Tuesday, November 29, 2011

B****marked I MEAN Birthmarked

First of all, look at this title.

Image stolen from Amazon. Obviously. From whom you should order this book right now at this location
Just look at that title. Does that NOT look like "Bitchmarked" to you? I mean really. I don't even call it Birthmarked anymore. It is so obviously Bitchmarked.
Anyway, this book was awesome.
Why was it awesome?
Well...
I didn't hate the main character. This is good. She had a sort of Not Too Much Of A Martyr-ness to her that didn't piss me off too much.
The romance? The romance! It was perfect! It was the total, like, "I hate you. But hey, maybe I'll be a human being for a couple minutes. Oh, whoa, you're hot when you're not bitching at me. Okay, I'll help you for like five minutes, but I won't enjoy it. Okay, maybe I might. A little bit... OMGILOVEYOU. OH S*** THERE ARE DUDES WITH GUNS CHASING US. BACK TO REALITY.
I really liked the setting. It takes place in the area that once was the Great Lakes region, but after a fuel-related apocalypse combined with climate change, all the water dried up. The culture is kind of old-west-y, which is cool. Also, they wear cloaks. Cloaks are one of those things that nobody actually wears, but they must be present for a book to be cool. Or something.
In case you're really confused, Bitchmarked is about a girl named Gaia who lives not in but outside a Really Cool Post-apocalyptic Enclave (Once again, you're not cool unless you have either a clave or an enclave. What's the difference, by the way?). She's not quite cool enough to live IN the enclave, of course, she's too badass. The way it works is that you either live in it our outside of it. Instead of hospitals they have midwives, so every birth is assisted by one or two women, usually particular to the area. The midwives have an obligation to "advance" a certain number of babies every month to be adopted into the Enclave, who have a little problem with inbreeding, due to the fact that they live inside a wall.
Note to future post-apocalyptic societies: avoid living inside a wall as long as it is possible to live outside a wall. I mean, REALLY.
Anyway, Gaia's mom is the midwife, and Gaia kind of has this little "apprentice" thing going on. Gaia has a scar on her face, by the way, which makes people think she's a freak. Anyway, her parents get arrested, and she has to take over as midwife, taking people's children and advancing them and all that stuff. And then stuff happens and it gets really awesome. I'm going to try and avoid spoilers on this one, especially since it's better if you don't know them. Even the romance isn't totally obvious from the beginning, unless of course you're me and you know how it's going to end from the first page. I read too much. I haven't been surprised by a book in years.
Except maybe Goliath, but kind of not even.
So, as for the plot: awesome. I've been wanting something with that sort of Awesometype (New word. This is the kind of "vibe" the book sends, the energy of it. I'm cool, right?) for a while now. I'm making Mrs. McCauley read it, so we can discuss it on our Book Show Thing.

OH AND OMGGUESSWHAT? No Love Triangle of Doom. Yup. SOMEONE WITH SOME LEVEL OF ORIGINALITY YAY.
AND THERE'S A SEQUEL. I'm getting a Kindle Fire soon, so I can be even more of a book nerd, so that might be my first ebook.

WWMMRHRN:
-Sushi?
-Booksbooksbooks
-no homework, pleaseee
-Foood

Next Book: WGWG? This Dark Endeavor? The Last Hero? The world may never know.

Monday, November 28, 2011

1984

So, people say this book is boring.
It's not.
It's basically the original dystopia. Technically, it is the original dystopia. Therefore, it's awesome.
Also, it's just so...
Cool?
I don't even know.
Maybe I'm a nerd.
Maybe I'm crazy.
But this was a really good book.
Except the end.
That sucked.
But that was the way it had to end.
And I respect that.
Mer.

WWMMRHRN:
-Sushi
-MORE BOOKS.
-5 more hours in the day?

Next Book: something?

Sunday, November 27, 2011

I HAVE CRACKED THE CODE (NotABook)

So you know how most popular young adult novels are written in the point of view of a girl or with the main character being a girl? That's kind of interesting, considering especially how a lot of these books are actiony warry whatevery stuff, and therefore you'd think it would be the guys that were into it (stereotypes, stereotypes...). An idea just popped into my head likefivesecondsago. It's not because most popular YA authors are girls (although this is true) especially because most of the guys who write for the genre (Eg. Scott Westerfeld, who, out of his three young adult trilogies and four standalones, has written a total of two standalones in the point of view of a boy and one partially in the point of view of two different boys (along with some girls) and those happen to be his least popular books for young adults) still write in the point of view of a female character most of the time. The reason, according to the Manon Institute of Jumping To Conclusions and Defending Them Obsessively located in The Basement, USA, is that most girls have about fifty million strange and unknown hormones running through their brains at all time. Boys have about four. Therefore, girls are about 12.5 million times more likely to make strange and irrational decisions and go on random bitchfits whenever the author deems necessary, and for a decent plot with a badass main character, you kind of need both. For some strange reason, literature seems to think that if a girl makes crazy and irrational decisions all the time, she's "spunky," and if she goes on random bitchfits, she's "strong." Apparently, "spunky" and "strong" characters are in demand right now, because all the main female characters seem to do is make crazy decisions and go on bitchfits about how their crazy irrational decisions have screwed up their lives. If book characters didn't make irrational decisions and go on bitchfits about them, then they could usually solve their problems relatively easily, therefore there would be no story.