Book Review: Extras by Scott Westerfeld

• Title: Extras (Uglies #4)
• Author: Scott Westerfeld
• Page Count & Publisher: 417 | Simon & Schuster
• Genre: Young Adult, Dystopia
• Format: Paperback
• Links: Amazon UK | Goodreads

Summary:
It's a few years after Tally bought down the Uglies/Pretties system and people are still pretty much finding a way. People are having more and more extreme surgeries to express themselves. This can even include a brain surgery to change your personality. We meet Aya Fuse who lives in one of these cities. She's a total nobody with a face rank of over 400,000. She wants to show a good story and finds a clique of girls who are into extreme stunts. If she shows the story about these girls are then she'll be launched into a world of fame and danger.

My Thoughts:
This final installment was definitely weaker than the main trilogy. The Uglies series works pretty well without this book. In fact, when I finished it, I didn't feel as though it had really added much to the overall story that we'd read in the previous books.

Tally isn't the focus here but she does appear later on in the book. It was pretty entertaining to read her bemusement at the new rules in this city. The Uglies/Pretties thing she understood! One of my main issues was how quickly this new system was put in place. From what I could work out of the timeline, maybe 2 or 3 years have passed since the end of Specials yet the world before is spoken of as though it was many, many years ago. Also, it seems to be a well established system. Certainly not the early days of a new culture. I expected there to be more fall out from the "mind rain" since it really happened so recently.

The technology of this future world was seamlessly blended in to everyone's life. There are video cameras absolutely everywhere and at times I wondered if this was supposed to be something of a social commentary!

The ending reveal left me going "huh? Why?". It was somewhat bizarre. A lot, actually.

My Rating:

Book Review: Cell by Stephen King

• Title: Cell
• Author: Stephen King
• Page Count & Publisher: 473 | Hodder
• Genre: Apocalyptic, Horror, Zombies
• Format: Paperback
• Links: Amazon UK | Goodreads

Summary:
In one instant the world changes. Known as The Pulse, everyone using a mobile phone is infected with a virus. At first they're violent but later on begin to change and adapt to the world they're in. Clayton Riddell realises what's happening and he. and a group of uninfected "normies", travel across country to discover the fate of his estranged wife and son.

My Thoughts:
This starts fast and throws you straight into the gore. There's no build up: one minute the world makes sense, the next someone is eating their dog (seriously). Clayton Riddell watches as the world around him goes mad before realising what's happening and meeting up with other people without mobile phones.

I'm not a fan of the "hero travels across country to discover the fate of his family" stories, it always seems a little to convenient. Of course, this being Stephen King, the outcome is not what you'd expect. Clayton wasn't the most sympathetic character for me, I didn't actually care if he was killed or turned in the meantime or not. The psychological games played against him by the leader of the "zombies" were far more interesting than his traveling moments.

I thought conclusions were reached far too quickly at times. It doesn't take Clayton very long at all to realise that the phones were the source of the problem, despite no real evidence to show they were. People using phones has become so much a part of life that I'm pretty sure only someone utterly paranoid about mobile phones would come to that conclusion.

I don't think this was one of Stephen King's best stories. The characters lacked some of the complexity and depth that I'd seen in The Stand and Misery. Plus, the zombie plot line just got really, really silly.

My Rating:

Book Review: The Departure by Neal Asher

This is one of the books that featured in my very first haul video! I bought it not long after Christmas.

• Title: The Departure (Owner Trilogy #1)
• Author: Neal Asher
• Page Count & Publisher: 498 | Tor (Pan Macmillan)
• Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopia
• Format: Paperback
• Links: Amazon UK | Goodreads

Summary:
Alan Saul wakes up on his way to the Calais Incineration Plant. He can't remember much, but he does remember pain and his tormenter's face. He has an illegal AI in his head who reveals a world full of death and despair. Earth is a hugely overpopulated planet, ruled over by the Committee, watched over by the Argus Array. The Committee need to kill 12 billion in order to stabilise the population of Earth, Saul doesn't intend to let them.

