The Ashfall Trilogy by Mike Mullin

The Ashfall Trilogy by Mike Mullin consists of three books.

1.  Ashfall, 2011
2.  Ashen Winter, 2012
3.  Sunrise, 2014

In Ashfall, the supervolcano underneath Yellowstone National Park explodes.  This releases such a huge quantity of ash that the world is immediately thrust into a volcanic winter.  Alex is alone at home during the eruption, and he sets off through the ash in hopes of finding his parents and sister, who are visiting relatives.

The book is slow to get started, and Alex is alone for the longest time.  The story is actually quite realistic for that reason, but the realism makes it boring.

On the other hand, the fight scenes are extremely short and not realistic.  Alex, who has never had to kill before, is able to almost instantly kill every opponent with only one or two hits.  Wow.  I am not one for fight scenes that last for pages and pages, but it's a bit concerning for fight scenes to last only one short paragraph with almost no effort.

The book has more graphic violence than I can stomach.  I read young adult novels to avoid the more graphic violence in adult novels, but the violence in this book is on an adult level.  Nearly four pages deal with an extremely detailed description of a rabbit getting killed, skinned, and prepared for consumption.  I didn't read more than a few words and skipped the text until the description was over.  A few other times I had to skip over lengthy excessively graphic descriptions of death.

The book gets much better after Alex begins traveling with Darla, although I still had to skim horrific gore.

Darla is quite likable.  She's better than Alex.  I kind of wish the book had been narrated from her point of view.  The story could have begun as Alex arrives at Darla's farm and been narrated by her.  If that had been done and if the gore had been left out, then the story might have been outstanding.

One thing that is off is that nobody coughs or has trouble breathing.  The ash would have caused people with even minor asthma to have major problems.  In fact, even people with no prior history of asthma would have developed asthma.

I wasn't sure at all whether I would be interested in reading more than just the first book.  I found I cared greatly about the characters by the end of the book, so I decided to purchase the second book.

In Ashen Winter, Alex makes extremely stupid impulsive decisions that cost him and Darla dearly.  Each time Darla tells Alex emphatically that something is a really bad idea, he does it anyway, causing disastrous events like the total loss of their supplies or the abduction of Darla.  I quickly became quite annoyed.

I skipped around 20 to 30 pages in the middle of the book.  I got so disgusted about Alex's stupidity that I couldn't read it.  After that point, I read through to the end.

This book doesn't have the problems of the first book, but those problems were traded for others.  Darla and Alex are apart for most all of the book.  This was a big mistake, since Darla is the best part of the first book.  Alex's extreme stupidity is the other huge flaw in this book.  The entire plot is driven by Alex's stupidity.  Other ways could have been found for the same sequence of events to occur.  It's laziness to rely on one character being so incredibly stupid.

Still, I enjoyed most of the book and wanted to know how the story would end, so I proceeded to the third book.

In Sunrise, Alex and Darla continue their struggle for survival.  Interestingly, Alex is cured of his stupidity in this story and assumes a leadership role.  He leads hundreds of people as they build a new settlement in order to survive the volcanic winter.

During the volcanic winter, some people have become cannibals as a means to survive. Page 523 has an insightful comment about cannibalism.  "Cannibalism is simply not a viable long-term survival strategy.  The problem solves itself."  Indeed it does.

I love reading the reviews on Amazon after I finish these novels.  I particularly like the more critical reviews since they bring up good points. One reviewer wrote, "[Darla] was able to get their new community set up using wind turbines to heat their greenhouses but they’re still having to barter for candles? I’m no survivalist but it seems to me like they could have come up with something there."

Ah-ha!  When I read that, I suddenly realized that I learned how to make candles from crayons when I was in grade school.  I'm sure crayons could have been scavenged, then melted, and a string used as a wick.  Voila!  Therefore, the trouble acquiring candles was not logical.  I'm sure lots of old crayons were available in the abandoned farmhouses.

The third book is probably the best book in the series and has the least flaws. However, the first two books have to be read in order to enjoy the third book.

I was quite pleased with my reading experience once I finished the third book.  Even though the first two books have many flaws, the story of Alex and Darla is quite compelling and enjoyable.

The Seventh Hour by Tracey Ward

In The Seventh Hour by Tracey Ward, the Earth's rotation has stopped.  This results in sunlight lasting for six months and darkness lasting for six months.  During those times, the Earth experiences extreme temperatures.

