Tag Archives: young adult

Review: Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld (@ScottWesterfeld @SimonTEEN)

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Uglies is yet another one of those series I started without any idea of the plot (I have got to stop doing that. It’s really going to backfire on me someday). All I knew was that it’s yet another YA dystopian. I know, I know, the genre is flooded with mediocrity right now, but before you immediately tune out, let me just throw this out there: this one is actually good.

PLOT:

Uglies follows Tally Youngblood, a 15-year-old girl living in a futuristic society that has decided that the main thing wrong with the world is that attractive people have unfair advantages over the unattractive. The solution? Everyone undergoes cosmetic surgery on their 16th birthday, modifying all their facial and physical features to fit a common standard of perfect beauty.

Once the procedure is complete, these former “Uglies” are now allowed to live in beautiful cities with the “Pretties,” where their every need is catered to via a hole in the wall (think replicators on Star Trek: TNG), and their only concern is what to wear to the next fabulous party.

Tally is eagerly awaiting her operation, passing her time with harmless pranks on the Pretties, until she meets Shay. Shay is also 15, and therefore also an Ugly. As a matter of fact, she and Tally share the same birthday, which means they will have their procedures at the same time.

The difference is that Shay doesn’t want the procedure. And after unsuccessfully trying to convince Tally to run away with her, Shay disappears. All she leaves behind is a set of cryptic instructions, in case Tally wants to join her.

While Tally is concerned for Shay, she doesn’t fluctuate in her desire to become a Pretty. She hopes Shay got what she wanted. But soon, Tally will get what she wants too.

However, on the day of Tally’s procedure, she is presented with an awful choice: go find Shay, and the rebels she has run away with, or stay Ugly forever.

Thus begins Tally’s journey to the Smoke, the secret rebel hideout that Shay has fled to. All Tally wants is to put this all behind her and become Pretty. Until she finds the Smoke, and starts to question everything she ever believed.

MY THOUGHTS:

I’ll admit, I was a little wary about starting a series that revolves around being pretty. I mean seriously, how much more superficial can you get? I was prepared to be super-annoyed with the shallowness of it all.

But once I started reading, I found myself completely absorbed in Tally’s world. Mr. Westerfeld actually made me understand how Tally would want nothing more in life than to become Pretty, and managed to do it without making me hate her. No small task.

There were a few things I could nitpick about the plot. The endless hoverboarding, for example (I couldn’t help but think that Mr. Westerfeld may have just wanted an excuse to stretch this scene out for an entire book…or four).

Also, I had a little bit of a hard time figuring out how anything actually got accomplished in this world. What I surmised was that the inhabitants of Uglyville go to school, then turn 16 and party hearty for a few years until they hit “Middle Pretty” age and actually start contributing something to society. Not that I could imagine any of them actually wanting to contribute, since it sounds like the Pretty lifestyle was the epitome of luxury and indulgence. Maybe you or I would get tired of living like that, but the Pretties don’t seem to mind in the least.

Is a workforce consisting entirely of middle-aged ex-partiers (as it’s implied that the elderly, or “Crumblies” — ouch — also do not work) enough to keep this advanced society running smoothly? Maybe not in the world you and I live in. In the world of Uglies, though, it works.

When it comes to YA fiction — or any fiction, for that matter — I can almost always poke holes in the logic of its world. The question I have to ask myself is, “Did I care?” If the answer is yes, it pulls me out of the story and diminishes my enjoyment of the book.

With Uglies, the answer was no. I didn’t care that not everything made sense. What I cared about was Tally. Was she a perfect character? Heck no. She drove me nuts at times (this is also one of the main downfalls of reading YA lit, period. The protagonists are always teenagers. I am not). But she was fun to read about, her journey was exciting, and I couldn’t put the book down until I knew what happened to her.

Content guide: contains some mild violence.

Uglies has three sequels: Pretties, Specials, and Extras. I recommend the whole series.

Book to Film: The Hunger Games

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A lot of the books I read eventually become movies. Sometimes I read the book first, sometimes I see the movie first. Sometimes I see the movie because I read the book, and vice versa. So I thought it may be fun to talk about the film adaptations of the books I’ve read.

And what better film to kick it off than the one currently dominating the box office, The Hunger Games?

