Monument 14, by Emmy Laybourne

I’m going to be honest – this book wasn’t great. I was expecting a lot more than I got. It seems like your typical plot, a bunch of young people bundled up inside a mega store while  all hell breaks loose outside. And that’s the problem, it was a typical plot.

So the kids are bundled up safe and sound. Well, almost. There’s obviously quite a bit of tension, and when outside factors start to leak in (literally) things get a little bit hairy in there.

I picked up this book expecting a lot, it sounded just like my sort of read. I’m not even sure what made me dislike it. It may be that the characters acted so insanely stupid. I mean it’s the definition of an emergency, and they’re being idiots about it. Plus the fact that I could tell what was going to happen from the off.

So to summarise, I didn’t love it, didn’t hate it. Monument 14 was a solid 3/5. Ish…

Battle Lines by Will Hill – 700 pages of excellent.

Warning: This review contains spoilers for the first two books in the Department 19 series by Will Hill- Department 19 and The Rising.

I really do love the cover…

Battle Lines is the third book in the Department 19 series by Will Hill, which follows Jamie Carpenter and his fellow operatives in Department 19 (Blacklight) – The department of the British government that hunts vampires. Yeah it doesn’t sound the best. But take my word for it, it’s excellent.

With 52 days until Zero Hour, the time when the newly-awakened Dracula will be back to his full strength, the Department isn’t exactly the strongest it’s ever been. It’s trying to build itself back up after the devastating attack that took place at the hands of Valeri Rusmanov at the end of the previous book, and the kidnapping of the Director, Henry Seward. That means taking on new recruits, and trying to train them as quickly as possible so that they can be ready for action when needed. And that moment comes a lot sooner than anybody was expecting, as the unthinkable happens. Several of the highest security prisons around the world are broken into, the staff massacred, and all the inmates turned. But they aren’t the usual newly-turned vampires. Oh no. For some reason they have strength and speed far surpassing that of a normal vampire.
Meanwhile, Dracula is still building up his strength, and the Department don’t really have any way to stop him…

So all in all, it seems like there’s a lot of doom and gloom. And there is, there’s no denying that Battle Lines is quite a bit darker than either of the previous two books. But the darkness actually makes it an easier read, at least to me. It conveys the sense that if Dracula is allowed to regain his full strength, it will be absolutely horrendous. So in this book, Dracula goes from being a threat in the distance – real, but still quite far away – to a genuine, and rather immediate threat. Which is a very good thing from a reader’s point of view.

We get a very different perspective on the morality of what Blacklight does. Larissa especially seems to be of the mind that they shouldn’t be killing vampires just because they’re vampires. They haven’t done anything wrong, they didn’t choose to be a vampire, so why should they be killed on sight? And while it’s not addressed as much in this book as I presume it will be in the next, it’s certainly a very interesting point to mull over.

Plot wise, there’s really not a slow point throughout the book. It just keeps going for seven hundred pages, and to be honest it’s brilliant. A problem I have with a lot of the books I read is that they’re over too soon, and I definitely don’t have that complaint about Battle Lines.

All in all I’d probably give Battle Lines 4/5 stars, because while it wasn’t exceptional, it was very very good, and I couldn’t put it down.

Light by Michael Grant, and the end of a reading era.

So I just finished reading Light.

When I say I just finished it, I mean I finished it an hour ago, and have spent the time since then staring at the wall trying to absorb the fact that it’s all over, and contemplating everything that happened.

Cause of death…

First of all, some serious congratulations are in order for Mr Grant.

I’m sure he knew from the start, but to think up such a complicated plot, and then to end it so spectacularly, that basically everything was cleared up, that takes skill.  Plot wise, the book was pretty much perfect. I mean there really wasn’t a slow moment, and everything was made clear without overwhelming the reader.

The characters were quite something. The character deaths were something else. I knew there were going to be deaths, heck I even knew there were going to be main character deaths, but that didn’t mean I was prepared. All I’m saying is that if you’re yet to read Light, and you’re as invested as I am, have the Kleenex on stand-by. You’ll most likely need them.

But I’m not complaining. I understand that Light was never going to be a Breaking Dawn, where every single main character walked away at the end- Grant is far too good a writer for that. I understand that the deaths were necessary. I don’t have to like them, but the story is probably better because of it. So I can mourn the characters in my head, I can reread the previous instalments, and I’ll live.

As for the ending, I don’t think I can stress how perfect I found it. As I said before, pretty much everything was cleared up, and in a way that made sense too. Grant avoided pulling a Hunger Games on it, and he ended an amazing series with an epilogue that was actually good. Or aftermath, or whatever you want to call it. It could have been disastrous,  it could have been absolutely brilliant up to the end, and then fallen with a sub-par epilogue. But it didn’t. Personally, I think it ended in the best way it could.

As for the rest of my thoughts on the story, I really don’t think I can make them at all coherent, so I think I’m going to end this here.

Light was a spectacular ending to an exceptional series. It ticked all the boxes, and I genuinely don’t have a bad word to say about it.  There’s no doubt in my mind that Light deserves five stars, as does the Gone Series in general.

And I’d like to take another moment to thank Michael Grant, for writing such an incredible story.