I decided to read this book because I enjoyed Tracey Ward's zombie apocalypse novels. The description implies that this is a dystopian novel with survival experiences.  Instead, the book features little about the world and mostly centers on romance.  There is little danger. This is a romance, not a post-apocalyptic dystopian novel.

The teasing and joking in this book is quite juvenile and not what I expect in a young adult book.

I skimmed towards the end of the book.  I just wanted it to be over.  I do not recommend this book unless you are looking for teen romance.

Neal Shusterman's Unwind Dystology

I wrote about the first book in the Unwind Dystology, Unwind, nearly three years ago. 

The Unwind Dystology consists of four books and one short story.

1.  Unwind, 2007
2.  UnWholly, 2012
3.  UnSouled, 2013
4.  UnDivided, 2014

UnStrung is a short story published in 2012.  It is meant to be read between volumes 1 and 2.  UnStrung contains events that are important to understanding parts of the later books.  Novellas typically can be skipped and are not necessary to understanding the main books in a series, but UnStrung is very important to this series.

Like with most dystopian series, I cannot give much information beyond what happens in the first book.  Most additional information would spoil too much.

The Unwind Dystology is set in the future United States.  Abortion has been declared illegal, and in exchange, parents can have their children unwound between the ages of 13 and 17.  The teenagers who are unwound are no longer wanted by their parents.  Many parents sign away teenagers that get into trouble or don't make good enough of grades.

Teenagers who are unwound basically become unwilling organ donors.  Their bodies are separated, and 100% of their parts are given to others.  People believe that being unwound does not kill the person, that the person will live on in a divided state.

Some families choose to tithe their children.  Children who are tithes know from birth that they will be unwound at the age of 13.  Tithes and their families see this as a deeply religious experience and are content knowing that the unwound teenager will help others live a better life.

Cults form around the recipients of certain unwound teenagers.  For instance, all of the people who received unwound parts from a boy named Tyler create a cult and live together.  They believe that Tyler is with them in spirit.

This is all very twisted, but it gets worse.  Proactive Citizenry has created a young man, Cam, who was created from 100 unwinds.  Cam has the flesh of all races, stitched together across his body.  His hair is a rainbow of colors and textures, also representing all races.  Many people are disgusted by Cam's existence.  Cam is depicted on the cover of the second book, UnWholly.

Some unwinds go AWOL before they are unwound.  Some of them are the protagonists, Conner, Lev, and Risa.  They fight to stay alive as they search for a way to convince society that unwinding is wrong.

These books are dystopian horror novels.  They are darkly disturbing.  They also get the reader to think.  In fact, these books are so deeply thought-provoking, they may very well be considered great literature years from now.  As we know, great literature is often controversial, and these books are no less than that. 

Shusterman has interspersed real articles from the internet through his books.  The reader gets to read about events that have actually happened that could be precursors to the events of these books. 

These books aren't for everyone.  Some readers may find the content to be too disturbing.  Furthermore, people who are strong pro-life or strong pro-choice likely will not be able to enjoy these books.  The author purposefully uses verbiage from both sides of the issue, and language from both sides is used to support both sides of the unwind issue.  It's quite clever.

I found the first book to be quite unsettling, but at the same time, I found the story to be intensely compelling.  I wanted to see what would happen to the protagonists, despite my horror about the premise.  As I continued reading the books, I became somewhat desensitized and accepted the bizarre premise of this dystopian universe.

If you like young adult dystopian fiction, consider giving these books a try.  Unlike some other authors, Shusterman ends this series strongly.  The last book, UnDivided, may in fact be the best book.  I have read a number of dystopian series, and the authors tend to get lazy towards the end or can't figure out how to end their series, resulting in abysmal final books.  Shusterman knows how to do it right.

The message in these books is powerful.  I couldn't stop thinking about the books after I finished the last one.  The story is haunting and stays with the reader long after the last page is turned.

Parallel Trilogy by Christine Kersey

The Parallel Trilogy consists of the following books.

1.  Gone, 2013
2.  Imprisoned, 2013
3.  Hunted, 2014

In the Parallel Trilogy, Morgan Campbell is furious when her mother takes away her cell phone.  Morgan runs away from home and stays in a cabin in the woods overnight.  The next morning when Morgan returns home, she discovers that another family lives in her house.  Her family has vanished!  Soon Morgan realizes that she has somehow stepped into a parallel universe.