If you want to brush up on the basic plot, you can read my review. But if you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, you probably don’t want to keep going. Because I’m about to get into spoiler territory, which means you’re about to get either lost or annoyed.

CAST

For the most part, I thought the casting was spot-on. Jennifer Lawrence was a perfect Katniss, Josh Hutcherson was a charming and empathetic Peeta, Amandla Stenberg broke my heart as Rue, Lenny Kravitz was a cool and composed Cinna.

It probably helps that I read the books after the movie had been principally cast, so even though I wasn’t very familiar with a lot of the actors portraying the leads, I at least had their images in my mind when reading. And because I was aware of who was cast when I was reading, I can honestly say that for the most part, the casting, makeup, and wardrobe department did an excellent job of making the actors look the way Suzanne Collins describes the characters.

There were only a few characters where the casting surprised me. None of the actors were bad (Wes Bentley in particular was pretty impressive) — just not what I pictured from reading the book. These included:

Toby Jones as Claudius Templesmith. (Couldn’t find a picture of him in character – sorry). I pictured someone boisterous and imposing, to go with his big, booming voice. I’m not actually sure if he’s given a physical description in the book. I just pictured him having a very dominating physical presence. But they reduced Claudius’ character to a very minor one in the film (I think mostly to bolster the role of Seneca Crane, which is a creative decision I agree with), and Toby Jones did a fine job with what he was given.

 

Wes Bentley as Seneca Crane. You have to understand, Seneca Crane is barely even a character in the first book. He’s not even given a name until the second book, and he has very little written about him. I’m nearly positive there is no physical description given. So for some reason, I pictured him as middle-aged and portly. No idea why. However, probably to give the events of the second book/film more weight, the filmmakers expanded the role of Seneca Crane in the film, and Wes Bentley was excellent in the role. He had very few lines, but conveyed quite a bit with his eyes and expressions.

Isabelle Fuhrman as Clove. This is the only bit of casting that I’m positive went completely against the physical description given in the book. In the book, Clove has an imposing physical presence, and is much bigger than Katniss. There’s a scene in the book where Katniss climbs a tree, and Clove can’t follow her because she’s so much larger than Katniss. Isabelle is noticeably smaller than Jennifer Lawrence. That said, Isabelle Fuhrman had every bit of the character’s personality spot on, and delivered all her lines and actions exactly how I imagined Clove would. She just didn’t look like her. But I’m not a stickler for actors having to exactly match physical descriptions in books. I’d much rather they act like the characters than look like them. So I was totally fine with this change.

PLOT

As far as book-to-movie adaptations go, The Hunger Games was one of the most faithful ones I’ve ever seen. All the main plot points were there. There were some omissions and alterations from the book, obviously. It’s necessary when condensing an almost-400-page book down to a 2.5 hour movie.

Some of the changes didn’t bother me – the elimination of the characters of Madge and the Avox girl; the shortening of the Games themselves; the addition of the scenes with President Snow, Seneca Crane, and the Gamemakers; the lack of mention of the eyes of the mutts at the end; the fact that Peeta (it would seem) doesn’t have his leg amputated after the conclusion of the Games. I thought those changes helped make the story watchable and understandable, especially for people who hadn’t read the books.

Others irked me just a tad. [Major spoilers ahead. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Twice.]

There’s a scene in the book where the Career tributes leave a girl for dead in the woods, but a cannon (signaling her death) never sounds. Peeta volunteers to go check and finish her off. He’s gone an unusually long time. Finally, he returns and then the cannon sounds. The Careers (and Katniss, who is observing it all from her hiding place) all assume Peeta killed her. But this is also when they’re all assuming that Peeta is helping them hunt down Katniss, when in fact, he’s trying to protect her.

I’ve always been curious what actually happened between Peeta and that girl. It doesn’t seem to be in his character to go and kill a wounded girl. Did he simply wait with her until she died? Did he try to help her? It’s never explained in the books. Since Suzanne Collins collaborated on the screenplay, I was hoping it would be addressed in the movie. But the whole scene is omitted.

The other scene that was left out of the movie that really irked me was the exchange between Katniss and Peeta at the very end of the book. That conversation is the catalyst for some major developments between them in Catching Fire. It changes their entire relationship. And they left it out of the movie.

