Life, the Universe and Everything

Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams
Pan Books - 1982
160 pages

The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky above their heads--so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals stand between the killer robots of Krikkit and their goal of total annihilation.
They are Arthur Dent, a mild-mannered space and time traveler who tries to learn how to fly by throwing himself at the ground and missing; Ford Prefect, his best friend, who decides to go insane to see if he likes it; Slartibartfast, the indomitable vice president of the Campaign for Real Time, who travels in a ship powered by irrational behavior; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed ex-president of the galaxy; and Trillian, the space cadet who is torn between a persistent thunder god and a very depressed Beeblebrox.
How will it all end? Will it end? Only this stalwart crew knows as they try to avert "universal" Armageddon and save life as we know it--and don't know it!

This one is different than the other two. The plot is about Armageddon by the robots of Krikkit from the beginning to end. It ambles in the middle, but ultimately it sticks with one plot the whole way through, which saves a lot of trouble.

The book took me only a couple of days to read, but it makes it difficult to review. Unlike most series that have wild ups and downs (The Last Werewolf trilogy), the Hitchhiker's "trilogy" stays more and more consistent.

Grade: A-

The Shining Girls

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
Random House Struik - 15 April 2013
375 pages

THE GIRL WHO WOULDN'T DIE HUNTS THE KILLER WHO SHOULDN'T EXIST.
Harper Curtis is a killer who stepped out of the past. Kirby Mazrachi is the girl who was never meant to have a future.
Kirby is the last shining girl, one of the bright young women burning with potential whose lives Harper is destined to snuff out after he stumbles upon a House in Depression-era Chicago that opens on to other times.
At the urging of the House, Harper inserts himself into the lives of the shining girls, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He's the ultimate hunter, vanishing into another time after each murder, untraceable--until one of his victims survives.
Determined to bring her would-be killer to justice, Kirby joins the Chicago Sun-Times to work with the ex-homicide reporter, Dan Velasquez, who covers her case. Soon Kirby finds herself closing in on the impossible truth...

Define "soon".

Because if you mean the first 84.4% of the book, then you're sorely mistaken. That part of the book is Harper killing various girls who only get one chapter, Kirby talking to murder victims' families and supposed killers trying to figure something out, and Dan getting a huge, overly creepy crush on Kirby. And yes, I actually did the math to figure out that 84.5% through the book is when Kirby finally figures out that Harper comes from the future. After that, everything wraps itself up in a pretty little ribbon all at the end, just like Where'd You Go, Bernadette.

Most of the book was spent either with one-shot chapters in the point of view of one of Harper's victims or of Harper OR Kirby doing God knows what about serial killer nonsense. Did I repeat that? Not exactly, with a few different words? I'm sorry, I guess I'm like Beukes and have to show you the same thing over and over with a couple of variations.

The characters were all one-dimensional things that didn't really seem to have any life. I've seen boxes of cereal that were less cardboard than Harper, Kirby, and everyone else.

Maybe I kept reading this book because I thought that something would happen, or maybe because the chapters were so short I thought that maybe I could just read a few and then stop. Or maybe I just wanted to prove I could slog through this book. No matter what, I was a fool.

Grade: F

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
Pan Books - January 1, 1980
208 pages

Facing annihilation at the hands of the warlike Vogons is a curious time to have a craving for tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his curious comrades in arms as they hurtle across space powered by pure improbability and desperately in search of a place to eat.
Among Arthur's motley shipmates are Ford Prefect, a longtime friend and expert contributor to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the three-armed, two-headed ex-president of the galaxy; Tricia McMillan, a fellow Earth refugee who's gone native (her name is Trillian now); and Marvin, the moody android who suffers nothing and no one very gladly. Their destination? The ultimate hotspot for an evening of apocalyptic entertainment and fine dining, where the food (literally) speaks for itself.

This is the second book out of five in the Hitchhiker "trilogy" written by Adams himself. Fortunately, I liked it just as much as the first one. It starts with a laugh as the entire computer system on the ship shuts down because it needs to figure out how to make tea, or "the taste of dried leaves boiled in water with milk squirted out of a cow."

This one's plot was a little less coherent than its predecessors while it was going on, but I think that it tied together better at the end and more of an ending, which is more than I can say for the first book. However, that means that it wasn't set up particularly well for a third book, which is bad considering there are five books written by Adams and one more by Eoin Colfer.

This installment is less about Arthur and Ford than it is Zaphod and Marvin; while Zaphod wasn't exactly my favorite character in Hitchhiker's, Marvin was one of the greatest robots, if not one of the greatest speculative fiction characters, I have ever seen. Once again he uses his pessimism to kill off other technology, this time by angering a tank into shooting around the floor it's standing on and falling through to the ground, where it breaks.

Zaphod also comes more into his own in this part, although he's still not anywhere near being my favorite character. Here's to hoping Ford and Marvin go on an adventure in book 3!

Grade: A-

The Teleportation Accident

The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman
Sceptre - July 19, 2012
357 pages

HISTORY HAPPENED WHILE YOU WERE HUNGOVER
When you haven't had sex in a long time, it feels like the worst thing that is happening to anyone anywhere. When you're living in Germany in the 1930s, it probably isn't. But that's no consolation to Egon Loesser, whose carnal misfortunes will push him from the experimental theatres of Berlin to the absinthe bars of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, trying all the while to solve two mysteries: whether it was really a deal with Satan that claimed the life of his hero, the great Renaissance stage designer Adriano Lavicini; and why a handsome, clever, charming, modest guy like himself can't, just once in a while, get himself laid. From the author of the acclaimed Boxer, Beetle comes a historical novel that doesn't know what year it is, a noir novel that turns all the lights on, a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner, a science fiction novel that can't remember what "isotope" means, a stunningly inventive, exceptionally funny, dangerously unsteady and (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it.
LET'S HOPE THE PARTY WAS WORTH IT

You know those summaries of books where you really wonder if whoever was tasked with doing that truly read the book or if they just skimmed it and decided to come up with a wild hook to get people into the novel? Well, I think that's what happened here. Maybe thirty pages are devoted to the Lavicini mystery, and it isn't even about a deal with Satan, It's about whether the "Teleportation Accident" of 1679 was actually an accident.

So, the book. Not one of my favorites. I think it might have been my fault, because I was thinking to myself one day that I had read so many good books, and I would just love to rant and rant about how horrible a book is. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten something that horrendous. In fact, I've gotten stuff I've forced myself to finish, felt bad about finishing, but didn't want to go crazy ranting about it like I had Mockingbird.

I simply didn't care about any of the characters, which was good considering how many of them popped up and then disappeared. In addition, the last few chapters skip about ten years, and you're expected to understand everything that happened in those ten years. The plot isn't a clear, defined one, much like The Dead Zone; instead it aimlessly wanders around, pausing at times to poke at something that might become sort of a story before the author gets bored with it and throws it away. He even grew bored with the era of the 1930's/40's, so near the end he just skipped a decade per chapter and expected you to know what was going on.

I don't know why I forced myself to finish this. Maybe I thought that it would get better? Whatever the answer is, it didn't get better. There's no plot, just some meandering stories that happen to feature an unlikable protagonist and his interactions with unlikable people. I would give it an F, but then I remind myself of Mockingbird.

Grade: D-

The Tommyknockers

The Tommyknockers by Stephen King
Putnam - November 10, 1987
558 pages

Late last night and the night before,
Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, knocking at the door
I want to go to sleep, don't know if I can
Cause I'm so afraid of the Tommyknocker man

Bobbi Anderson and the other good folks of Haven, Maine, have sold their souls to reap the rewards of the most deadly evil this side of hell.

Spoiler level: Minor

I have no idea what the summary is talking about; they didn't actually "sell their souls" by choice in this book. It was more like Bobbi Anderson found a spaceship in the ground that turned everyone into aliens that were given the name Tommyknockers.

This is one of the Stephen King novels that falls under the category of "bloated". Some of it should have definitely been left of the cutting-room floor and, on this count, I'm going to admit that I am guilty of page-skimming at some points. It wasn't until part two that I really got into it. That was when it got into the stories of the other townspeople, not just the unsympathetic Bobbi Anderson and Jim Gardener.

The Ruth McCausland story, however, was pretty bloated as well. Yeah, yeah, we get it, she was mysteriously killed and everyone's trying to call it an accident but in reality she was murdered by the Tommyknockers, but do we really need over a hundred pages devoted to this nonsense?

