Stacking The Shelves #107

Stacking The Shelves is hosted by Tyngs's Reviews and is all about sharing the books you are adding to your  shelves, may they be physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in physical stores or online, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts and of course ebooks!

We love sharing our books with you each week but more importantly we loving see what you add to your shelves. As always, clicking on a book will take you to goodreads.

  

The Curse Defiers ~ Denise Grover Swank ~ netgalley

Eve ~ Anna Carey ~ gift/publisher

All the Bright Places ~ Jennifer Niven ~ gift/publisher

Golden Boy ~ Abigale Tarttelin ~ gift/publisher

Some interesting books for us this week. We hope you got something exciting too!

Happy reading everyone.

Review ~ Red Rising ~ Pierce Brown

Title: Red Rising

Author: Pierce Brown

Published: 28^th January 2014 

                                                

By: Hodder & Stoughton

First line: I would have lived in peace.

Last line:  Rise.

Synopsis: The Earth is dying. Darrow is a Red, a miner in the interior of Mars. His mission is to extract enough precious elements to one day tame the surface of the planet and allow humans to live on it. The Reds are humanity's last hope.

Or so it appears, until the day Darrow discovers it's all a lie. That Mars has been habitable - and inhabited - for generations, by a class of people calling themselves the Golds. A class of people who look down on Darrow and his fellows as slave labour, to be exploited and worked to death without a second thought.

Until the day that Darrow, with the help of a mysterious group of rebels, disguises himself as a Gold and infiltrates their command school, intent on taking down his oppressors from the inside. But the command school is a battlefield - and Darrow isn't the only student with an agenda.

I’ve been in love with the above cover for what seems like an eternity and at first glance this book fits nicely into my sci-fi, dystopian, apocalyptic, and utopian obsession that I nurture alongside books about all things dead.  

From the beginning it is clear that Red Rising is more brutal and far more explicit than most of the books that sit in the YA genre. I’m not referring to the language used or the relationships between the characters as such, in fact I’ve read a lot stronger. What I’m referring to is the rawness of the characters and sometimes brutal plotline. There are sections of this book that make me wonder if it should be included within the YA genre, for example there is a rape scene included. I had thought that this was an adult book and I have to say I would agree with that classification more than I would one that lends itself to sections for younger readers. Anyhoo, on to the book!

Darrow’s story starts with relative normality, lurches forward into devastation and an ultimate sense of deceit and betrayal before it transforms into a genuine battle for survival. There’s a lot to love about this book.  The transformation of Darrow is gripping, occuring not just on an emotional but also on a physical level and it’s intriguing to see how much he as an individual is prepared to endure to obtain what he perceives as justice. There was something about Darrow that I couldn’t quite put my finger on though and as I often do when I’m lost and confused I turned to Goodreads to hear what other readers thought. A lot of them had it in a nutshell.  As much as I could see the rationale behind Darrow’s behaviour and the emotional point of view was there for me to read about (his sense of loss is palpable at times) he was just too malleable! And no matter what was thrown at him he was just brilliant at it immediately.  Never seemed to get anything wrong. Ever.  So even though this is one hell of a battle it’s as though he is something already superhuman before the real battle gets underway. So maybe it’s that that takes some of the ‘reality’ for want of a better word away from the plot.

There was always talk of The Hunger Games being a milder rip-off of Battle Royale.  If that is the case then I guess I would have to liken the battle between the wannabe peerless scarred in Red Rising as being a combination of The Hunger Games and the Lord of the Flies with a dash of naked humiliation thrown in for good measure.  And there’s an amazing array of characters who seem to twist and turn all over the place so you’re never quite sure who is trustworthy and who isn’t.  The combination of the two keep you on your toes. As with most dystopian series there is a whole new lexicon to acquire but unlike some I’ve read this was pretty easy and I did like the mix of modern language and technologies and historical reflections on earth and its politics and what went wrong.

3.5/5 This is a pretty heavy read and there’s a lot going on.  Given the ending I would imagine that where other books have their mid-series crisis book the next instalment of this read will show no such symptoms.   Again, however I should say that I think this book is for the older reader.

  

Review ~ The Iron Trial ~ Cassandra Clare & Holly Black

Title: The Iron Trial

Author: Cassandra Clare & Holly Black

Published: September 9th 2014

By:Doubleday Children's Books

First line:From a distance, the man struggling up the white face of the glacier looked like an ant crawling slowly up the side of a dinner plate.

Last line:  And despite himself, despite of the terrible thing he was doing, despite of it all, Call began to grin.

I’m in quite a fortunate position for this review mainly because I haven’t, and I can’t believe I’m actually admitting this, I haven’t read Harry Potter.  Yes, I’ve seen the films and loved them but I’ve never actually read the books so I’m hoping this places me in the fortunate position where I bring no bias with me when reviewing The Iron Trial.  That said having seen the films I can still see that there are similarities between the two stories but that’s tantamount to saying any book about a child wizard from herein is a rip-off of Harry Potter.  Yes there may be similarities but there are also fundamental differences between the stories so I think each should be taken on their own merit.  This is also the first review that I have completed for books for younger children so it was quite strange for me to sit down with a book which is so much more simplistic grammatically, even more so when written by Cassandra Clare who is known for her flowery use of the English language.  So I come to this book with completely new eyes and I have to say I did enjoy it.

So we have the main character Callum (or Call, who I ended up calling call as in phone call a lot in my head – very annoying) who lives with his father and who goes to take part in an assessment on his abilities in order to attend the magisterium where they will develop his magical abilities.  His father doesn’t want him to go, he doesn’t want to go and so he does everything he can to ruin his chances.  The masters don’t fall for the ruse however and Call ends up being whisked off to the magisterium anyway!

In the midst of all the training Call and his new (and only) friends take part in we start to get drawn into this new world of the magisterium and the trials and in this book I guess as with most series it really is all about the world building.  As I would expect with anything written by Clare and Black there is some fantastical description both in terms of the physical world the story is set in but also in terms of the characters, including a bully who I admit did remind me a tad of Draco but then there are many other characters who remind me of different storylines in different books so I can’t see an issue with that to be honest. We also get to know more about the Enemy of Death, baddie of the series and the wars that have taken place between the good and the bad through history.  Within all this there are twists and turns in the plot, some of which I didn’t expect and all of these provide a setting for what will be the next instalment of the series.  One thing I would look for in the second book is a tad more adventure.  It’s often the case that in the first of a series plotline does take a back seat so that a world can be built but there is a lot of potential for the second book and I hope the plot develops, providing more action that will keep a younger reader’s interest.

Based on this first book I would suggest that the series would be suitable for readers from seven plus.

Rating: 3.5/5.  A good start to a series.  There is plenty of potential here for the younger reader.