What We See in the Mirror

The Rule of Mirrors is the second book in the Vault of Dreamers series by Caragh M. O'Brien who wrote the Birthmarked series.  I read the first one in the series, but during last year when I wasn't keeping up with the blog.  So all I can say is I really did like it!  And you really should start with the first one first.  The Rule of Mirrors is that we don't really see ourselves, ever, as others see us.  I was going to write "we don't really see ourselves as we really are" but that really isn't true, is it?  I mean, what is our "real self?"  The one that we see or the the one that others see?  Or are we many selves, like Naked Masks? Ah!  Big questions of little real import!  In any case, this is a very engaging series.  I am not quite a sucked into it as Birthmarked, but I can recommend it for sure!

Team Will? Team Leon? Team Peter?

I was so thrilled to get my hands on the ARC of Prized, the second book in Caragh O'Brien's Birthmarked Trilogy. I loved Birthmarked and have been recommending it to anyone and everyone, especially folks who are looking for YA books with strong female lead characters. Gaia is definitely strong! She has rebelled against cruel societies, escaped imprisonment and close calls with early death. This sixteen year old midwife from the shores of Unlake Superior doesn't give up. In Prized, Gaia faces moral dilemmas, time in the stocks and the wooing of three very different young men.

Gaia has taken her infant sister, Mya and gone off in search of the place her grandmother went years before. The story begins with both Mya and Gaia near death, found just in time by a young man on horseback from nearby Sylum. Sylum seems like a nice place….at first….but then as Gaia learns the rules of this matriarchal society, she finds that it might not be the best place for her, her sister, or Leon, who has followed her from the Enclave. Indeed, the Big Momma Boss of Sylum takes Mya away from Gaia right away and gives her to another woman to raise. Some women might dream of a world run by women, but Prized really shows us that a society dominated by any group that oppresses others, is a bad society.
I loved, loved, loved this book and can’t wait for the third! It raises some big questions, everything from reproductive rights to environmental protection and it does so in a completely non-preaching way. This is a must-purchase for the library, and the series is a must-read!

Dream On and on and on and on and on (or maybe it was the speed of the audio)

The last book in the Vault of Dreamers trilogy seemed endless to me.  The Keep of Ages just was not my thing.  I have to say though that it very well may have been the audio production and the speed at which I listened.  I had it up to 1.5 and the main character, Rosie, was just so whiny!  And so alarmist!  And just going on and on and on and in a panic throughout the whole book.  And it was really annoying.  It just ruined the book for me.  I mean, I was glad to find out how it all ended and I did care.  So it didn't ruin it, which says a lot about how much I do like Caragh M. O'Brien and the world she created here and also in Birthmarked. 
I see that I had a sort-of similar reaction to the third book in the Birthmarked series and so now I wonder if it is one of those deals where the publisher made O'Brien turn a one-book idea or a two-book idea into a trilogy.  That's what I think happened with Matched and what I know happened to Claws because the author is my friend.  Still, this was a good and unique premise.  Read the first two for sure and then if you listen to the third, play it at regular speed, you might like it!

How to Fix the World

I know I've been slow with the reading, but things have been crazy-awesome at work, like never before, and my father has been very ill, so time for reading has been slim.
As I read Divergent it occurred to me that it, like a great many of the dystopian YA books around, is about a messed up future because some folks came up with a brilliant idea to make life perfect.
Delirium Series - Takes place in a future where society has decided that love is a disease.  Folks are vaccinated against it and feelings in general, in order to lessen desires and wants and instead, to make everyone content.
Matched Series - In order to avoid unhappiness folks are matched with their life-mate.
Shadow Children Series - The Population Police requires that families only have one child.  A good way to save on resources.
And on and on.
Now I am not ripping on these books, I love Delirium completely.  The first Matched book was great, the second less so, but I will certainly read the third.  And the Shadow Children is widely popular, though I can't remember if I ever read it!  I think I did, but I wouldn't swear to it.  I am just saying that it is interesting that we have a lot of books about dystopian societies that were started with the best of intentions, to bring about peace and happiness to a broken world. In fact, that's the hard-core definition of a dysotpian society.  It has to start out as an utopia.  So books like The Chemical Garden Trilogy and Birthmarked, they wouldn't be technically dystopian because those societies became what they are not because of an attempt to make an (or is it a, an sounds weird) utopian society, but because folks were dealing with disaster. But my tags were wrong then, because I counted those and others like Legend as dystopian, too!
Divergent takes place in what used to be Chicago, and in this future the country is divided into five factions, based on folks' personalities.
Dauntless- the brave
Amity- the peaceful
Candor- the honest
Erudite- the intelligent
Abnegation- the selfless
Everyone stays in the faction they were born into until they turn 16 then they take an aptitude test which tells them in which faction they are best suited to live.  They don't have to pick that faction, but they do have to pick one.  I won't say which one Beatrice chooses or say anymore because I don't want to ruin the surprises.

I am laughing as I think of them joining Erudite!  Hahahaha!  And they don't seem to fit anywhere else.  Too bad there isn't a bunch of people who just go away with each other and live in misery.  That would be best for them!  Away from other people's children!
Divergent was very good, even though it was hard to like Beatrice sometimes, but that's okay, it isn't always necessary to like the main character, of course!
I look forward to reading the next one, soon!

