And All The Stars by Andrea K. Höst

Come for the apocalypse. Stay for cupcakes. Die for love.

Madeleine Cost is working to become the youngest person ever to win the Archibald Prize for portraiture. Her elusive cousin Tyler is the perfect subject: androgynous, beautiful, and famous. All she needs to do is pin him down for the sittings.

None of her plans factored in the Spires: featureless, impossible, spearing into the hearts of cities across the world – and spraying clouds of sparkling dust into the wind.

Is it an alien invasion? Germ warfare? They are questions everyone on Earth would like answered, but Madeleine has a more immediate problem. At Ground Zero of the Sydney Spire, beneath the collapsed ruin of St James Station, she must make it to the surface before she can hope to find out if the world is ending.

I'm not sure why, but I just didn't "get" this book. All the pieces were there, but they just didn't fit together somehow.  It wasn't the characterization, though.  I did enjoy Madeleine and getting to know her and watch her overcome some pretty steep odds.  There were other characters I liked, too, especially Noi.  However, at times I did have problems telling some of them apart, especially the gang of boys.  I also had problems with the nickname usage, there were times when the author would switch to using a nickname without telling you who was being addressed.  It took me a while to recognize Emily and Millie as the same person. 

I think my major problem was with the plot.  I don't want to spoil too much, but I found the plot very disjointed and random.  It starts with the obelisks that land in cities and spew dust everywhere that makes people sick and turns the survivors either green or blue.  Later on things happen to the spires, and other events, and it really doesn't connect much to the beginning.  There's little foreshadowing of events to come as well, so every plot twist seems very "deus ex machina" with no other purpose than to challenge the cast of characters yet again.  The pacing works well, the author has the timing down as to when major events need to happen, I just didn't feel like the events were plausible based on the knowledge given.  Too bad, I really wanted to like this book and did love its portrayal of a transsexual and a homosexual relationship.

Mothership by Martin Leicht and Isla Neal

Elvie Nara was doing just fine in the year 2074. She had a great best friend, a dad she adored, and bright future working on the Ares Project on Mars. But then she had to get involved with sweet, gorgeous, dumb-as-a-brick Cole--and now she’s pregnant.

Getting shipped off to the Hanover School for Expecting Teen Mothers was not how Elvie imagined spending her junior year, but she can go with the flow. That is, until a team of hot commandos hijacks the ship--and one of them turns out to be Cole. She hasn’t seen him since she told him she’s pregnant, and now he’s bursting into her new home to tell her that her teachers are aliens and want to use her unborn baby to repopulate their species? Nice try, buddy. You could have just called.

So fine, finding a way off this ship is priority number one, but first Elvie has to figure out how Cole ended up as a commando, work together with her arch-nemesis, and figure out if she even wants to be a mother--assuming they get back to Earth in one piece.

It's been a while since I read some comedic sf.  Usually SF takes itself much too seriously.  This book, however, is anything from serious and totally perfect.  The plot of this book is barely plausible.  Alien pregnancies multiplied to the nth is always kinda crazy.  The protagonist, however, injects a measure of seriousness and life to the plot while remaining a snarky teenager able to make us laugh.  It's a tenuous balance, but the authors walk it very well.  The beginning was full of flashbacks, so it was a little hard to keep track of where you were in the timeline, but as the book went on it really hit its stride.  The plot, though, is really secondary to the narrator.  Elvie really carries this book with her sarcastic wit and her drive to survive.  She has to deal with some very heavy stuff as the book goes on, but somehow her attitude and humor pull us past it.  If I had a complaint about the book it would be related to this: we see so many pregnant teenagers die in this book, but there is little emotional impact because the writing keeps things light a little too much.  Cole is a big part of this, and his dim-as-a-fireplace-poker intelligence takes us through many things with an amused atmosphere of "how will he screw up next?"  In all this is a great book, and I'd recommend it as a palate cleanser for some of those heavier, horror filled sf novels. 

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a non-biased review. 

Adaptation by Malinda Lo

Reese can’t remember anything from the time between the accident and the day she woke up almost a month later. She only knows one thing: She’s different now. Across North America, flocks of birds hurl themselves into airplanes, causing at least a dozen to crash. Thousands of people die. Fearing terrorism, the United States government grounds all flights, and millions of travelers are stranded. Reese and her debate team partner and longtime crush David are in Arizona when it happens. Everyone knows the world will never be the same. On their drive home to San Francisco, along a stretch of empty highway at night in the middle of Nevada, a bird flies into their headlights. The car flips over. When they wake up in a military hospital, the doctor won’t tell them what happened, where they are—or how they’ve been miraculously healed. Things become even stranger when Reese returns home. San Francisco feels like a different place with police enforcing curfew, hazmat teams collecting dead birds, and a strange presence that seems to be following her. When Reese unexpectedly collides with the beautiful Amber Gray, her search for the truth is forced in an entirely new direction—and threatens to expose a vast global conspiracy that the government has worked for decades to keep secret.