There is a conversation, and the gist of the original conversation is kind of maybe implied. But in the book, they both state their feelings quite bluntly, and in the movie, it’s all subtlety. I wish it had been blunt.

Other than those two notable exceptions, I thought the adaptation was extremely well done. It was obvious that Gary Ross, the actors, and the crew were trying their best to respect the books and their message.

FILMING

I’ll be honest – there was a lot of shaky cam. It kind of irked me at first.

But.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt that it was adding to the sense of unease, of wrongness, of the feeling that this world was not good, pretty, or comfortable. And that’s exactly how it’s supposed to feel.

It didn’t feel like a big, glossy action movie where the bad guys blow things up and the attractive hero always escapes by the skin of her teeth. It felt gritty and dirty and upsetting.

Speaking of dirt, I know there are some nay-sayers out there that think it wasn’t gritty and dirty and upsetting enough. But just because people are poor and in a desperate situation doesn’t automatically turn them into cavemen. They can still practice basic hygiene and grooming habits. They can still clean their small, ill-equipped houses. So I was totally okay with the overall look of the movie.

The violence was a big concern for a lot of movie-goers. After all, it’s kids killing kids. How on earth would anyone want to watch that? But much like in the book, where Katniss is observing the violence in bits and pieces as she focuses on trying to keep herself alive, a lot of the violence takes place in quick snippets or off-camera. It’s not downplayed. You definitely feel that these events are not right. But it’s also not gratuitous. It’s not glorifying violence. I thought it was handled well.

FINAL IMPRESSIONS

If I had to pick one, I’d still say I enjoyed the book more than the film. But this is definitely one of my favorite book-to-film adaptations, especially in the Young Adult genre. I thought the story came across loud and clear. The sets, costumes, and makeup were perfect. The acting was fantastic. If I had my druthers, it would have been about 30 minutes longer, but I know that a 3-hour film based on a book directed at teenagers is just not something studios are interested in doing. All in all, it was great to see a book I love brought to life so faithfully in the theater.

Grade: A

The Hunger Games is rated PG-13 for intense violent thematic material and disturbing images – all involving teens.

Review: Pandemonium, by Lauren Oliver (@oliverbooks @harperteen)

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WARNING: Spoilers for Delirium ahead.

Pandemonium is the second book in Lauren Oliver’s Delirium Trilogy. In the first book, Delirium, Lena lives in a future dystopian United States, where love has been designated a disease, and everyone is cured on their 18th birthday. Lena was eagerly anticipating her “cure” and her orderly, predictable life to follow, free from the “Deliria” that leads to mood swings, irrational behavior, violence, and death. That is, until she meets Alex, an “Invalid” from The Wilds – a boy who has never been cured and doesn’t believe that love is something that needs a cure. Alex teaches Lena about love, and they plan to escape Portland to live in The Wilds together. But in the end, Alex sacrifices himself to allow Lena to escape.

Pandemonium’s narrative alternates between two separate time lines. The first picks up right where Delirium ends. It follows Lena in the days, weeks, and months after she has escaped Portland, losing Alex in the process. Predictably, she meets up with other Invalids living in The Wilds, and slowly assimilates to life with them. Away from the familiar comforts of the city. Away from fear of the Deliria. Away from Alex.

The second takes place several months later. Lena is now an active part of the resistance, and is living undercover in New York City. Her cover is that she is part of a new political movement – the DFA or “Deliria-Free America.” The movement’s mission is for the cure to be administered to everyone in America before their 18th birthday. Lena’s mission is to keep an eye on the DFA, especially its leaders: Thomas Fineman and his son, Julian.

[Spoilers Ahead]

But everything turns to chaos when Scavengers – a violent extremist group of uncureds – attack a DFA rally, and Lena and Julian are kidnapped and held hostage together. Their captivity forces them to question their preconceived notions about each other and about who their enemies really are.

Pandemonium was an enjoyable, exciting, fast-paced book. I did find it a bit predictable – I wasn’t nearly as surprised as Lena at the twists and turns of the plot – but that didn’t lessen my enjoyment of it at all. And as much as I loved Alex in Delirium and I wasn’t sure initially if I would be able to accept if Lena moved on, I found that I loved Julian just as much as Alex. I appreciated how the evolution of Lena and Julian’s relationship mirrored that of Lena and Alex – but with Lena’s role reversed.

