Overall impression: Sure, it’s for a 5th grade reading level, but it was pretty awesome, actually.
So my mom has recently been looking into writing again lately. To help her decide upon a genre and target audience (and, I suspect, to procrastinate some), she’s bought a number of books of various kinds and been reading them like crazy. One of these was Among the Hidden, a story about a boy, Luke, who is the third child in his family in a time (supposedly in the near future) where it’s illegal to have more than two kids. My mom then went and bought the entire series about his and his friends’ struggle against the government to gain freedom.
So there are seven books: Among the Hidden, Among the Impostors, Among the Betrayed, Among the Barons, Among the Brave, Among the Enemy, and Among the Free. They’re all relatively short–able to be read 2-3 books in one day, if you have nothing better to do–but they manage to go into great depth (especially for a 5th grader) about government, freedom, and generally what is right, all while keeping the action and the plot moving forward.
There are a couple issues I had with it, though, the first being that even though the protagonist in each book changed sometimes (4 were Luke, and 3 were various friends of his), the personality from which it was told was completely static. They all cared at different levels about different things, sure, but they all also consistently made the same decisions as all the others. It was like the author picked a character at random to be the Luke for that story. She didn’t quite manage to get completely into the mind of someone completely different.
One other minor thing that I considered not so much a flaw as simply annoying. The ending seemed, to me, to be somewhat idealistic. Admittedly, it is a children’s book, so my personal preferences are probably playing into that more than anything, but the anticlimactic nature of the resolution just bugged me a bit.
Besides that, however, I have little or no complaints (well… there was the ending of the third book, but that’s easy to get over). It was extremely well-written to keep the reader’s attention the whole way through, and had a very, very good underlying theme. The story itself is pretty amazing, and the author does not shy away from tragedy just because her audience is children. Granted, she softens it a tad for them, but allows the truth of the world have its effect. I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone. Highly. It’s really quite impressive.
Essentially this entire semester, I’ve been reading this book–mostly just before class, thus inhibiting my ability to go through quickly. The review may potentially be brief, since I finished it last week and returned it to its owner yesterday, thereby probably somewhat blocking my ability to remember too many specific details, but we’ll see.
Overall Impression: Generally a very great book, but it could be rather slow-moving.
So, a few months ago, a friend told me about this great book called World War Z. Basically, it’s about a zombie apocalypse, so how could I possibly refuse?
The interesting thing I found out in my reading, though, is that the zombies themselves are not a major staple in the story. It’s more about the people’s and government’s reactions to such a crazy, hopeless-seeming situation, which I actually found to be spot-on, particularly considering today’s world. While I did, of course, miss the plethora of blood and gore and zombies that today’s movies use (not that it wasn’t present; just not the central point of the whole thing), it was a good deal more intelligent, deep, and… well… non-cookie-cutter than those (or even a lot of books written these days. So formulaic!)
It’s told by way of a series of interviews with various people involved in the war–or who simply got caught in the middle of it all. Frankly, that was one of the more ingenious parts, but it also caused a sort of choppiness in the storytelling that made it run far less smoothly and caused more difficulty in wanting to pick it up and read the next chapter. Additionally, it was somewhat rare (though most certainly present–especially in one particular “interview”) for the speech of each interviewee to be as individualized as would more likely be in real life, but I fully understand the complications in both reading and writing anything in a manner even mildly resembling that. Truthfully, I’m rather glad it was as consistent as it was.
Back to the choppiness, though, it was still written about as well as it possibly could have been to get the point across. It reads more like a history book than a novel, but it was meant to. That’s the point. It was meant to be reality, but with zombies; not zombies with… not much else. Overall, I highly recommend it to any intelligent person who happens to also find zombies really cool (just don’t expect them to be all over the place).
Hah! I’m pretty sure I managed to avoid spoilers in this one, even while explaining why it’s so good. Now why couldn’t Watchmen have been that kind of story? Seriously, I loved that one. It’s still on my mind.
Overall Impression: At least they were married this time.
Just kidding! Again, I think I was simply unprepared for the premise of that book. I’ve since learned to research these before reading them.
Real Overall Impression: Fantastic beginning, got somewhat confusing in the last part, and the last chapter didn’t really wrap anything up (how does one rearrange that to avoid a dangling participle?).
It starts off with a stranger sitting at the table of the main character and narrator, Richard (as it was during a date with the other main character, Gwen), and tells him to kill someone. During the conversation the stranger is shot–which is promptly cleaned up–and the couple leaves. They go to his place and get “married” by pledging themselves to one-another, which is good enough for me to accept. The next morning, they are kicked out and leave for Luna, since Richard is apparently wanted for the murder of the person the stranger wanted him to kill.