As science fiction goes I thought this was really good. A little predictable, maybe, but exploring things that are kinda rare out there right now, which is always a plus in my book.  The best thing I think this book has going for it is its voice.  It has such an honest, believable tone that it really cuts to the quick of what being a teenager and exploring your sexuality and boundaries is really like.  Wrapping up the tone is a thriller plot that kept me on the edge of my seat the entire book.  The pacing had a few issues, especially with the romance which seemed to really stall out the plot, but Lo really knows where to twist the knife, and although I had predicted many of the twists they came up in such an original way that I didn't mind that they were sci-fi standard.  I believe fans of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother should pick up this book, it seemed very similar in tone and overarching theme.


I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review.

Black Hole Sun by David Macinnis Gill

Durango is playing the cards he was dealt. And it’s not a good hand.

He’s lost his family.

He’s lost his crew.

And he’s got the scars to prove it.

You don’t want to mess with Durango.

This classic sci-fi western book was a delight to find. Although it has some of the issues that are ingrained in its genre Black Hole Sun was still a breath of fresh air in the current sci-fi/romances and fantasy/romances. Durango is a great character, and I was surprised to find that I really identified with him even though I almost always identify with the female lead. Perhaps Mimi, Durango’s iPhone-in-his-head-voice has a lot to do with that. Mimi is delightfully sarcastic and has a distinct personality of her own, but it connects with Durango’s very well in a great friendly, motherly, mischievous way. The alien bad guys in the story, the Drau, are a mix of zombie and alien and seem to be something I have seen before until a plot twist at the very end of the book changes my mind. Speaking of plot, although this book falls into the trap that many of the classics of its genre have in that it is a very slow starter and the plot can drag until it gets to its main storyline. It does give us time to get to know his davos, including Vienne, a tough-as-nails second in command mercenary that nonetheless had a personality that made her a very rounded character that plays well off the humor of Fuse. I did find some things confusing, like the slang (a friend said it was Australian maybe?) and the charting of time and calculation of ages. Although I understand why the author did this I wished there was a little primer or exposition that would explain it better early in the book. In all, though, if you like sci-fi western/military like Firefly or Zoe’s Tale you would be delighted with this book. I will be picking up the sequel soon, and since the plot picks up where this book left off I have high hopes that it will be even better than this book.

I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore

In the beginning they were a group of nine. Nine aliens who left their home planet of Lorien when it fell under attack by the evil Mogadorian. Nine aliens who scattered on Earth. Nine aliens who look like ordinary teenagers living ordinary lives, but who have extraordinary, paranormal skills. Nine aliens who might be sitting next to you now.

The Nine had to separate and go into hiding. The Mogadorian caught Number One in Malaysia, Number Two in England, and Number Three in Kenya. All of them were killed. John Smith, of Paradise, Ohio, is Number Four. He knows that he is next.

I AM NUMBER FOUR is the thrilling launch of a series about an exceptional group of teens as they struggle to outrun their past, discover their future—and live a normal life on Earth.

I AM NUMBER FOUR.
I AM NEXT.

I’m not sure why, but this book is a miss for me. The first problem is with the motivations. I don’t get the Mogadorians or their reasoning behind attacking Lorien, and I don’t get how the Loriens were able to smuggle children and their protectors off the planet. Mostly, though, I don’t get what nine earth children can do against a race of super-soldiers that a whole planet of adults couldn’t figure out. The whole premise seems very off to me. John is not much of a redemption either. His character seems rather flat, and he’s always reacting in a logical, boring manner. His romance of Sarah is almost scary. She is really a cardboard cutout for John to fill with his expectations, and at the end it’s revealed that John has “bonded” with her and she is the only person he will ever love – a heavy thing to put on a teenage girl, imo. The only character I really liked was Henri. The author seems to have thought a lot more about who he is and what he thinks of the world, so he’s a lot more believable as a person. Perhaps the pretentions of the author have a bit to do with things, too. “Pittacus Lore” is an alien elder, and putting him forward as the author of the book seems rather arrogant, and this arrogance kinda extends through the story as well. It’s not very tangible, but there were definitely times I felt the author was saying “Look! Amaze at the cleverness of me!”.

I have to admit that I read the book right before seeing the movie, so the two kinda blended together in my head. I did think that the movie was more choppy than the book, but it did flesh out 6 a lot better than the book, so thank goodness for the trend of injecting a sassy female. Henri suffered, though. The movie makers seemed to take the pretentions of the author and try to cram it as full of explosions as they could manage, whether it made sense or not. In all, I think both the book and the movie are a pass.

Invasion by Jon S. Lewis

He didn't ask for the job, but now all that stands between us and chaos . . . is Colt.

Colt McAlister was having the summer of his life. He spent his days surfing and his nights playing guitar on the beach with friends. He even met a girl and got his first car. But everything changes when his parents are killed in a freak accident.