Finishing the Gone series comes with the same feeling that finishing the Artemis Fowl books did. Or The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. Even Harry Potter. The Gone books have been somewhat a constant in my life over the past few years, and now that the series is finished, I feel like there’s a small void within me that was previously filled with anticipation for the next part of the story. I have fond memories of the first time I read Gone – sitting in one place for most of Christmas day until I finished it, and going out the next day to get Hunger and Lies. I remember reading Plague on a long, cramped plane journey. I bought Fear the third time I went to see the Hunger Games, and devoured it the second I got home. Basically what I’m saying is, it may sound a little sad, but these books have been a part of my life over the past few years, and I’m really sad that they have to end.

But everything has to end sometime, right?

And Gone ended spectacularly.

The Host – A Pleasant Surprise

A few years ago I would never have picked up this book. I would have scoffed, perhaps even mimed vomiting at the mention of the name Stephanie Meyer. But I’ve grown up.

The Host is genuinely brilliant, and I completely loved it. I can’t believe I’m only reading it now, but I was a stubborn eleven year old, and I refused to give it a chance. I was a stupid eleven year old.

A rather lovely cover

The Host follows Wanderer (Wanda) – A Soul.

Souls are a species which inhabit the bodies of humans (or other species on other planets). They’re not evil, they inhabit the bodies to help the world, but in doing so they wipe out their host species.

But not completely.

On Earth, there are humans who have managed to remain free of inhabitation by the Souls. They’re very much in the minority, and there’s only a few of them left, but they’re definitely present. And when Wanda inhabits one of the remaining humans, Melanie, she isn’t prepared for the fight Melanie puts up, a fight that Melanie might just win. Melanie tries to overpower Wanda’s presence in her mind, to get back to her brother Jamie, and Jared, her, for want of a better word, boyfriend or lover. She has vague directions in her head to the home of a group of surviving humans. But if she gets there will she be accepted? Will the humans even believe that Melanie is still alive inside of Wanda? And what if they start to like Wanda? What happens then?

It sounds good, but not brilliant. But it is brilliant. The thing about The Host is that you think you’d be rooting for Melanie – her being the human, and probably the more relatable of the two. But you don’t. You end up wanting Wanda to get her way, but at the same time wanting Melanie to be ok. And that’s really not a good place to be, at least not with what they have to go through in the course of the novel. You get very attached to both Wanda and Melanie, even if you set out not wanting to.

The hard part of reading is that you get to see both sides of the story. You would obviously go into the novel taking the human’s side, wanting rid of the souls, and to get the planet, and those you know and love back. But then you see in all from Wanda’s perspective, and you see what kind beings the Souls are, and how they really are here only to help, and if you don’t end up extremely conflicted, I genuinely don’t know what sort of person you are.

It is quite a long book, over 600 pages, and the start is a little slow, but it does pick up a lot, and apart from the beginning there’s never really a dull moment.

The characters are very well written, the fact that there’s no clear choice, or clear winner, or whatever you want to call it, in any of the situations that arise, is a tribute to how three-dimensional the characters all are. Even the characters that I thought I hated (of which there were two) ended up having a lot more to them than what I first thought.

Overall The Host genuinely moved me, it was absolutely brilliant. I strongly recommend it, and even if you’re not sure, even if you’ve read the terrible blurb and decided it wouldn’t be a good read, give it a go, you might be surprised – I know I was. So much so that I’m giving the Host 4.5 stars out of 5.

Level Two – too much love, not enough story

Not a cover I would usually pick up, but I’m glad I did…

Level Two, by Lenore Appelhans, is the story of Felicia Ward, who died a while back. She’s currently in “Level Two” where you go to confront your past, before you can move on to Heaven or Hell. Or at least that was the original purpose of Level Two. Now it’s purpose is gone. You can now rent out your memories for other dead souls to watch, so they can live your experiences, and in turn you can rent other soul’s memories. This completely defeats the purpose of Level Two, as you’re not confronting your death, and so cannot move on to Heaven or Hell.

So Felicia is doing just that – Not moving on, perpetually looking back over memories of her life, especially memories of Neil, her boyfriend. Until one day that is, when Julian – a boy who was in her life for all of a few weeks, tore her life apart then left forever – shows up at her memory pod, and forces her to leave with him. He brings her to a group of rebellious angels, who are plotting against the Morati, the angels who run Level Two, because the Morati are stopping the souls from moving on, so that they can use their energy as fuel. The rebels want to return Level Two to its original purpose of helping souls to move on.

I kind of have mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, it has quite a good plot, and is actually very well written, especially for a flashback novel, which as we all know are often extremely confusing. However, even as love triangles go, this one was blown way out of proportion, and to be honest the actual plot was overshadowed by it. I’m of the opinion that the story itself would be a lot better if the love triangle was played down a bit, because the story actually is brilliant.

I felt certain scenes were very rushed. I wouldn’t have minded if the book was another hundred pages long, if it meant the author could have gone into more detail in certain scenes, or certain aspects of the story.

Overall, apart from the over-emphasised love triangle, I don’t have anything to complain about. I’d put Level Two at 3.5 stars.