Ultimately, I thought Pandemonium was a great set-up for the third book in the trilogy. I anticipate the conclusion to the Delirium Trilogy will contain lots of action, a likely love triangle (which is overdone in YA books, but in a world where the entire plot focuses around the benefits and drawbacks of falling in love, it probably can’t be avoided), and Lena’s deeper involvement with the resistance. It answered some questions set up in Delirium while asking several more. And it introduced us to some great new characters.

My frustrations with the book were minor. I missed the characters from Delirium (but I suspect some of them will pop up in the 3rd book). I couldn’t understand how just a couple days lost in the woods resulted in Lena needing weeks to recuperate, considering how physically fit she was at the end of Delirium. And several of Lena’s great plans just seemed far too simple (especially in the couple parts where she has to deal with key codes).

But overall, none of that was enough to take away from my enjoyment of the book. The storytelling was excellent, and I found myself completely immersed in the characters and world that Ms. Oliver created. I’m intrigued and excited to see how she wraps up Lena’s story in book 3.

Content guide: Contains scenes of violence and peril. 

Review: Divergent, by Veronica Roth (@harperteen)

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Divergent is the first book in a trilogy by Veronica Roth. The setting is a future dystopian Chicago, where the city – and presumably the country (although nothing much is ever said about the world outside of Chicago) – have been split into five factions according to personality:

Abnegation (the selfless)
Amity (the kind)
Candor (the honest)
Dauntless (the brave)
Erudite (the intellectual)

All children are given an aptitude test when they are 16 to determine which faction they are best suited for. Then, in a public ceremony, they choose a faction for life. If the faction is different than the one they were raised in, bye-bye family (“faction before blood” is their motto).

Those who fail to assimilate into their chosen faction are the factionless, doomed to live in the projects and take the “undesirable” jobs (like janitors and sanitation workers). Ouch.

The narrator of Divergent is Beatrice, or “Tris,” as she prefers to be called once she leaves her Abnegation family to join the daredevil Dauntless faction. Her aptitude test results were inconclusive, ruling out only Amity and Candor, and making her “Divergent” – something that she doesn’t understand, but is told is something she must keep secret if she wants to live.

After deciding that she isn’t selfless enough and that her inner monologue is too snarky to really belong in Abnegation, and never really considering Erudite at all, Tris begins initiation into the Dauntless faction, most of which consists of jumping on and off of moving trains, hallucinating her worst fears, and hurling herself from great heights. She bonds with her fellow transfer initiates (all of whom are either from Candor or Erudite), develops a crush on her 18-year-old instructor, and gets beaten up a lot.

Eventually, Tris’ Divergent nature starts to help her excel in her training — a little too much. She is warned repeatedly — with little to no explanation — to keep her Divergency hidden. And ultimately, through some shoehorned monologuing by the Bad Guy, we learn why it upsets the Powers that Be so much for her to be running around, Divergent. Unfortunately, by the time she learns the truth, it may be too late…

Plot contrivances aside, I really enjoyed this book. No, I don’t think the factions were explained well, and I don’t believe a lot of the rules of the world makes sense. But I was able to suspend my disbelief enough to immerse myself in Tris’ POV, and when you just accept that everything in her world makes sense (even though it doesn’t), it’s an enjoyable read. I’m hoping that some of the more practical questions about the world, why it exists, and how it functions are answered in the next book in the series, Insurgent.

I also hope to see Tris a bit more well-rounded in the next books. She is remarkably self-absorbed, suspicious, and unforgiving in her treatment of others. Even though she was supposed to have equal aptitude for Abnegation, Dauntless and Erudite, I didn’t see many selfless or intellectual traits in her (she figured a couple simple things out using her wits, but the Erudite are supposed to be the exceedingly intelligent, not just the not-stupid). It’s a puzzle, considering she spent the first 16 years of her life among the Abnegation.

This book isn’t perfect. The characters were sometimes confusing. Sometimes infuriating. Some of the plot twists really come out of left field, and others you can see coming miles away. There are gaping holes in some of the logic. And the world building is extremely under-developed.

All that said, I still enjoyed it. It’s fast-paced, it’s entertaining, and it’s escapist. It was a fun way to spend a couple afternoons, and I’m looking forward to finding out what comes next in Insurgent.

