We'd like to extent your credit limit to...ridiculous

What the dickens just happened to me? I think I may have just gotten slapped with a halibut, or maybe I just read something completely original. Blood Zero Sky by J. Gabriel Gates has a believable, if unfortunate outlook on the future. Governments have been privatized and cash is pretty much debunk. Instead, everyone is given a line of credit, which they work to pay off. But hard work gives you more credit, opening up opportunity to get new shiny toys and go further in debt. Pretty much, every working person is in debt for their entire life. The point of the system is that you won't pay it off; you'll be indebted to the company forever. (Side note- Nabisco as a world superpower just cracks me up.) May is one of the few people that should be able to reach Blackie status and escape debt, but she's the company president's daughter, which could have something to do with it. So if you aren't going to be a Blackie...why not just dig yourself into bottomless debt and stop going to work? Because if your debt outweights your usefulness, you can be shipped off to a work camp. Believe me, you DON'T want to go to a work camp. So this is the backdrop for our story. Now May starts out being a little happy peon of the system, but I'm sure you can imagine that she doesn't necessarily end up there. I didn't always buy into May's motivations, but I really enjoyed learning about the world Gates created. I almost wish the latter half had included more fleshing out of the system and how others live in it than the completely removed world of the revolutionaries. I give it 4 out of 5 cross implants and hope that our televangelists have a little more moral fiber than this story's religious mogul.debt

My name? I saw it on a backpack. Call me Jansport.

Partials.  Now here was a book I could sink my teeth into. Yes, if I had read a hard copy and not an ebook version, I would have grasped it firmly in my jaws and torn out the first quarter of the book and discarded it. Then I would have nothing negative to say about it.

What I'm getting at is that it starts out much too slow. I read the first quarter of it and stopped, promising myself that I did not have to finish it if I didn't want to. Then I started reading something else. Then I forgot what Partials was about. A few months later I saw the title on my kindle and thought it looked interesting, only to discover I had already started it! By the time I realized it was a book I had chosen not to finish, the action had started and I really dug in!

So, people created a super race to pretty much be slaves. AND THEY REVOLTED?!?!?! Wow, big surprise. And now humans can't reproduce and the partials are dying out. And Kira, our protagonist, is the only person with a soul, apparently, who feels some empathy for the partials (whom we see in the character of Samm). I'm totally hooked.  We get to see Government Gone Wild (is that available on Blu-Ray?) and get to feel like we're sitting in on one of Dr. House's cases as Kira's work always seems like it's just about to work....and doesn't.

And the best part??? IT'S A STAND-ALONE NOVEL!!! Wait, what? It's not? Oh, well-played YA multi-book series trap, you've caught yourself another one. Dan Wells, did you jump in that pit, or were you pushed?

Yeah, well, MY grandpa was a super hero

I read Alienation without realizing it was the second in a series. The story, while not compelling to me, would definitely hold the interest of middle school-aged boys, whom I am hoping are the target audience. Alienation takes a nice angle on secret government agencies and extraterrestrial threats, but don't expect anything ground-breaking here (I mean, the kid is named Colt, c'mon). Just a solid punch-the-alien-in-the-face-and-call-it-a-day story, WITH JETPACKS! 3 out of 5 golden electrostatic repulsors to Mr. Jon Lewis. I may not read your other CHAOS stories, but this one was a fine way to pass the time.

Naomi and the Horse-flavored T-Shirt

I tried to have an open mind. I gave it a chance. It failed. All I could hear in my head while I read this was "Soylent Green is made of PEOPLE!" 1 out of 5 loaves of paste. Not a winner in my book.  Sorry Dan Boehl.

Quarantine by John Smolens

This story was...hmmm...interesting. I love historical fiction. Oh, and theres' a plague? BONUS! And a creepy, lecherous cretin with bad teeth and a lazy eye? OK, I could have done with less of him. I'm reading it thinking "This would be great for teens!" until I came to a certain scene where the mother of the house walks in on her adult son (THE CRETIN!) in a very compromising position and begins reaming him out while he continues his deplorable activities with a random young lady as if she never entered. There were a number of these scenes which just caught me off guard and made me wonder about the target audience age. For some reason, the gruesome details of the plague effects seemed fine to me - probably because you saw it coming if you knew what the book was about. But the gratuitous naughty bits could have been down-played without having a detrimental effect on the story. It gets 4 out of five clams, would have been a 5 if there was less of the cretin, or even just the removal of that one icky scene.

You're a PALE!

Oh why, WHY must you be a novella? When I read the blurb about Pale by Chris Wooding, I could not wait to read it. When I got it, it went straight to the top of my "to-read" pile and was quickly devoured. The concept is great - you can avoid death, but it makes you a pariah. Wonderful, WONDERFUL examples of bigotry and how senseless and cruel it is. I was invested in the story from the start and wish there had been about 200 pages longer!

The Deserter

A creative combination of Sharp North and The Matrix, this Peadar Ó Guilín book works well as a stand-alone novel even though it is a sequal.  The characters are shockingy authentic and the world is well-developed and complete.  I would recommend this story to high school and college students who enjoy sci-fi or dystopic novels.  It is a much faster read than its length suggests.

False Memory by Dan Krokos

"Go Go Power Rangers! The Mighty Morph..." oh, wait, that's something else. Sorry, I get so confused. Ahh, yes, False Memory by Dan Krokos. First off, I must have enjoyed the story. I read it in one sitting. But...but...is it ironic that I'm having trouble remembering it? I remember the basic storyline, but the details are lost....Nevertheless, we shall power on! OK, good things about this book: 1) fighting scenes 2) magnetic armor (want!) 3) cliffhanger leaves me wanting more, and 4) kids with superpowers! Alright, moving on to the things I didn't like so much about this book: 1) cliffhanger leaves me wanting more...not a whole new story, just a resolution 2) kids with superpowers! See how you can read that sentence two totally different ways? For once, I'd like the non-superpower kid to have his day. We can't all blow up cars with our minds...(no matter how hard we try...) So, I did enjoy this book, but I wish it had been a well-resolved stand-alone novel instead of falling into the multi-book scheme that's trapping all YA novels recently. HOLD ON DAN KROKOS! I'LL THROW YOU A ROPE! PULL YOURSELF FREE FROM THE YA TRILOGY PIT!

If all the raindrops were lemondrop and gumdrops...

Oooo, I was all excited to read The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy and it did not disappoint! Horrify me! Shock me! Stun me! Feed me? Alright, so I felt a little squidgy every time someone started eating, but seriously, that was the point. I thought that it read a little like the Ramona Quimby books. Think of the possibilities! Ramona and the Overfed Class, Ramona and the Marzipan, or even Ramona and Her Stepmother. I liked the plot very much, though the ending was a tad weak. I was hoping that a certain diet-obsessed someone would have been involved in the climax (and not necessarily as a hero). Overall, it gets 4 out of 5 marzipan cookies and a fervent hope that Nikki Loftin rewrites more fairy tales.

Intentions by Deborah Heiligman

So, what happens to you when you lose all faith in humanity? Evidently, its' a mix of promiscuity, experimentation, and trouble with school. Now, to be fair, Intentions did a great job of finding a series of events that are *almost* believable. Almost. Meaning not. Not believable. What are the odds, really, of one spunky, happy-go-lucky teen falling down the slippery slope of substance abuse, crime, and pathetic woe-is-me depression and then be reborn from the ashes of understanding in under 300 pages? Any math majors out there want to tackle that one? This book was a means of passing time, but that time has passed, and so has my patience for this book. Read it if you want, but don't hold out for any warm fuzzies or personal epiphanies.