In this strange world, it is illegal for people to be overweight.  People are sent to Federally Assisted Thinning centers, known as F.A.T. centers, in order to force them to lose weight.  Some people are sent to the centers because someone turned them in.

Morgan quickly makes a few enemies and gets sent to a F.A.T. center.  The center is little more than a prison camp, where people are tortured.  Morgan must find a away to escape the F.A.T. center and get back to her own world.

In the beginning of the first book, many readers will have trouble liking Morgan.  She is very immature and makes horrible decisions.  In short, Morgan is the cause of all of her problems.  As the story continues, Morgan grows as a character, and she is not the same person at the end of the third book.  By the end of the trilogy, I had fallen in love with both Morgan and Billy.

A fourth book has also been written, After, published in 2014.  In this book, we get to see what happens to Morgan and Billy after the conclusion of the Parallel Trilogy.

I didn't refresh my memory before beginning After.  Around ten months had passed between when I finished the Parallel Trilogy and when I began reading After.  It was like no time had passed, and I was able to remember everything about Morgan and Billy quite clearly.  These stories are memorable, and I recommend them to people who enjoy young adult novels.

Another story is to be released in late 2014, The Other Morgan.  I look forward to meeting the Morgan from the parallel world who switched places with our Morgan.

Quarantined and Survival Series by Tracey Ward

Tracey Ward has written two short young adult series that deal with a zombie apocalypse that began in the Pacific Northwest.  The first is Quarantined, which consists of two books, Until the End and In the End.  The opening pages of Until the End show the beginning of the zombie apocalypse in Portland, Oregon.  Two college students, Alissa and Jordan, escape together and try to get out of the quarantined area, which consists of much of Oregon.  Until the End is told from Alissa's point of view, and In the End continues the story but is told from Jordan's point of view.

Adding to the drama is the fact that Alissa suffers from a mental illness that causes hallucinations.  She needs medication, which becomes an immediate problem after the zombies attack.  Medication is not easy to acquire in the chaos.

The Survival Series is set in Seattle around eight to ten years later.  The Survival Series consists of three books, Writing on the Wall, Backs Against the Wall, and Tearing Down the Wall.  This series features Joss and Ryan as they try to stay alive in Seattle.  The threats are the zombies as well as different factions of colonists who have various agendas.  Alissa and Jordan make an appearance towards the end of the second book and in parts of the third book of the trilogy.

Both sets of the books are worth reading and are similar in feel to other young adult dystopian novels that feature zombies, such as The Forest of Hands and Teeth.  Overall, I enjoyed the Quarantined Series more than the Survival Series.

The 5th Wave Trilogy by Rick Yancey

Alien books are not my thing.  However, last year, Amazon had a free chapter sampler of The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey, so I tried it out.  Even though the plot has to do with an alien takeover, what I read was enough like the typical zombie-driven young adult dystopian novel that I ended up purchasing the book.

In The 5th Wave, an alien mothership has arrived and is orbiting the Earth.  After 10 days, the mothership sends an electromagnetic pulse that wipes out all electronic devices.  Later, the ebola virus is used to wipe out most of the human population.  The aliens want the planet for themselves, so they must wipe out the entire human population.  The book follows the story of several humans who try to stay alive in the midst of the chaos.

The 5th Wave contains this great quote about books.

"Books? They're heavy and take up room in my already bulging backpack. But I have a thing about books. So did my father. Our house was stacked floor to ceiling with every book he could find after the 3rd Wave took out more than 3.5 billion people. While the rest of us scrounged for potable water and food and stocked up on the weaponry for the last stand we were sure was coming, Daddy was out with my little brother's Radio Flyer carting home the books."

I enjoyed The 5th Wave, but not quite as much as other dystopian novels.  Not surprisingly, it is because I don't like books about aliens very much.

The second book, The Infinite Sea, was published this month.  I found The Infinite Sea not to be as interesting as The 5th Wave, and I felt that the book was bogged down with too many details.  Throughout the entire book the question is posed as to why the aliens are not content with killing humans as quickly as possible so as to be finished with it.  Why are they killing humans in the cruelest way possible in order to inflict great emotional trauma?  Apparently, the aliens are killing people in a cruel fashion because they hate people—or something like that.  I'm not really sure that I completely understood.

Near the end of the book, there was a revelation about the aliens and what they were doing.  I think it was supposed to be shocking, but I had no reaction.  I didn't care.  I so very much didn't care and didn't see what it changed that I almost want to say what it is.  But since that might be a plot spoiler for people who might think it matters, I'll refrain.  My reaction was, "Whatever."  I don't see how it changed what had happened.  Maybe a little bit.  But I really don't care.

So this book lost me around halfway through.  I suppose I'll purchase the final book in the trilogy once it is released just to see what happens, but I'm rather ambivalent. 

Dystopian Novels: Life As We Knew It, Quarantine, and Rage Within

Life As We Knew It Series - Susan Beth Pfeffer

1.  Life As We Knew It, 2006
2.  The Dead and the Gone, 2008
3.  This World We Live In, 2010
4.  The Shade of the Moon, 2013

In Life As We Knew It, an asteroid hits the moon, throwing it into a new orbit, causing widespread tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.  Most of the world's population dies, and life is grim for the survivors.  These books are very good, but the books are flawed.

In the first book, everyone looks forward to the asteroid hitting the moon, and absolutely no one has any idea that anything could go wrong.  The book is set in 2006, and think of how the media analyze everything.  People would have been well aware of the danger. 

The author throws in some really unnecessary political bashing that pulled me right out of the book and into reality.  Fiction should never do that.

The electricity goes off for days, then comes back on for an hour or so.  Most everyone is dead, so who is turning the electricity back on?  And why would they, since no one is paying the bills?  And a bunch of other stuff is not logical.  

The first book shows how the situation grows gradually worse, which makes for fascinating reading. Even though some aspects of the story make little sense, I enjoyed these books.

Quarantine - Lex Thomas

1.  The Loners, 2012
2.  The Saints, 2013

These books are very similar to the Gone series by Michael Grant, so if you've ever read those books, you have a good idea what to expect with these.  The teenagers are trapped inside their school, infected with a virus that is lethal to everyone over the age of 18.  The government has sealed off all exits to the school and periodically drops supplies down into the school.  Gangs form, and the students fight to the death for the supplies.  At least one more book will be published.

Dark Inside Series - Jeyn Roberts

1.  Dark Inside, 2011
2.  Rage Within, 2012

A huge earthquake strikes, unleashing an ancient evil that takes over the minds of at least half the human population.  The Baggers are consumed by hatred, hunting down the remains of the normal human population.  The Baggers are not zombies.  They look just like everyone else, except for the black veins in their eyes.  They are controlled by the ancient evil, which desires to rebuild the world according its own plan.

These books are scary and suspenseful in the way of old movies from the early part of the 20th century.  I got shivers.  I had to cover the lower half of many pages as I read, anticipating when something would come at them from the shadows!  I love these books, which are very good, chilling dystopian fiction.  There should be at least one more book coming in this set.

Dystopian Novels: Uglies, Ashes, and Birthmarked

The Uglies - Scott Westerfield

1.  Uglies, 2005
2.  Pretties, 2011
3.  Specials, 2011

In this series, society operates on all young people when they turn 16.  They are made "pretty," and their minds are altered so that all they want to do is think about "happy-making" and being "bubbly."

The books tell the story of one young woman's fight against what society has forced on her.  Some readers don't care for these books because the characters act like airheads much of the time.  That's the point, which those readers missed completely.  Society has made them into airheads, and then they fight against it.  I enjoyed these books.

Westerfield wrote a fourth book, Extras, which I have opted not to read since it features different characters.

The Ashes Trilogy - Ilsa J. Bick

1.  Ashes, 2012
2.  Shadows, 2012

This is another zombie apocalypse trilogy.  In these books, an electromagnetic pulse wipes out all electronics and kills billions of people.  Of the people not killed, many become zombies and others attain heightened senses.

I enjoyed the books, but they are heavy into extremely graphic gore and have excessively long fight scenes.  I found myself beginning to skim the fight scenes, as I was just not that interested.  If you enjoy really gross content, these books are for you.  I will be reading the third book when it is released because I want to know what happens.

The Birthmarked Trilogy - Caragh M. O'Brien

1.  Birthmarked, 2010
2.  Prized, 2011
3.  Promised, 2012

While I enjoyed the Birthmarked Trilogy for the most part, I found a lot wrong with the books.  The main theme has to do with reproductive rights.  Women who live outside the city's walls have to give their children up for adoption by families who live inside the city.  The protagonist, Gaia, is a midwife.