Content guide: Contains violence, daredevil scenarios, several scenes designed to play on fear.

Review: The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins (@Scholastic)

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I read The Hunger Games several months ago. I never wrote down my thoughts, because thousands before me already had, and I figured I probably didn’t have much to add. Then I read and reviewed a bunch of other young adult dystopian fiction, some good, some “eh,” and came to the conclusion that if I’m going to judge all of them against The Hunger Games, then I should probably go ahead and review The Hunger Games.

This is a review only of the first book.

We all know by now what The Hunger Games is about. In a future version of the United States (now called Panem), the country has been divided into 12 Districts, each specializing in a different industry, surrounding a central Capitol. Years ago, the Districts rebelled against the Capitol. The Capitol prevailed, and as punishment for the rebellion (and as a deterrent against future rebellion), each year the Capitol forces each District to sacrifice 2 of its citizens – a boy and girl between the ages of 12 and 18 – to fight to the death in a barbaric gladiatorial arena for the amusement of the Capitol’s citizens. One will survive. 23 will die.

The decadent and pampered Capitol citizens, desensitized to the actual horror of what they are watching, view the televised Games as the height of entertainment, Olympics and action movies and reality TV all rolled into one.

Meanwhile, the oppressed citizens of the 12 Districts live out a nightmare, as they are forced to watch their children mercilessly slaughtered on TV.

And rebellion is out of the question. Each District is patrolled by Capitol-appointed “Peacekeepers,” there to make sure that they willingly send their Tributes and watch the Games like they’re supposed to. To resist is to guarantee death – or worse.

The heroine of the book is Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year-old girl who has managed to avoid the Hunger Games for the past 4 years. But that all changes when her 12-year-old sister, Prim, is selected to be this year’s District 12 Tribute. Katniss, terrified for Prim, volunteers to take her place — a decision which most likely guarantees a gruesome death.

Katniss is shipped off to the Capitol to prepare for the Games, along with Peeta, the local baker’s son. They are primped and polished, interviewed and pampered, and ultimately turned loose in the arena with the other 22 tributes.

Every single one of them knows, if they are not prepared to fight to the death, they have no hope of winning. And a peaceful sit-in is not an option – the country is watching, and the Gamemakers will guarantee a good show, even if it means unleashing mutant wasps or raining down fire on the tributes.

I will admit, I spent the first half of the book convinced Katniss would certainly find a way to rebel against the Games. Surely she wouldn’t participate. Surely she wouldn’t kill anyone. Surely she wouldn’t fight Peeta. Surely something will happen to make it so that none of these children actually has to die.

But Katniss doesn’t go to the games to rebel. She goes to save her sister, and she goes to try to come back to her sister. Which means she has to win. Which means she has to participate. She’s a 16-year-old girl in a world that has accepted the Games as a part of life for 3/4 of a century.

Children do die in this book. It’s horrible and terrifying and heartbreaking. You want to scream at the Gamemakers and Capitol citizens, “What’s wrong with you?” The book gives a chilling look at the insensitivity that would turn a blind eye to the slaughter of children in the name of entertainment and tradition.

It also gives us, in Katniss, a very flawed young girl. She is angry, stubborn and judgmental. But she is also fiercely loyal, protective, and determined. I don’t agree with all of her decisions in the book. I was actually a much bigger fan of Peeta than Katniss. But I can admire her determination to do what she has to, to return to protect her sister. She clings to hope, even when all seems lost. In the world she lives in, it seems like the only choice she has.

As a parent, it saddened me greatly to think of a world where parents would be forced to send their children into a situation like this, and where children would be forced to endure this kind of brutality and despair. And if The Hunger Games was just a stand-alone story, I may not have enjoyed it as much, even though it’s an exciting and engrossing read. But it is the first book in a trilogy, and does an excellent job of setting up the world that Katniss and Peeta live in.

The first book is sad. I cared about the characters, but I hated the world they lived in. I hated what they had to go through. It’s upsetting. It’s horrifying. It made me angry. And it’s supposed to. If this is the feeling you’re left with after the first book, it’s not a sign to give up on the series. It’s a sign you need to see where it goes.

Content guide: Contains numerous descriptions of disturbing violence towards children, often resulting in death.