Dystopian Thoughts

Now THAT blog title is bound to be uplifting, is it not?  Matched is a dystopian, teen novel.  Notice I didn't say ANOTHER dystopian teen novel, because I truly believe that Matched is different and not a cheap knock-off of say, Hunger Games or Birthmarked.  This is more of a love story, but more than a love story.
Cassia is just like any other seventeen year old in The Society.  She will be matched to the perfect job and matched to the perfect mate as well.  We meet her on the night of the Match Banquet, when all of the seventeen year olds and their parents go to their respective City Halls.  The girls names are called an on a big screen they see the face of their match, the one whom they will marry.  Usually the matches are between guys and gals from different cities in The Society, so the people being matched see their match's face for the first time that night.  At the end of the evening they are given a microchip with information about their match.  They get to know each other that way and then eventually they go on dates, accompanied by an Official.  Cassia is lucky, lucky, lucky though, she is matched to her best friend Xander.  Xander and Cassia have been friends forever and are truly excited that they now can be "more than friends" and live out their lives together.
But.
Cassia goes home and looks at her microchip, just for the fun of it, even though she knows Xander so well.  There's a blip on the chip.  Someone else's face flashes on the screen.  Ky's face.  Ky lives in her city, too, but she doesn't know him all that well.
Now Cassia starts to thinking.  Is The Society always correct when they match young men and women?
Is it good that everyone in The Society just does whatever The Society says?
True, there is no disease or poverty, no unhappiness.  But there is also no choice.  No mystery.  Everything is careful and mathematical and planned for the benefit of the greater society.
As I started thinking about the future, I thought, "Could something like this really happen?"
I think it could.  But I don't think it would.  Pretty much I think that if the really powerful people in the world ever got control of everything, they wouldn't waste time constructing a "perfect" society like The Society.  They wouldn't go to great mathematical calculations to control the common man and woman.  They would just get rid of everyone!  Pretty much I think that if people greedy people got all of the power, they wouldn't waste their time figuring out what to do with the rest of us!  They'd just eliminate the rest of us and live their own lives doing whatever they wanted to do, in their own way!
But that would make a pretty boring book.
So we have these dystopian books, like The Giver and the world in The Line instead and I've enjoyed them all.  And yes, the paint a bleak portrait of our world in the future, but I actually think that they are much more optimistic than reality would be!
Man, am I a pessimist, or what?
Regardless, Matched was fascinating.  I loved Cassia, and could never be as brave or hopeful as she.  Don't get me wrong.  I am hopeful, for the NEXT life.  But not this one.  Yet Cassia, she just keeps on fighting and trying.  And I can't wait to read the next book in the series, and I wish her all the best!  

Promises! Coming Soon!

Until Promised comes out later this year, check out Tortured, a short story from Leon's perspective when Gaia set off for the Wasteland.  I love the Birthmarked series so much!  The first book was awesome and I loved the second one.  Sometimes the second book in a series can be so disappointing, but Prized wasn't at all.  Can't wait until October!

Because Your Mine...

I read The Line. Okay. That makes no sense at all. But all while I was reading The Line, the fantastic song by the guy who totally copied my fashion sense. The Line is other dystopian teen fiction book like Birthmarked, the Last Survivors series and Hunger Games. Compared to those, it really falls short. Some of the complaints I read on goodreads said that it was too short- an intentional series set up. That is true, for sure. But then I started thinking about those Stephen King thingies. The Green Mile. A serial novel. Maybe that's what The Line is. It probably isn't. But I think the author and publisher should start telling people it is. It works as a serial novel I think. Personally I had trouble reading it - and this is no fault of the book. See I have a friend named Rachel and her daughter's name is Vivian. But in the book, the mom's name is Vivian and the daughter is Rachel! The book rarely says 'her mom' or 'her daughter'-it mostly uses the proper names, which is awkward for anyone to read I bet, but especially for me. Well it isn't confusing for anyone but me probably. But even if you aren't me I would still think it sounds unrealistic or weird or some thing. That said, I will read the next book. This one left too many question and was interesting enough to make me want more.

BLAH!!!

Not the short story, Ruled.  Ruled was awesome.  But it was short!  Of course, it was a short story, an ebook to tide us over until Birthmarked #3 finally gets here!  Like Tortured was between the first two books.  When is the third coming!  Soon, next week, I think.  I can't wait!  I love this series!
This little book takes place been Prized and Promised and is told from Leon's POV.  Gaia is doing her mid-wife thing, Peter is angry that Gaia has chosen Leon over him, and Leon is sad that Gaia won't yet marry him.  Man.  I can't wait until the new book!  I LOVE this series!

READ THIS NOW

How much did I love Birthmarked? Well I left it in my car one night and it was about one am, rainy and cold so I bought it on my Kindle. Then I put it on my phone. I wanted to read this book twenty-four hours a day. I read all through the night and wasn't even tired, even though I had to work the next day. This is another dystopian book and I have to say I think it is better than the one that my favorite before, which was Hunger Games, which is still a totally amazing book, but this book is fantastic! The story is set in the future after the world has gotten totally messed up because of climate change. Lake Superior is now the unlake- all of the bodies and stuff like that have dried up and water is in really short supply, especially for the folks who live outside of the Enclave in the sectors. Gaia is a sixteen year old girl who lives in Western Sector Three. She and her mother are midwives. The deal with being a midwife though is that the first three babies born to each midwife have to go directly to the Enclave so that the wealthy folks there can adopt the kids and the kids can be "advanced" into a happy, privileged life. In the first chapter Gaia discovers that her parents have been taken prisoner by the government. She has to figure out what in the heck is going on and how to get her parents out of the Enclave. This book has a TERRIBLE cover, but it is fantastic! It has romance in it, sigh, but that is okay! READ THIS BOOK DUDES! FOR REAL!