While I am calling it a bloated mess, there was also some horror in there. As someone who does not believe in aliens, it wasn't enough to pin me to the sheets with fright, but I always think in a book, "What if I were in this situation?" The answer to The Tommyknockers was run and cry. And then die because you're not allowed to leave Haven or you die.

Grade: C

Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Delacorte - 1969
186 pages

Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Trafalmadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who watches the firebombing of Dresden.

Honestly, at first, I was a little confused reading this novel. That's because chapter one is more like an introduction to the novel, where Vonnegut describes how he poured his life into this novel, but it was truly terrible and jumbled. Vonnegut inserts himself into two more situations, one where he is suffering the consequences of food poisoning and suggests that his brains may be coming out, and again where he says "Oz" as the characters are going to Dresden.

That being said, once it got into the actual novel, it turned wonderful. I was glad to see that it was supposed to be funny, because there were times I disturbed people around me with my laughing. For example, the protagonist Billy Pilgrim is reading the Bible and thinks that the message of the Gospels is: "If you are going to kill someone, make sure it is someone who is not well-connected."

In the beginning, I felt that Slaughterhouse-Five was a little too jumpy with the time-travelling, going from World War II to Pilgrim's childhood to visiting his mother in the nursing home in spans of only a few paragraphs, but then it finally levelled out to focus mainly on its topic: the firebombing of Dresden in World War II.

While I was a bit hesitant to pick up World War II fiction, as it's not exactly my favorite period of historical fiction (that one's actually tough: maybe Black Death in England, the Industrial Revolution, World War I, or Anglo-Saxon times), it is easily wonderful.

Grade: A-

A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
William Heinemann - 1962
192 pages

In a dystopian near-future England, teenage gangs, their members called "droogs", speak a Russified English with some Cockney rhyming slang and Roma and roam the streets at night. One of these such "droogs" is Alex, whose only solace is classical music. Alex gets arrested and is put on a new technique called the "Ludovico Technique", where he is forced to see horrifying images put to the classical music that he so loves.

The book that I read was as it was published in the United Kingdom: with a full twenty-one chapters. The early English versions, including the one that the film is based on, leave out the twenty-first chapter because they felt it had a different tone and American audiences wouldn't like the new version. Twenty or twenty-one chapters, the novella is still wonderful. The Nadsat was difficult to understand at first, and I had to read slowly, but as I went on I got more of it and could pick up the pace and could truly enjoy the book.

Grade: A

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Pan Books - October 12, 1979
180 pages

Arthur Dent is a completely unremarkable human that is living in a completely unremarkable town on a completely unremarkable Thursday. He wakes up to find that his house is about to be demolished for a bypass. Naturally, Arthur lies down in front of the bulldozers so that they can't go anywhere. Soon his friend Ford Prefect comes and invites him for a drink, hypnotizing the man in charge of demolition to take Arthur's place. Ford then calmly explains to them that he is an alien stranded on Earth in his quest to update The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an early form of the ebook. Earth is about to be destroyed by a race called the Vogons, and just before they disintegrate, Arthur and Ford hitch a ride on the ship.

Ah, yet another short novel. At least this one comes at the beginning of a series, so it will add up to be longer in the long run. And I assure you that I will be reading the next books of the series. This cult phenomenon deserves a widespread audience. In one of my favorite parts of the novel, (spoiler alert! This is the turning point of the book, so don't read unless you really don't care!)Marvin the paranoid android, a chronically depressed robot, kills a ship by telling it about his world views. The ship kills itself in utter depression.(spoiler end) This work is wholly clever and imaginative.

Grade: A

The Maze Runner

The Maze Runner by James Dashner
Delacorte Press - October 6, 2009
384 pages

Thomas wakes up in an elevator, remembering nothing but his own name. When the elevator opens, he finds out that there are others where he has woken up. These boys (yes, they are all boys) call themselves the Gladers as a reference to where they live, a place called the Glade. Thomas feels a connection to the Maze that is attached to the Glade and thinks that he is born to become a Runner, who travel the Maze every day trying to solve it. The next day, the first girl comes to the maze, and she comes bearing a mysterious note.