In the first book, Gaia is all about saving babies' lives.  In the second book, she is all about killing the unborn.  In the third book, some truly horrific things happen to Gaia, and I'm not sure what the point is.  At the end of the third book, I just felt depressed.  I also didn't really care by that point.  I felt like I had been through a traumatic experience and like I would have been better off not reading the books.

Dystopian Novels: Haddix, Darkwoods, and Born

I have come to love dystopian fiction.  In these books set in the near or distant future, just about everything goes wrong.  This means that the characters don't have cell phones, computers, automobiles, or most modern conveniences.  In the books where the characters do have some conveniences, society is so restrictive that the conveniences cannot be used for their intended purposes.  In short, these books are like reading the vintage series fiction that I love so much.

This is the first of several posts that contain brief reviews of dystopian fiction that I have not previously reviewed in this blog.

The Missing Series - Margaret Peterson Haddix

1.  Found, 2008
2.  Sent, 2009
3.  Sabotaged, 2010
4.  Torn, 2011
5.  Caught, 2012

This series is set in the 21st century, circa 2008 or so.  36 adopted children learn that they were abducted out of the past and taken to the future as part of a for-profit adoption scheme run by time travelers.  Time got messed up, and they had to be adopted into the late 20th century instead of in the distant future.  Now, the time travelers have returned from the future in order to take the children back to their own places in past history in order to set time straight.  The children are not happy, since they don't want to leave their 21st century lives.  This is a very abbreviated version of the plot.

Since the plot involves time travel, much it makes little sense, because the characters go back and forth in time and really make a mess of things.  The reader has to engage in much suspension of belief, accepting that certain things are possible in order to enjoy the stories.  Time travel never is logical.

The reader learns a lot of history in these books.  I found the books to be very interesting and very educational.  I do have a word of caution for people who have adopted children.  Read the first book before giving it to an adopted child.  These books have content that could be upsetting to adopted children.

Additional books will be published in this series.

The Shadow Children - Margaret Peterson Haddix

1.  Among the Hidden, 1998
2.  Among the Imposters, 2001
3.  Among the Betrayed, 2002
4.  Among the Barons, 2003
5.  Among the Brave, 2004
6.  Among the Enemy, 2005
7.  Among the Free, 2006

This series takes place in a society in which families are permitted to have no more than two children.  Many families have had a third child, and the third children are the shadow children, forced to live in hiding inside their homes, never able to come out into the world.  The third children sometimes get discovered and have to go on the run.  These books tell the story of the shadow children and their struggle for survival.  I enjoyed reading these books.

The Darkwoods Trilogy - J. A. Redmerski

1.  The Mayfair Moon, 2012
2.  Kindred, 2012
3.  The Ballad of Aramei, 2012

I read these books because I was a bit desperate.  These books were clearly inspired by the Twilight series, except that this series is about werewolves.  Adria falls in love with Isaac, who is a werewolf.  If you are familiar with Twilight, you know where this is heading.  Isaac will not age, and Adria worries that she will grow older than him, so... she wants to be a werewolf.  Shocking!

This trilogy has some of the same problems as Twilight, and in that respect, the author did a great job of mimicking Twilight.  Adria meets Isaac, and there is no chemistry, nothing, no reason for her to fall for him.  Yet she does.  I never was able to feel what Adria feels for Isaac, just as I was never able to understand Bella's inexplicable attraction to Edward.  In that respect, Redmerski copied Twilight beautifully.  These books are in some ways better than Twilight, especially since they don't have a grown man who is basically betrothed to a baby.  You know, that creepy imprinting thing from Twilight where Jacob seems almost like a child molester.  It's not in this trilogy, which is a plus.

These books are somewhat better than Twilight in the overall premise, but the books are poorly edited with quite a few typos. I found them enjoyable, although not favorites.

The Born Trilogy - Tara Brown
 
1.  Born, 2012
2.  Born to Fight, 2013
3.  Reborn, 2013

This trilogy is set around 10 years in the future after a man-made virus gets out of control, infecting a large percentage of the population.  The virus causes people to lose their minds, and all they want to do is kill and eat other people. 

These books feature the most awesome young woman named Emma.  This girl is a tough, aggressive survivor.  You just have to read the books to see what I mean.  Emma is awesome, and I love her.  This trilogy tells such a great story that it could become the next big thing.  The problem is that these books are not edited very well.  The books are self-published, and the author needs to get someone other than whoever is editing them.  There are many word usage errors, misplaced commas, and grammatical errors.  One example is the use of "planes" as the word for an open grassy area when the correct word is "plains."

