia/Science Fiction books.

Flawed/Cecelia Ahern/324 pgs.

Celestine North is a perfect teenager--good student, obedient to her parents, girlfriend to Art Craven, whose father is the head judge for the Guild. The Guild is the ruling body that determines if a person is "Flawed." The Flawed live by different rules in society--they have curfews, eat different food, sit in different seats on the bus, just to name a few. Celestine performs an act that marks her as Flawed. The book makes the reader think how society treats its members that are considered different or "flawed." This book is a fast read, but it leaves some unfinished plot lines that will be resolved in the next installment. Recommended!

Stars Above / Marissa Meyer / 369 pgs

This is the end. The last book in the Lunar Chronicles universe. I'm really sad. I loved these books so much. I've seen a lot of people complain about Stars Above and say that some of the stories were unnecessary. Obviously, none of the stories were necessary, but they were all perfect. A lot of them flesh out what was only mentioned in passing in the previous books, including Carswell Thorne's interactions with his high school crush, Kate; how Winter chose to stop using her Lunar gift and how she got her facial scars; how Cinder came to live with the Linh family; how Wolf was taken from his family and turned into a special ops soldier in the Queen's army; how Cress was taken to the satellite when she was very young; and how Michelle Benoit was roped into helping keep the heir to the Lunar throne safe for eight years. Other short stories were new, like Kai's perspective when he first met Cinder and "The Little Android", which is based on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid", but the best story of all was the last one, which goes forward a little over two years into the future and gathers all of our favorite characters together as they celebrate a certain two characters' wedding. To tell you who would be to give away plot points. Suffice to say, it was an awesome epilogue to what is definitely now my favorite YA series!

Winter / Marissa Meyer / 824 pgs

I would say that I was upset that the series has ended, what has become my favorite YA series, and indeed one of my favorite series period, but then I would be forgetting that I still have Stars Above and I'm so excited about that! Winter was a bit long, but I still gave the book 5 stars because the ending completely satisfied me.

Winter is considered Book #4 in the series, although with Fairest (Book #3.5), it's actually the 5th book in the series. Everything comes to a head as Cinder, Captain Carswell Thorne (easily my favorite character), Wolf, Emperor Kai, and Cress take on Queen Levana. Scarlett still needs saving. And Princess Winter must learn to overcome her Lunar sickness if she wants to help in the revolution against her evil stepmother. Like the other three main books, a bit of romance for Winter occurs as she deals with her attraction to her childhood friend, now royal guard, Jacin Clay.

Of the four women in the series, Winter was my least favorite and her romance with Jacin was probably my least favorite to read, but that didn't detract too much from all of the action and the final showdown between Cinder and her friends and Levana. That said, I did like that the story of Winter probably most mirrored the original fairy tale (this time it was Snow White) than the other books mirrored their respective fairy tales. All in all, I loved this series and will be sad to finish with Stars Above this coming week.

Fairest / Marissa Meyer / 220 pgs

I just finished listening to Fairest, and loved it almost as much as the previous three books in Meyer's Lunar Chronicles. The reason why I say "almost as much" is mainly just due to the fact that it was completely heart wrenching. Hearing about the tragedy that strikes Queen Levana makes the reader pity the character, but how Levana justifies her horrible behavior and actions makes the reader equally hate her too. This makes for a disturbing book, short though as it was - the book is really a novella. However, the book is a must read if you want to understand the motivations of the Queen of Luna. After her parents, the King and Queen of Levana are assassinated, Levana is the teenage younger sister of the cruel, new Queen Channery, who was responsible for causing Levana's disfigurement. This causes Levana to always be conscious of her appearance. At the same time, her love for a royal guard goes unrequited. What Levana does in response will affect her for the rest of her life.

Cress / Marissa Meyer / 550 pgs

I am absolutely in love with all of the Lunar Chronicles books I've listened to so far. Fair warning, I have not read any of these books yet, rather they have all been listened to on my commutes to and from work through CD Audiobook. Rebecca Soler continues to do an amazing job with all of the voices. She adds the voices of new characters like Jacin Clay and Princess Winter (the latter of whom sounds exactly like Harry Potter's Luna Lovegood).