Here is one thing I am going to tell you right away; there were 72 maximum boys sent there, one every month, and yet they've only been there two years. This drove me crazy through the majority of the book, and so I'm going to tell you this, because though it's revealed at the end it isn't too much of a spoiler; a large group were sent at first. This is the first book in a planned series, so I was pleasently surprised to see how much of an ending there was. Of course, it wasn't a real ending, but more was resolved than other first books in a series. The book moved a little slowly in the beginning, so it felt rushed towards the end. The characters were not too well-developed, and Thomas would get out of a pinch too easily. Another thing I'm tiring of in fiction is when somebody's arrival changes it all, e.g. The Hunger Games. Give me a protagonist who's totally ordinary and who is just trying to figure out things like everybody else, without any special powers.

Grade: B-

The Running Man

The Running Man by Stephen King as Richard Bachman
Signet Books - May 1982
219 pages

It is the year 2025, and citizens of Co-Op City are in for a spectacle; a competition known as "The Running Man", where contestants are officially declared to be "enemies of the state" and are hunted down by people known as Hunters, an elite team of hitmen hired by the Games Network. For each hour they survive, the contestant earns $100, and for each Hunter they kill they get another one hundred. If they stay alive for thirty days, they get one million New Dollars, or three million Old Dollars. Ben Richards has a sick daughter and needs money badly. His solution is to go to The Running Man.

Okay, it sounds sort of like The Hunger Games without that silly love triangle, right? Well, that's where you're wrong. It sounds sort of like The Hunger Games without that silly love triangle for about the first half. Then (spoiler alert!)Ben Richards gets into a huge police standoff---must be some kind of Richard Bachman trademark, having a police standoff---in which trades are negotiated, bluffs are made, and ultimately everyone dies. Not joking. This is the end of the book.(spoiler end!) I'm not saying that it was not necessarily a bad book, just not what I was expecting.

Grade: B-

Firestarter

Firestarter by Stephen King

Viking Press - September 29, 1980

426 pages

Charlie McGee has a power; she can start fires with her mind. This wasn't supposed to happen, of course, but it was a result of her parents. When they were in college, they took part in an experiment for a drug known as "Lot Six" by a goverment agency known as The Shop. When Andy McGee and Victoria Tomlinson participated in this experiment, they retained minor psychic effects. However, that laboratory was where they fell in love. They ended up getting married and had Charlie. Because they both retained minor abilities, Charlie was born with major abilities. The Shop wants Charlie, and they killed Victoria for information. Now Charlie and Andy are on the run.

One problem I had with this book was the fact that a horse named Necromancer was given major significance and then has no end. (Spoiler alert!)Charlie and Andy get captured by The Shop, and they realize that if they don't want Charlie to burn the whole place down, they have to be nice to her. She likes horses, so they show her Necromancer and she learns to ride. When Andy and an officer named Cap plan to escape with Charlie, they decide that she can say she's going to ride Necromancer and then escape. When Charlie burns down the barn, Necromancer escapes and is never seen again. Seems like a waste of forty or so pages about a horse that eventually just runs wild.(Spoiler end) The description could be overpowering at times, but it was okay. Not his greatest, but okay.

Grade: B

The Dead Zone

The Dead Zone by Stephen King

Viking Press - August 1979

428 pages

After winning big at the Wheel of Fortune at the county fair, Johnny Smith takes his sick girlfriend Sarah home and then jumps in a cab, planning to go straight to his home. Today is not Johnny Smith's lucky day, however. The taxicab gets caught in an accident that kills the driver and puts Johnny into a coma for five years. When he wakes up, he needs extreme surgery on his legs, arms, and neck, but that's not all. When Johnny wakes up, he realizes that he's psychic.

Okay, that doesn't even begin to describe the plot of the book, but I couldn't reveal any more without giving it away. That alone is about the first 75 or so pages of the book. The reason that it doesn't even begin to describe the plot is because there isn't just one plot. And yet, it's all (for the most part) in Johnny's viewpoint. The problem is that this would do better as a book series or a television show (it actually was a TV show from 2002-2007). It cannot follow one storyline. Storylines are finished at various intervals, and a new one begins. Very few loose ends were tied up at the end, and the ending seemed like an easy way out of the book. I'll allow you this one bomb, Steve. But next time you'll be getting a letter and a copy of the review.