I won’t bore you with the details of the story in my own words into which no effort is being put at the moment, but it was an incredibly exciting adventure story.
It was in “Book Three” that things got a little iffy. At this point, it’s made clear that the reader was supposed to have already read through all the stories that pretty much all meld together in this book. Since I’ve learned to research books before reading them, I already knew this. Thankfully, I’d already been through two important ones (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land) and through my research discovered the titles of other important ones–namely, the Lazarus Long Series. Therefore, while I came to be a tad lost at times, I still understood the gist of what was going on. Heck, I’m not even sure I would have understood everything had I read every Heinlein book out there.
The last chapter was even more confusing and didn’t entirely wrap things up for me. It consists of Richard having done exactly what he’d spent the rest of the last portion of the book refusing to do. Also, it’s not very clear as to who there dies and lives, but educated guesses can easily be made.
Well, overall, it was a very enjoyable book, though not one of Heinlein’s best works. I recommend it, but I would recommend some of his other books first.
Overall impression: Absolutely awesome in every sense of the word.
The Silmarillion is basically a collection of stories starting at the creation of the world and ending with the creation of the Rings of Power and all that huge mess. I would describe it as, “like the Bible, but better written and with more interesting stories.” Along with that, it also helped me understand much of what happens and is referenced in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Also, and perhaps most importantly, I now know what was said and meant at 1:22 here:
Really, though, the stories were great. One in particular stood out in my mind, and that is the tale Of Beren and Luthien, chapter 19 in the section that is called the Quenta Silmarillion (it’s sort of split into 5 “books”, though the Quenta Silmarillion is, of course, the primary one and the only one with chapters). Beren was of the race of men, and Luthien (that “u” has a little apostrophe thing above it, but I know not how to type it in here) was the daughter of Thingol, an elf, and Melian of the Maiar (divine beings under the Valar, who pretty much set up the earth for life). They fell in love, but Thingol disapproved of the union since, well, Beren was a man. So, he sent him off to take a Silmaril (The Silmarils were three stones created by one of the elder elves from way back when. They contained the light from some super-awesome trees that were created by one of the Valar but destroyed by Melkor/Morgoth, who was the super-evil divine being guy. Sauron was his servant, if that’s any indication) from Melkor’s crown. An epic tale ensues, which I shall not here divulge for spoiling reasons. It is a great story, though, and includes Sauron being overpowered by a girl! Well, a hound too, but I just wanted to say that.
I also noticed some similarities between this and Der Ring Des Nibelungen, which was based off of the same Norse legends (and y’all should know that I at least know the story (though I haven’t yet seen the opera–I should do that), since I named my 240D Brunhilde after the Valkyrie. My uncle loved that when I told him, since he’s the one to have introduced the tale to us). Most prominent to me was the story Of Turin Turambar, which has a very different signifigance to the whole world than in The Ring Cycle. In Wagner’s version, there is an *achem* incestuous relationship, which leads to the birth of the main character. The one in here, however, ends with everyone dying and the downfall of pretty much every civilization at the time. After that, however, the Valar were finally convinced that they needed to do something about Melkor, the super-evil guy, and all turned out fairly acceptable.
Also prominent in my mind was the story of the island of Numenor (Detailed in the Akallebeth). Up to this point, Tolkien had been doing fairly well in keeping middle-earth somewhat separate from our world (save for a couple things, such as the naming of the one God guy who created even the Valar, Illuvatar. My guess is that this comes from Illu-, which usually has something to do with light, and Vater, the German word for “father.” That’s just speculation, though), but this is a very typical story here, and is most popular in the tale of Atlantis. A race of men was rewarded by the Valar with long life and a great island and all that. After many centuries, though, they began to grow selfish and warlike. Sauron, who had been gaining much power in middle-earth amongst the other men, took this greed and wrath and fed it until the Numenorians decided to wage war against the Valar (all save a few led by Elendil, who was the father of Isildur, whom we all know). Well, it didn’t take much effort for the Valar to destroy them and sink their island back into the waters from whence it came (I must admit, however, that I laughed a little at this part because Sauron was an idiot and was on the island at the time at which it was sunk, so his physical form of the time was drowned). The thing is, though, that the names listed at the end by which it was thence known includes “Atlante” (the “e” has umlauts). Yeah, that’s not obvious at all. Thanks man, I never would have guessed that this story pertained to Atlantis had you not included that.
