Peter Jones

I try to stay up to date on the hot Young Adult fiction. My kids either have or will want to read a lot of these, and so I try to make sure I am familiar with them. Some I really enjoy (Rick Riordan's work for example), some have a lot of promise then fizzle out (I'm looking at you Hunger Games series). So with Divergent being the new hotness in our home (we had a countdown for the movie running) I decided to give it a go.

Well, sadly I couldn't make it. Kindle tells me I made it 83% of the way through it but that was when I called it quits.

Future dystopian fiction has the difficult challenge of walking that line between telling you too much about the world or not enough. I just never felt that I knew enough about this world and what led to the world as it is. As such, I never felt interested I the world. The characters were just a bit too cliche for me as well. The main character, Tris, never was someone I cared about. And I found myself caring even less about Four, her dreamy love interest. Finally, it was becoming too teen angsty for me. The development of the relationship between Four and Tris never felt real. It was obvious that they were going to end up in a relationship, but I never saw any real reason for that to happen. There was just no believable development to the relationship.

I ended up reading the synopses on Wikipedia and think I mad the right choice in stopping when I did.

Rick Riordan continues to demonstrate that derivative fiction is not necessarily bad fiction. The Red Pyramid has so many parallels to the Percy Jackson series (also written by Riordan), as well as Harry Potter, that it would be easy to discard it.

However, Mr. Riordan blends ancient mythology (this time from Egypt) with modern life in a way no one else is doing. He also writes enjoyable characters who grow in believable ways throughout this books. Carter and Sadie Kane are no different here. As details about their troubled and unconventional childhoods are revealed, they develop a bond that is both believable and natural. The action is well written, the dialog is witty and humorous, and I anxiously await further installments in the series.

There is no question the Dune series is influential. It deserves its place in the pantheon of sci-fi. However, God Emperor was my least favorite. Leto II goes on and on about his “Golden Path”, but there is never any really clear idea of what this means.

Political and philosophical machinations and discussions abound, and in the end I was left wondering really what had taken place in the book and how important it was.

I am a sucker for these books. I enjoy the characters that Rick Riordan has created (for the most part) and enjoy the world they inhabit. The House of Hades takes our group of 7 demigods and splits them in two. With Percy and Annabeth in one group, and the other 5 together in the other.

Both working to get to the House of Hades and the Doors of Death, I felt this book really had a lot of character development and growth. While those types of books can be slow, Riordan keeps things moving at his standard brisk pace (he knows well his audience). I think that is the main reason I enjoyed it as much as I did. While there certainly was conflict and battles to be fought, the most significant battles were the ones being fought inside each of the major characters. In the end, I came away finally liking Leo, and felt that Hazel, Piper, Jason and Frank (quite literally) had really grown as characters. Nico was fleshed out as well, though still remained and annoying emo kid (I think that is on purpose). Percy and Annabeth learn some about themselves, but even more about their relationship and each other.

Many of the realizations are painful, but they make the heroes seem more real, more authentic and less Mary Sue and Gary Stu than they have in some of the past books. I particularly liked seeing just how powerful Percy is, and how terrifying that can be.

Good read and I anxiously (along with my daughters) look forward to the 5th installment later this year. Now, if Riordan would just bring these characters and the world of the Kane Chronicles together, I would really be happy.

As a huge fan of Rick Riordan's other books, I greatly anticipated his latest release. This release did not disappoint. I greatly enjoyed the mixture of Greek and Roman mythology, and the manner in which Riordan created two distinct worlds based on the difference between the mythologies. I did feel at times that the humor and “teenager-ness” was forced. The set up for further story telling is interesting, and I look forward for the rest of the series.

Heretics of Dune reinvogorated me. The conflict between the Bene Gesserit and the Honored Matres was interesting, Miles Teg and Darwe Odrade were great characters, and the scope felt epic again. Great ending, some interesting twists, and strong characters helped this one be one of my favorites.

The Chronicles of Prydain have long been some of my very favorite books. About ever 5-10 years I come back around and read them again. In needing to take a break from the slog that has become The Wheel of Time, I decided it was time, again, to visit these classics. The Book of Three is certainly not the best book in the series, by a long shot. But it still delivers. I appreciate the characters, though love them for what we get in future books. That is really what we get her, the establishment of certain characters we will come to know and love more as the series continues. And for that, I still cherish this book.

The biggest problem with Chapterhouse: Dune is that we never get the story Frank Herbert wanted told to conclude it. Nevertheless, the book ends in such a way that it is still satisfying.

Murbella really comes into her own here, the fascinating mixture of Bene Gesserit and Honored Matre. Dar is again a powerful force. The building menace of the threat that drove the Honored Matres back from the Scattering is intriguingly written. I would have loved to know how Frank Herbert wanted to end this conflict (not the hack attempts from his son and KJ Anderson), but am content with my own vision of how it ended, based on what Frank wrote. All in all, a good ending to the series.

Jack McDevitt again demonstrates why he is one of my favorite current sci-fi authors. The Devil's Eye is another Chase Kolpath/Alex Benedict novel, which blends science fiction, Indiana Jones style xeno-archeology, and who-dunnit mystery into a delightful end result. If you aren't reading Jack McDevitt yet, you owe it to yourself to fix that right now.

I really enjoy the Silo Saga. Wool and Shift were both very interesting stories. Dust continues right where Shift left off. It does manage to pull the story to a decent conclusion. However, it felt like it took too long to get there. The first third of the book just didn't grab me and moved too slow. The end just sort of hits and didn't feel like we had a good wrap up. And while we got some small resolution for a very small part of the people living in the Silos, there were still too many unanswered questions.

Worth a read, but not quite the highlight the other books were.

Ender's Game is a classic. Probably my personal favorite science fiction book, it is perfectly paced. The action sequences are well written, and the more cereberal portions are incredibly engaging. Ender Wiggin and Bean are two of the best characters on paper. The catharsis of the final battle of the book is still one of my most memorable moments in fiction. Highly recommended.

I found the conclusion to the Hunger Games trilogy to be a grand disappointment. Gone is the strong, resourceful Katniss. She is replaced wholly by a whiney, self-indulgent teenager. That would have been fine at some point of the story arc, but not after all the life changing experiences she has been through. The deaths and violence often felt unnecessary, like they were just thrown in there to make the story more dark and grim. They didn't seem to.really serve much more of a purpose. Particularly the deaths of Finnick and Prim. Both of these felt like deaths thrown in there just to manipulate the reader.

Finally, the end left a really bad taste in my mouth. First off, the entire series starts off with the goal to protect Prim, and Collins doesn't even give that to Katniss. Second, I really didn't get the feeling at the end that the world was any better off than it was at the beginning. All in all, I don't plan to go back to this series again and am glad that I used the library.