Grade: D

The Long Walk

The Long Walk by Stephen King as Richard Bachman

Signet Books - July 1979

384 pages

In future America, the ultimate sports competition is an annual walking contest known as "The Long Walk". All boys over the age of twelve take a physical and mental exam. One in fifty passes. Those who pass, up to the age of eighteen, are put in a drawing to get selected for The Long Walk. Two hundred are chosen; the first one hundred are Prime, meaning that they walk immediately. The other hundred are back-up, in case Prime walkers decide that they're terrified of The Long Walk and refuse to do it. Garraty is a Prime walker who will not back out.

I am dismayed by the sexism in this book to start. I understand that in most totalitarian dystopian societies men would be given more opportunities than women for any number of reasons, but this is a new level. Since walkers are allowed to have contact with anyone in the crowd as long as they stay on the road, walkers who have girlfriends will kiss and grab at girls in skimpy clothing in the crowd. They also talk about their women as objects that they can use to their will. Sexism aside, I found this novel interesting. (I also find it hard to believe that the original edition was 384 pages. I read it as part of the Bachman Books). While most of the walkers succumbed to physical tests, such as being shot after slowing down too much, some of them took a mental turn for the worse when the threat of death was continually being used. Sometimes a walker would be so beaten and bloody that they believe death would be better than continuing to walk. Another interesting novel from King's dystopian-favoring pseudonym.

Grade: B+

Fahrenheit 451

R.I.P. Ray Bradbury (1920-2012)
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Ballantine Books - 1953
179 pages

Guy Montag was a fireman, but not the kind of fireman that you'd expect. He doesn't put out fires---he starts them. But only when it comes to books. Books are outlawed in Bradbury's futuristic America, and anyone who reads them is put in prison while their books burn. Montag has never questioned his line of work, until a 17-year-old girl named Clarisse McClellan makes him rethink everything he's been told.

I read this book twice. The first time, I read it simply for leisure purposes and I feel like I missed the point a little. Then, a month later, I had to read it again. The second time I was made to analyze it closer, and I feel like I got more out of it. The only problem is how slow it is. The three parts to it are called "The Hearth and the Salamander," "The Sieve and the Sand", and "Burning Bright", but I think that they should be more like "A Day in the Life of Montag", "Montag Keeps Books But No One Notices Yet", and "Something Happens but the Book is Almost Over". I was also very frightened with the fact that when Guy Montag meets Clarisse, he falls out of love with his wife and in love with her. That didn't seem necessary and was rather creepy.


Grade: B-

The Time Machine

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
William Heinemann - 1895
216 pages

The Time Traveller hosts a dinner party one night to tell his guests that he has made a miniature version of a time machine, but he is laughed off. A week later, he invites them back for another dinner party, where he says that he has been to the future and begins to recount his tales in the year 802,701 A.D., where mankind has shifted itself into two forms: pale, naïve creatures called the Eloi, and apelike, light-fearing beasts called the Morlocks, who feed on the Eloi.

I was forced to read this book. If I weren't, I would probably have read it sometime later in life, when I felt like I wasn't really living until I read such classics as this and Dracula (which I still have not read). If I had read it later in life, I probably would have been more disappointed with The Time Machine than I already am. I did not feel one bit of emotion for the Time Traveller during his journeys because the fact that he was recounting them to us means that he could not have been in too much peril, otherwise he would not be telling them to us. If it were happening in the moment, while he were getting attacked by Morlocks and more, then it would have been better. The startling lack of characterization did not help the story either. The Time Traveller seemed nothing more than any old scientist who has an extravagant idea that he feels he simply must do, otherwise he will be mocked forever. The book moved along quite slowly, to the point where I felt like I needed Sparknotes to find out what just happened. I feel sorry for the person who had to write Sparknotes for it, because they must have had to pick through for some sort of meaning.

Grade: D-

Mockingjay

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
Scholastic - August 24, 2010
390 pages

While heroine Katniss Everdeen was participating in the 75th annual Hunger Games, her home District, 12, was firebombed by the Capitol as a sign of revenge for revolutionary Katniss. The few survivors are hiding out in District 13, long believed to be wiped out but truthfully living underground, out of sight. Katniss is their "Mockingjay", their mascot, if you will. She accepts her position to lead the Districts to victory, but must first save her love, Peeta.