In this, the third book in the series, Cinder, Wolf, Scarlet, and Carswell all decide to rescue Cress, a Lunar Shell who has been stuck on a satellite for the majority of her life. However, things go extremely badly and our group of heroes are soon torn apart. If I say any more, I shall definitely spoil it for those who have yet to read the series. Suffice to say, I feel like each book I've read in the series so far has ended up being better than the last. I am a huge Marissa Meyer fan now. I've already started Fairest and can't wait to finish the series with Winter.

Morning Star / Pierce Brown / 518 pgs.

The Red Rising trilogy ends with a huge bang. Darrow must complete what he set out to do seven years before, to "Break the Chains" of oppression that his people have lived under for seven hundred years. However, some of his friends have become his enemies while some of his enemies have become his friends. While he wages war against the Golds, a question remains, what will become of the worlds he conquers and can he lead the rebuilding after the ashes have settled?

Of the three books, Morning Star definitely my least favorite. That said, the whole trilogy was so unique that it deserves to be given as many stars as I can possibly deign to give it. What makes Morning Star difficult is that it gets a bit boring in the middle. Not from a lack of action. Far from it! But, honestly, from TOO MUCH action. I got bored from all of the fights, all of the razors and slingBlades and Olympic Knights and blood. So much bleeding! It really started to bore me and that was kind of scary when you think about it.

The heart of the series is the camaraderie between Darrow and his true friends like Sevro, Mustang, Ragnar, Victra, et cetera. When the Mr. Brown remembers that, the book is good. When it got far more gory than was necessary, it faltered. Pierce Brown did continue to do a bang up job with the dialogue, especially my favorite, Sevro. He's the master of getting different voices down and it's a shame that I've yet to get to listen to any of the audio book versions. I'll have to rectify it once I can stomach the brutality again.

Scarlet / Marissa Meyer / 452 pgs

A few weeks ago, I profiled Cinder, the first book in the Lunar Chronicles and I raved big time about it. It had been my favorite book I had read thus far in 2016. That was supplanted by Scarlet, the second book in the series (which will probably be supplanted with Cress, the third book, once I've finished it). Like Cinder, I listened to Scarlet on audio while commuting to and from work. Rebecca Solner, the narrator, is called upon to do even more accents and voices in the second book, and she does a wonderful job. We are introduced to more characters, including my favorite, Captain Carswell Thorne, as well as Scarlet Benoit, her grandmother Michelle Benoit, and Wolf. Unlike Cinder, in which almost all the action was centered around the main character, Cinder Linh, the action transitions between Scarlet and Wolf's story, Cinder's continuing story, and Emperor Kai at his palace in New Beijing. This diversity in action really makes for a better book, and I was far more on the edge of my driver's seat than I was in the first book. I HIGHLY recommend this one, but start with Cinder first.

Cinder / Marissa Meyer / 390 pgs.

For the PopSugar book challenge, I fulfilled the "read a book based on a fairy tale" challenge by listening to the audiobook version of Cinder by Marissa Meyer, the first book in the popular YA series, The Lunar Chronicles. The narrator, Rebecca Soler, does a wonderful job of making all the voices of the characters come alive and sound interesting. The book is a perfect mix of fairy tale and futuristic sci-fi dystopia and I enjoyed it immensely. I'm already listening to the second book of the series, Scarlet.


As you can imagine, Cinder is based loosely on the tale of Cinderella. A cyborg 16-year old girl, Cinder, is a virtual slave to her step-mother and two step-sisters in New Beijing. She works as a mechanic, fixing droids and portscreens when she meets the handsome Prince Kai. Although Earth has enjoyed over 125 years with no wars, it has succumbed in the last decade to a deadly plague. Prince Kai must deal with his ailing father, the Emperor, and an evil queen from the Moon with the ability to "glamour" people into doing exactly what she wants.

Golden Son / Pierce Brown / 446 pgs

I just finished the second book in the Red Rising trilogy. If you have yet to read the first book, be warned that there may be spoilers in this post.




I mean it - total spoilerage





I warned you!