The author also greatly overuses pronouns to the point that the reader often has to skip ahead several pages in order to try to figure out exactly who "he" or "she" is.  When the scene contains two men and a woman, referring to both men as "he" is extremely confusing.

All that said, I greatly enjoyed this trilogy.

The Delirium Trilogy by Lauren Oliver

Earlier this year, I read the Delirium trilogy by Lauren Oliver.  This trilogy is aimed at young adult readers and consists of Delirium, Pandemonium, and Requiem.  The Delirium books are set in the future United States, in which love has been labeled a disease.  Love has been eradicated by forcing everyone to undergo a procedure as a young adult to cure them of amor deliria nervosa.

The first book tells the story of Lena and Hana in the months before their procedures.  Without getting into a lot of spoilers, Lena falls victim to amor deliria nervosa by falling in love with Alex.  In the second book, Lena becomes part of the rebel movement and grows close to Julian, but just as a result of circumstance.  In the third book, the rebel movement gains power, and Lena is in a love triangle of sorts with Alex and Julian.

The first book is quite slow with lots of what, to me, is filler.  Teenage girls might have a different view.  The second book is much more exciting than the first book, and the third book is similar to the second book.

This trilogy is quite good, but the problem is the ending of the third book.  Some say that the third book closes open-ended, but really, the third book just stops during the climax.  Lots of action is happening, then the author goes into some vague flowery prose about walls and tearing them down.  The book ends with the reader left wondering about just about everything.  It is very unsatisfying.

Most any epic story will have at least a partially open-ended conclusion, since the authors typically do not expound in great detail every event that ever happens to the characters.  But this trilogy does not successfully resolve the conflict.  For me, I just can't see how it could possibly work out.  In fact, I could see everyone getting killed one chapter after the book ends.  I suppose they could live happily ever after.  We really don't know.  The author is supposed to give us some idea of how events will unfold.  That's not my job as the reader.  I am not into writing fan fiction.  I am just a reader.

Most readers have the same opinion.  Here is a screen cap from Amazon.

 Look at the two complaints about the ending of Requiem and the rather large number of people who made similar statements.

I read this book shortly after it was released and found the reviews to be rather interesting as they came in.  A good many people complained about the ending and gave specific reasons why.  It was apparent they had read the book.  Let's just say that after a few too many complaints, a number of five-star reviews would appear, and those reviews were along the lines of "OMG.  This was the best book EVER!!!"  with no specific information given.  I have heard of fake reviews and paid reviews on Amazon, and this book appears to have a number of them.

The Delirium trilogy is excellent, but just be aware that the author apparently wants us to imagine the ending.

Reached by Ally Condie

Reached by Ally Condie was recently published.  Reached is the final installment in the Matched Trilogy.  I decided to reread Matched and Crossed before reading Reached, and I'm so glad I did.

I reviewed Matched and Crossed in this blog post, and my opinion about Crossed has changed somewhat.  I still believe that Crossed has way too much filler material, and when I reread it, I skimmed through much of it.  I no longer believe that Condie made a mistake about Xander and his secret.  I also liked Crossed better this time, but that may perhaps be because I skimmed through much of it.

Crossed has a lot of very important information, some of which the reader does not realize is important until well into the third book.  The importance of some of the information is another reason why I like Crossed better now.

Before I begin my review of Reached, I want to recap the main plot points of Matched and Crossed.

Matched is set in the Society, which controls every aspect of every person's life.  Cassia Maria Reyes is Matched with Xander Thomas Carrow.  Cassia is thrilled about her Match, since she has known Xander her entire life and is friends with him.  After the Match banquet, Cassia views Xander's microcard, which will tell her everything she needs to know about Xander.  The trouble is that another boy's face flashes on the screen, that of Ky Markham.

Cassia also knows Ky.  Cassia is drawn to Ky because of the microchip mistake and falls in love with him.  The rest of Matched deals with Cassia's feelings and her growing awareness of the flaws in the Society's ways.

Crossed tells the story of Cassia's escape from the Society and her search for Ky.  Cassia and Ky learn about the Enemy and the Rising.  The Rising is a rebellion led by the Pilot.  Nobody knows who the Pilot is.  Crossed switches between two points of view—Cassia and Ky.