My Thoughts:
This took me some getting through! The first quarter or so of the book seemed to take so long to get through but the second half flew by. It's probably because while I love love hard science fiction (and this is definitely in the ranks of hard sci-fi), I'm not the biggest fan of post-humans. Aliens and such are fine, but something about AI and computer enhanced humans just doesn't do it for me. Maybe I was just traumatised by the Borg as a child.

This Earth is a brutal, violent world where the sheer scale of human life has cheapened its value. The phrase "manswarm" is used a few times and it sums it up quite well. There are Zero Asset and Societal Asset citizens. The be a Societal Asset means you have use (unless you start asking questions, then you get taken away to be re-educated) and the ability to buy food. Zero Asset citizens are nothing.

The world building in this was pretty fantastic. You got a good idea of the sights (and occasionally the smells) around Saul. You can understand how this world came to be, especially with the snippets of future history at the start of each chapter. This world actually makes sense, it feels real. Horrifically brutal, but real.

At first I wanted to sympathise with Saul. He has no idea who he is, everything about him was wiped out during his torture. You want him to find his answers, find out who he was and how he reached that point. However, as he began to get his answers he moved further and further away from what it meant in his world to be human. He's downright disturbing at the end and I even began to ask myself if he was "the good guy" after all. He doesn't seem to want to cause suffering, only death. Some of the obvious "bad guys" were a bit stereotypical bad guy-ish. You knew they weren't good but lacked some depth that could have added more interest to the world and storyline.

I am planning on reading the rest of this trilogy, but it's probably not going to be a priority.

Rating:

Book Review: Noah's Ark by Andrew J. Morgan

This was my first for review book! The author contacted me and offered me a free download in exchange for an honest review. This has had no effect on the review I'm going to give.

• Title: Noah's Ark
• Author: Andrew J. Morgan
• Page Count & Publisher: 289 | That Right Publishing
• Genre: Science Fiction, Apocalypse
• Format: eBook
• Links: Amazon UK | Goodreads

Summary:
We follow two characters, Alex and Michael. Alex is living the perfect life. He has a wonderful family and a successful career. Michael is living a perpetual nightmarish existence in a locked facility under sadistic guards. Alex thinks he's along after the darkness took everyone away. He's wrong.

My Thoughts:
This is such a hard book to review because discussing the plot at all will give away the biggest spoiler in the book! It was utterly confusing at first, until you figure out what's going on. And by confusing, I mean to the point where I put the it down for a few days until I could devote a bit more attention to it! You get absolutely no answers during these confusing first chapters but it all falls into place later on in the book.

While this book follows two main characters, there are a few other people involved. I don't think the other people felt as fleshed out as Alex and Michael and one or two were a touch stereotypical. I liked Michael a whole lot better than Alex, even at the start when it appears Michael is a violent, cold blooded murderer. Michael is always fighting for himself, to not give into those around him. Alex slips into a melodramatic funk quite early on and has a lot of things happen at him, rather than to him.

There is a huge amount of descriptiveness in this book, sometimes it's actually quite beautiful:

"His pondering swirled out through his mouth and drew spirals in front of him. They collided, showering reflective sparks in every direction.The ones that touched him burnt and stung; he yelped and they turned and slithered away, wriggling and writhing as they burrowed into the black."

-Noah's Ark by Andrew J. Morgan

Other times, the description got in the way of the momentum of the story, it felt a little bogged down in adjectives.

The tone completely changed once the two met, it got a little "action hero" dialogue-ish. There was some "I can't go on, leave me", "Never!!" type dialogue which felt a bit out of tone with what had happened so far.

There's a huge, and not unexpected plot twist at the end but there's a huge amount that still doesn't get explained by the end of the book.

Overall, it's a good and solid debut. I'm looking forward to seeing more from Andrew J. Morgan!

My Rating: