Ha'ani

It was a good book. I finished it in 4 days, so it was definitely interesting. It was insightful, inspirational, hopeful, and very introspective. I like how it showed the viewpoints of many people, many lives, but through the same eyes. I think that Nathan was a very underused character, and the ending was disappointing. Very vague and disappointing. A basically manipulates the body he is in to give Rhiannon a new boyfriend, since A can never be there for her. And then he runs away. I think the author meant for it to be a vague ending, but I find it pretty unsatisfying. I also think that A was a terrible name for the author to choose for the main character. If this book was written in, like, Japanese or something, A as a name would be acceptable. But in English, a is such a common word, it is one letter–it's barely a sound. It's an article, it's a GRAMMAR thing. Having a character named A makes following certain conversations unnecessarily hard.

Still, I think the book was worth reading. I think I'll give it 3.5 stars.

Pretty good. I initially read it because at a writer's camp, a girl recommended it to me. I asked her why she liked it so much and she just shrugged and said, I don't know, I just do. But now, I understand. I read it, and I like it. Why? Honestly, no particular reason. It is just well-made.

The book holds a themes of redemption and identity as Chase Ambrose struggles to find his place in school after falling off a roof and getting amnesia. He then figures out that he used to be a horrible bully and spends the rest of the book making amends with the people he used to torment.

One interesting thing about this book is the wide range of narrators. As many as 7 characters take turns narrating, but it is always in 1st person. Similar to Tui T. Sutherland's Darkstalker, each chapter declares the P.O.V. before it starts. So, that was unique and fresh.

Overall, I enjoyed it.

Moral: It's never too late to turn your life around.

Beautiful book. Unlike Into the Wild, this book relies on the protagonist's emotion and relationships. Like Rusty in the main books, we watch Stormkit grow into Crookedkit, Crookedpaw, Crookedjaw, and finally Crookedstar in the span of 40 (I think) chapters. And it's way more effective than the main books!

The concept of love and loss is repeated throughout the book and contains a valuable lesson on the cost of love. It's one of those books where, in the beginning you're like, “Did that person just state the theme? Is that really the theme? How is THAT the theme?” and then you get to the end and you're crying, “OHHH, THAT was the theme! I didn't see that coming!”

This book made me cry for, like, two hours after I finished it at 3:00am in the morning.

A charming book about the horror of being kidnapped, nearly getting brainwashed, having your down feathers plucked, almost getting blood-sucked by vampire bats, etc. And then escaping.

I liked this book. Started reading it last night, finished it this afternoon. I had tried, years ago in middle school, to read this book, but I just couldn't get through it. It had seemed boring and too dark, or something like that.

But now, as a junior in high school, this book was great. I can now see the creativity and purpose in this book. And I liked the characters and the originality of the whole book.

PROS:
- the chapters are short and straight to the point. The author does not waste her time with detailed descriptions unless they mean something to the characters.
- The book is fairly realistic. Like, comparing this to other fantasy books about non-human beings (Wings of Fire, Warriors, etc.), children do not randomly know or think about details they logically shouldn't know about (they think like what they are–children), the owls don't shrug (I don't know how warrior cats shrug without sitting back on their butts to painfully lift their paws off the ground with their shoulders), and the language the owls use is unique and makes sense (except for one time when Twilight's fighting some owls and sings about “punching”).
- The stakes. I really, really badly wanted them to escape. Which I guess is actually due to the characters: The characters were likeable. I guess a large part of that being that they are innocent children who I don't want to see blood-sucked or feather-plucked.
- The story and the world are very original. I'm sure the kidnapped-orphans-try-to-save-the-world plot has been done before, but the way in which the book deals with this plot is very original.

CONS:
- Some might see the language and style of the dialogue as distracting, as the owls do not speak “modern English”, but a more classy-sounding English mixed in with owl slang.
- People who like detailed, clever descriptions of setting may not like the book, as it describes only the necessary (it is not as bad as warriors, though!)
- Some characters and ideas seem a bit...basic. Like, Kludd. Kludd, in this book, is an evil big brother who complains a lot, and Mrs. Plithiver senses something very un-owlish about him. He's kind of evil for no reason other than to be evil, it seems. And because he's “mean”, he is un-owlish. This observation disappointed me because it gave off a belief of, “He is evil; therefore, he is not ‘human'”. Villains have depth and feelings, too. That's what makes them interesting. Also, the theme of believing is not really expanded upon to have deeper meaning; it's more like a repeated concept. That also may just be the author's way of portraying how children think about the world, however–if I believe it, it is real.

Because the whole situation of prehistoric big cats, some of which talk and keep livestock like humans, fighting against each other until one of them tames “the Red Tongue” kept me interested throughout, I consider this a good book. I liked Ratha, and I appreciate the author's efforts to keep her realistic and flawed. The book's world and story was strong enough to keep me reading.

However, I think the way the plot ‘flows' is the book's weakness. The whole story was predictable, and each time I reached a major plot point, I knew whatever happened happened because, well, because plot. I don't know about y'all, but when I read a book, I don't want to feel the plot like that. Things should just happen naturally. For example, Ratha realizes that her cubs are ‘witless' and becomes so angry that she attempts to murder one cub, then purposefully injures her mate. In that moment, I knew the author placed that moment there for no reason other than to drive Ratha back to the Named. It was too obvious. She was also daydreaming way too much about raising her cubs to be like the Named—more daydreaming than is usually allowed for a book character—earlier in that chapter. So, I knew her cubs would turn out to be ‘witless' already. Much of the book was like this: extremely predictable. Many moments in the book made me think, oh, this is happening so that this can happen later on, rather than, oh, this is happening because this happened earlier.

But other than that, I still think that this was a good book, and I admire the author's creativity with this one. I think it deserves 3.8 stars.