In Reached, the Rising has begun, and all three of Cassia, Ky, and Xander are fully involved in some way or another.  Reached switches between the viewpoints of all three characters, with much greater success than in Crossed.  I always knew which character was the voice while reading Reached.  Each character has a unique role to play, which makes it easy to know which character is the voice.

I did not like Xander very much in either Matched or Crossed.  Xander has no personality or reason for existence in either book, so he does not matter.  I felt no connection to Xander and found him to be pointless.

This changes in Reached.  Xander has a very important role to play, and his personality comes alive.

In Reached, the arrival of the Rising wreaks havoc on the Society, just as the Rising intended.  However, the Rising's plan has unintended consequences which throws both the Society and the Rising into chaos.  The Rising scrambles to right what has gone wrong.  I dislike giving too specific of information, so I will leave it at that.

As already stated, some seemingly insignificant conversations from Crossed are discovered to be extremely important and intriguing.  Xander is finally interesting.  The ending is quite satisfying, although some of it is left open-ended.  The plot takes quite a few unexpected twists and turns.

I have read the reviews for Reached, and the reviews are quite split between people who loved Reached and others who found Reached to be boring.  The disparity is caused by how different all three books are from each other.

The first book, Matched, is more of a romance than anything else.  People who enjoy romance ended up disappointed when the trilogy took a different direction.  Crossed is an adventure story.  Some people like Crossed the best of the three books.  Reached is like neither of the preceding stories, and that is why some readers do not like it.  Reached is compelling because we see how Cassia, Ky, and Xander are changed by the Rising and we get a glimpse into what the future holds for them.

With many trilogies, and most all series books for that matter, each book has a repetitive storyline that is very similar to the previous book.  This trilogy breaks out of the mold, giving us three very different stories that are pieces of the overall story arc.

I greatly enjoyed Reached.  I found every chapter to be interesting, and to me, Reached is the best book in the trilogy.  I had no idea while reading Matched what kind of journey I would take, and that journey was fantastic.

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Unwind by Neal Shusterman is a dystopian novel published in 2009.  This futuristic novel opens years after a civil war, known as the Heartland War, was fought over the right for a woman to have an abortion.

Synopsis taken from Amazon's product page:

In America after the Second Civil War, the Pro-Choice and Pro-Life armies came to an agreement: The Bill of Life states that human life may not be touched from the moment of conception until a child reaches the age of thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, a parent may choose to retroactively get rid of a child through a process called "unwinding." Unwinding ensures that the child's life doesn’t "technically" end by transplanting all the organs in the child's body to various recipients. Now a common and accepted practice in society, troublesome or unwanted teens are able to easily be unwound.

With breath-taking suspense, this book follows three teens who all become runaway Unwinds: Connor, a rebel whose parents have ordered his unwinding; Risa, a ward of the state who is to be unwound due to cost-cutting; and Lev, his parents' tenth child whose unwinding has been planned since birth as a religious tithing. As their paths intersect and lives hang in the balance, Shusterman examines serious moral issues in a way that will keep readers turning the pages to see if Connor, Risa, and Lev avoid meeting their untimely ends.

This is the type of novel I don't normally read, since it has an obvious political message which is subject to interpretation.  What I find interesting is how deeply offended some people are at the content.  Actually, I am not surprised that people are offended.  What surprises me is that people on both sides of the issue are absolutely convinced that the author is promoting the other viewpoint.  Some people who are very pro-choice are convinced that the author is biased towards pro-life.  At the same time, an equal number of people who are very pro-life are convinced that the author is biased towards pro-choice.  Both sides feel that the author is biased towards the other side.

So which is it?  The author wrote this book in a very clever fashion, and the book could be seen either way.  I have a suspicion, although I do not know for sure.  I am going to stop short of explaining, since no matter what I write, I would open the door to discussion of a very controversial political topic, which is not appropriate for this blog.  Suffice it to say that this book is deeply thought-provoking.  I enjoyed it for the horror and suspense, although I would not put it near the top of my list since for me, reading books is intended as escapism.  One cannot completely escape reality while reading this particular book.  It is unsettling.

The next book, UnWholly, will be released soon.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth Trilogy

The Forest of Hands and Teeth trilogy consists of the following books written by Carrie Ryan.

1. The Forest of Hands and Teeth, 2009
2. The Dead-Tossed Waves, 2010
3. The Dark and Hollow Places, 2011

The books are set a couple hundred years after the zombie apocalypse. Most of the human race has been infected by zombies and only a few scattered communities of uninfected humans remain. Those communities are at constant risk of infection. These are the first books that I have ever read about zombies, and I must say that the content is very scary. While these novels are dystopian novels, I consider them to be more horror than anything else.