Alright, perhaps I’m being a little too harsh with the naming thing there. I know Middle-earth is supposed to be pretty much the history of this world (I think), so it’s entirely understandable that there’s so much familiarity in these stories. I will admit that that was a better version than the regular history of Atlantis. Actually, that was better than any other history of the world, so I’ll be nicer.
One other thing stood out, which was in the last “book,” Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age, and that was how anti-climactic the whole battle between Sauron’s forces and the Last Alliance was, though I’m assuming that’s detailed further somewhere within the whole History of Middle-earth series chronicled by Christopher Tolkien.
All-in-all, it was at least among the best pieces of literature I’ve read, and I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone. At the very least, one should read the tale Of Beren and Luthien, as it truly is a great story on its own (though one should make sure of where the Index of Names is, since it is rather easy to get lost without knowing who everyone and everything is.
Most days (or at least half of them) since I began college here, I’ve been going to the totally-freaking-awesome D.H. Hill library for an hour or two between classes in order to read this book. I have yet to figure out how to check them out, and am unwilling to make such a noob of myself just yet. Besides, it’s been cold; I’d want somewhere inside to read, anyways.
I’ll try to avoid spoilers.
The beginning is simply fascinating. Valentine Michael Smith (whom they end up calling “Mike.” Heinlein seems to like that name) is a man who was born on Mars during the first attempted mission to the planet. He was raised by Martians and was well assimilated into their culture when the next humans arrived and discovered that he existed. He was then brought down to earth for some reason or another and spends most of his time after arrival lying in a hospital bed to gain enough strength to be able to function in earth’s gravity. While there, he meets a nurse, Jill, who gets him to escape for some reason, and they go to the home of Jubal Harshaw.
It continues being interesting in this part, during which Mike and Jubal have many philosophical conversations about the entire nature of the human race. Discussions on religion, war, tradition, etc. dominate the text. Then, they go to a church/cult of people dubbed “Fosterites” after the religion’s creator, some guy named Foster (creative!). After that, the plot begins getting a little screwy. Eventually, Jill and Mike leave Jubal’s to travel around for a while. Then, they create what is basically a communist sex cult. I think they even described it that way in the book at one point. So the entire rest of the novel is a description of that, and how blissfully happy all the members are to be free of so many things that made them human (they get rid of jealousy, anger, sadness, laughter, etc., but apparently still somehow feel great love and caring for their “water brothers”–something I failed to explain earlier in the post, but am too lazy to now. It basically makes them very close family), and also how we should all have sex with lots and lots of people because it feels good, and what possible consequences could come from something so good?
Now, I’ve known for a while now that R.A.H. embraced the idea of sexual freedom, so it was no surprise to me that it was at least present in the book. Nevertheless, I was rather unprepared for the entire premise to end up being the old hippie mantra of “if it feels good, do it” (I guess I should have read the wikipedia first). No ofense, Heinlein, but I simply can’t agree with that. We don’t really have a Martian handy to keep us from getting diseases or pregnant (unless we want to) or to teach us how to not be jealous if someone we love has sex with a bunch of other people (though if I’d have to give up my ability to laugh to do so, I’d rather be a crabby old maid).
Granted, my overall opinion on this matter is fairly more uptight than probably just about everyone. I even just learned on friday night while watching History Channel’s The History of Sex series (absolutely fascinating show, by the way) that 60% of Puritan women got married pregnant, IIRC. Puritans, for goodness’ sake! Humans don’t appear very able to practice self-control when it comes to this sort of thing. Of course sex is a good thing, and of course it’s natural and all that, but it’s just my personal belief that it’s a rather private matter and also not to be overused. Water is a good thing, but you can still drown. Oxygen is great, but it needs to be somewhat diluted if you’re going to breathe it. There are many things that are good–or even necessary–to human life, but excess of any one of them can have disastrous consequences. But hey, that’s just one person’s opinion. I understand what’s being said on the topic in Stranger in a Strange Land, but I just happen to disagree on many of the key points made.
Overall, I loved the first half and hated the second. I’ll avoid spilling what happens in the very end, but I will say that it works under the assumption that Americans are as intolerant as people were in the middle ages or even biblical times. I know I didn’t go into too many plot details, but that’s what reading the book itself is for (or the wikipedia, whichever). I wouldn’t really recommend it, but it might turn out to be a better read if you’re not caught off-guard. However, I suppose if you want the full Robert A. Heinlein experience, it’s definitely a necessity.