Okay, let me just say that the love triangle was much less of a problem for me this time because there was the constant threat of death. Yes, death. People were dying all over the place in Mockingjay. Rebels were being introduced in one chapter and were dying in the next. Some of the death seemed like it was thrown in just to make you cry, such as (spoiler alert!)the totally unnecessary and depressing death of Prim, Katniss's sister.(spoiler end) I was somewhat to moderately pleased with the ending, but there were some tangents that weren't tied up in the end. Characterization was, like before, fine with the main characters, but with the "crash test dummies" of characters made just to die, they served their soulless purpose without a shred of information on personality.

Grade: B

Catching Fire

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Scholastic - September 1, 2009
391 pages

It is the 75th annual Hunger Games, which means it's time for the Quarter Quell. This is done every number divisible by twenty-five and means that something special is being done. In this case, the past winners will have to go back into the arena and fight to the death again. Katniss is the only female victor from District 12, which means that no matter what, she's going back.

The useless love story from the first book is back, only it's even worse than before. The story has been transfigured unsettlingly from a "fight for your life" kind of book to a fake diary kept by the author of what she hopes out of her love life. I am not suggesting anything about Suzanne Collins, who by the way is married, but rather saying that the original premise of the series was a girl archer forced to kill in an arena to avoid death, but this second book has warped it into the kind of nasty romance story that a middle-aged fat woman would write to make up for her failed love life. The ending, however, is powerful. Not to mention I like Johanna from District 7.

Grade: C+

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Scholastic - September 14, 2008
374 pages

In the futuristic world of Panem, there are twelve Districts ruled by the Capitol. Seventy-four years ago, the Districts rebelled, but they were easily crushed. As penance for their crimes, the Districts are to send two "tributes", one boy and one girl, into the arena of the Hunger Games, a televised event where they are to fight to the death. The last one standing gets much glory. District 12, the home of Katniss Everdeen, has had two winners. When Katniss' sister Rue, only twelve years old, gets chosen, Katniss volunteers and is thrown into the fray.

As far as characterization, one of my most checked qualities, Games gets a mixed review. The main characters are sufficiently developed, but secondary characters such as Effie Trinket, the Capitol ambassador to District 12, and some of the unnamed tributes, seem to have only one personality trait that their entire essence is conceived around. When it comes to the tributes, that personality trait is shared with the entire rest of the district. The plot is intricate, and the writing is extremely fast-paced, providing a nice escape from the real world for a few hours. However, the Gale-Katniss-Peeta love triangle seems like a monkey wrench thrown into a dystopian escape as a clever plot to lure more female readers in. Heads up, Suzanne Collins! We girls don't need a girl fretting over who she really loves to get us to read! Just give us a well-characterized girl with strengths and weaknesses, and it wouldn't hurt to give her a bit of wit. Oh yeah, and develop your characters. Otherwise, you're doing everything right.

Grade: B+

Found (The Missing, Book 1)

Found (The Missing, Book 1) by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers - April 22, 2008
314 pages

Thirteen years ago, a plane filled with nothing but thirty-six screaming babies arrives mysteriously (one second it's not there, the next it is) on the runway of Sky Trails Airlines. Angela DuPre inspects, and the name of the airline the plane is from is called Tachyon Travel. A tachyon is a particle that travels faster than the speed of light. Thirteen years later Jonah, who is adopted, begins getting strange letters in the mail starting with one that says "You are one of the missing." This starts a large-scale investigation into who is sending this, who the other missing are, and what the sender wants with them.

I find Jonah to be very plain. This is simply my opinion, but he is. He has no distinguishing characteristics about him, a bad thing, but he doesn't mope about how he isn't special, which is good. If he were real and if he were not one of the missing, who if you haven't guessed by now are the babies on the plane, I probably would not have cared about him at all. He probably would have gone on his merry little way, and when he moves away or I do I'd forget about him, and when we all come back for a reunion and he introduces himself, I would not have the foggiest idea of who he was. Because I do not care, I do not feel sympathy with him. His best friend Chip's life is sheltered, his sister Katherine is obnoxious, Angela is whiny at the beginning and boring at the end, et cetera et cetera. I either loathe them or am indifferent to them. As for the science fictional aspects of the story, Haddix spends too much time explaining what they are and too little time showing what happens. She does that with descriptons of everything as well. Rooms, people, furniture, anything that Haddix sees in her mind she has to copy every detail about it, especially if it's right in the middle of an action scene. This book is ridiculous, and I definitely will not be reading Sent.

Grade: F