Ok, so I was warned beforehand that unlike its predecessor, Golden Son was much lighter on the action and far too political. My friend said that people lie to the main character, Darrow, right and left, which made the book far too annoying and much less enjoyable than Red Rising.


After having read the book, I disagree. To make it as succinct as possible, Golden Son is Game of Thrones in space. Like Game of Thrones, noble families are categorized in houses. People change allegiances, hopping from one powerful family to another. There are political intrigues, assassinations, wealthy daughters being given away in marriage to create new alliances, and there are even battles. In space!!! After having won the military academy tournament in the last book, Darrow takes the fight all the way up to the supreme ruler of the solar system, while having to maintain an alliance with the man who had his wife killed. I loved it and can't wait for Morningstar.

Red Rising / Pierce Brown / 382 pgs

Two years ago, when I was in the middle of a huge YA period in my life, I read Red Rising and enjoyed it immensely. Science Fiction! Dystopia! Mars! Hundreds of years into the future! Social stratification! Action! Seriously, what's not to love? I reread it this month so I could finally read the second book in the trilogy, Golden Son, and be ready for the final book, Morningstar, coming out today! It will be a few days before I can get my hands on that last book, but I cannot wait!


Red Rising is about Darrow, a young man living in the lowest caste of society. He, along with all the other Reds, have been told that they are the pioneers of Mars, mining for the element needed to terraform the planet for the rest of humanity. Earth won't be able to sustain life for much longer. His sacrifice will help future generations. Then Darrow finds out the awful truth about the totalitarian society in which he has been raised. This discovery leads to the infiltration of the elite military academy of the Golds. Golds are humans, just like Darrow, but with their superhuman strength and stamina, they might as well be a completely different lifeform.

The 11th Plague / Jeff Hirsch / 28 pages

     This is another dystopian YA book.  It takes place 15 years after the war with China.  The United States is in ruins, no power grid, no government, no civilization, no infrastructure, no nothing.  There were also 11 plagues that took many peoples' lives and there is no modern medical care.  That being said, this book shows the possibility of hope and belief that people would still exist that could rise above the chaos. 
     The main character, Stephen, is a 15 year old boy who has never known the "old world" and has grown up traveling around with his father and grandfather trying to find scrap to sell to exist.  He loses both to disease and peril and is alone.  He is rescued by two people who take him to their town and help him.  The story then becomes a story about values, kindness, and adjusting to change.  Stephen has to learn to trust, to believe that kindness can exist, that hope in a better future is possible. 
     This book is a very worthy discussion book because it goes beyond the fighting and chaos that characterizes so many (Maze Runner) dystopian novels that have no real purpose.  How much help should a person help another?  Is it okay to help only if it doesn't hurt your own resources or is it more moral to help if it is sacrificial.  Is it okay to kill others?  self-defense? pre-emptive defense?  to get resources?  just because?  then there is the issue of slavery.  The possibilities are wide for discussion with this book.
     Highly recommended.

Son/Lois Lowry/393 pgs.

This is the concluding novel of the Giver Quartet. Reflecting back to The Giver, Claire bridges the gap from the first novel to this last one. Claire is the Birthmother to Gabe; unlike the other Birthmothers, Claire, inadvertently, wasn't given the pills to take that would suppress any maternal feelings she would have towards her son. Without giving too much away, Claire goes in search of her son, and encounters extremely harsh obstacles along the way. In the course of finding Gabe, Claire must make some very difficult moral and ethical decisions. It's a satisfying conclusion to a thought provoking series. Recommended.

Gathering Blue/Lois Lowry/215 pgs

Book two in the Giver quartet, introduces the reader to a different future society compared to the one in The Giver. Society in The Giver was highly technological and emotionally repressed, whereas society in Gathering Blue is very rudimentary, and consists of greed and inhumanity. The key character is Kira, a crippled, and recently orphaned,  young girl. She is saved from being taken to the Field and left to die because of her skill in embroidery. She is given the task of repairing the robe worn at the annual Ruin Song Gathering--a day dedicated to retelling the history of Kira's village. However, Kara comes to learn that all is not what it seems to be. The reader is totally sucked in, and this reader can't wait to read the next installment!