He's forced to leave his old life behind and move to Arizona with his grandfather. The only person he knows at the new high school is a childhood friend named Dani. And Oz, a guy he's sure he's never met but who is strangely familiar.

But what if his parents' death wasn't an accident? His mother, and invesitgative reporter, was going to expose a secret mind-control program run by one of the world's largest companies. Before she could release the story, what if agents from Trident Biotech made sure she couldn't go public?

Vowing to uncover truth, Colt gets drawn into a secret world of aliens, shapeshifters, flying motorcycles, and invisible getaways.

The invasion has begun.

This is the first book in the C.H.A.O.S. Series. Even though I am a series completionist I think this will be my last read in this series. I just didn't connect with this book at all. Perhaps it is because I'm not really in the target demographic of pre-teen boys (who I think would eat this up and ask for more), but I found all the technical problems too glaring to enjoy the book. First was the author's problem with starting the book. He jumps us into a "boot camp trial" at the CHAOS Agency where a character named Oz Romero acts as the exposition computer and our lead, Colt, experiences a little bullying for being so small but finds out that he is the seventh son in a history of alien-fighters extending back to his grandfather, who was so legendary there is a popular series of comic books based on his World War II exploits (I'd call Colt a Mary-Sue, but that would imply that there was some kind of female influence in the book which really wasn't present at all). After the military trial we skip to Colt being attacked by a tentacle monster while his parents are killed in a car wreck with a drunk driver. Colt responds to this much like he responded to the bullies at the military tryout: woodenly. He does make best friends with Danielle, who he thinks of as "the little sister he never had" but who is a "quick study" at video games (*insert sarcastic tone* extraordinary, really, since boys are much better at video games than girls, of course). It's ok, though, because she eats salad like a normal girl, and she forces him to explore his feelings (difficult to do in such an emotionless character) and other *girly* emotional things. She's nothing, though, compared to Lily, who has "playful" eyes, "golden waves" of blonde hair, and a "melodic" voice that captivates Colt even before he discovers that she smells like orange blossoms. Meanwhile Colt becomes best friends, again, with Oz (CHAOS wiped his memory of his tryout) and gets tipped off that his parents were killed because his mother was about to write a huge exposee on the Trident company's experiments with mind control.

I think one of the strangest things about this book, though, are the details. It is as if the author felt that he should flesh out the story by making interesting details, but they're so unrelated to what's going on that they read like filler. His male characters get strange names like Colt, Oswaldo, and Aristotle. He wastes half a page on Colt and Danielle arguing over who should pay for gas (he does, of course), and another paragraph on the color of sheet they use to cover up Colt's stolen motorbike/plane (because pink is icky). Some of these details are downright misogynistic. Danielle evades capture in a high-speed car chase but looses the laptop her pursuers were after because she leaves it in her car as she goes for ice-cream (because although she eats salad like a good girl she needs to follow up high-speed pursuit with a triple chocolate sundae). And the most concerning part of being chased by robots to Danielle is worrying about whether or not the robot recorded any close-ups where her makeup is smudged. Even the robots are gendered: the killer ones are male and the servant/waitress ones are obviously "made to look and sound like a female". The cliched sentences even start to contradict themselves. Danielle warns Colt that "if you really care about her like I think you do, you need to protect her" while on the next page Colt thinks to himself that Lily "wasn't wearing a ring on her finger" (because lots of 16 year old girls are?) "that meant she was fair game" to Oz, but Colt is torn because he "didn't want to reduce Lily to some kind of a prize that went to the winner."

The other major issue is Colt's Mary Sue tendencies. He steals a motorbike/plane to escape from trained military assassins and easily outruns them. He outfights a mind-controlled superhuman programmed to capture him. He is the seventh son of a seventh son . . . (okay, the first is true but the second is not - although I wouldn't be surprised). He's also implied to be psychic: he knew *somehow* that Trident was behind his parents' deaths, and that Oz knows more about Trident than he lets on. He has the highest test scores in the history of CHAOS, and he's hand-picked to lead the organization before he even starts attending their academy (and while he's still 16). He has a girl sidekick (the scatterbrained Danielle, mentioned above) who "gets computers" well enough to hack into an alien corporation's top secret network and a guy sidekick who is probably the only person under the age of 20 who knows all about alien planets and has connections on all of them. And, to top it all off, he plays guitar just enough so that he can accompany the future-country-star Lily as she sings in church.

In all, I think this book shows its roots too much. It reads rather like a comic book without the pictures, complete with stilted dialogue and cookie-cutter plotting. It also is way too sexist, even when it is trying not to be (another major problem I have with much of the comic industry). I don't think I could recommend this book to anyone, even the pre-teen boys who might enjoy it, because I would worry that it would give them bad ideas about girls and gender.

I was provided with a free copy of this book through netgalley, however, I felt guilty getting such a book for free and declined the review and bought a copy so that I could do what I thought of as a proper review.