From Amazon's product page:

In Mary's world there are simple truths. The Sisterhood always knows best. The Guardians will protect and serve. The Unconsecrated will never relent. And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village; the fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth. But, slowly, Mary's truths are failing her. She's learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and their power, and about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness. When the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, she must choose between her village and her future—between the one she loves and the one who loves her. And she must face the truth about the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Could there be life outside a world surrounded in so much death?

The first book, The Forest of Hands and Teeth, has a love triangle between Mary and two brothers, Harry and Travis. Mary has to figure out what it is that she really wants, not only with respect to the two boys, but in life, while all three struggle to find a away out of the Forest of Hands and Teeth.

The second book, The Dead-Tossed Waves, jumps around 30 years into the future. At first, I was a bit dismayed to have a new protagonist, Gabry, but I was quickly pulled into the action. Gabry has a connection to Mary, and Gabry's story has much to do with the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Gabry is part of a new love triangle with two boys, Catcher and Elias.

The second book tells a very similar story as the first book, although with different characters and twists. This does not bother me, since I enjoy series fiction, which always recycles ideas. While the overall story is much the same as the first book, the second book is just as interesting and fulfilling to read.

The second book ends with a cliffhanger, and the third book, The Dark and Hollow Places, begins shortly after the end of the second book. The third book has another new main character, Annah, but the action also heavily involves Gabry, Catcher, and Elias from the previous book.

The third book is significantly darker and more depressing than the other two books. While the book is very good, I found it to be almost a bit too hopeless. While all three books contain violence, the third book ratchets it up a few notches. Not only do the teenagers have to contend with the zombies, the Recruiters have become extremely cruel. The third book is definitely more for older teenagers, and a number of reviewers have labeled the book as a gateway to adult fiction.

Since the third book has such heavy content, I enjoyed it a little less than the other two books, although I still very much enjoyed it. While the third book has a conclusion to its main story, the ending is also left open-ended. The books have been referred to as a trilogy, but I have heard that the author has also called them a series. So far, the author has not made any comment one way or the other, but the possibility does exist for more books to be written.

You can read the beginning of the first book on Amazon's product page, which is what I always do in order to get a feel for whether I like an author's writing style. I greatly enjoyed these books.

Matched and Crossed by Ally Condie

After reading Divergent, I decided to read Matched and Crossed by Ally Condie, since the Matched Trilogy was mentioned so often in the reviews for Divergent.

The Matched Trilogy is set in a dystopian society. The Society controls all aspects of people's lives including what they eat, what they drink, where they live, where they work, and who they marry.

From Amazon's product page:

For Cassia, nothing is left to chance--not what she will eat, the job she will have, or the man she will marry. In Matched, the Society Officials have determined optimal outcomes for all aspects of daily life, thereby removing the "burden" of choice. When Cassia's best friend is identified as her ideal marriage Match it confirms her belief that Society knows best, until she plugs in her Match microchip and a different boy’s face flashes on the screen. This improbable mistake sets Cassia on a dangerous path to the unthinkable--rebelling against the predetermined life Society has in store for her. As author Ally Condie’s unique dystopian Society takes chilling measures to maintain the status quo, Matched reminds readers that freedom of choice is precious, and not without sacrifice.--Seira Wilson

The first novel, Matched, deals with Cassia's feelings about both Xander, her Match, and Ky, the boy whose face flashes on her screen. In the Society, people whose parents commit Infractions are reclassified. Ky was reclassified as an Aberration due to an Infraction committed by his father. For that reason, Ky cannot be matched, yet his face flashed on Cassia's screen. Could Ky be Cassia's true Match?

In the second novel, Crossed, Ky has been sent away, and Cassia makes the choice to leave the Society in order to find him. Cassia learns about the Enemy, which fights the Society, and the Rising, which is a group of rebels hoping to infiltrate and bring down the Society.

The Society is set in the future, probably by 100 to 200 years. The Society decided to take away people's freedom of choice and seeks to destroy the artifacts of the previous society, such as books, poems, and art. The items that survived are traded on the black market. I found this aspect of the story to be very interesting.

The first book is dangerous. The reader constantly fears for what will happen to Cassia as she pursues a forbidden relationship with Ky and hides artifacts that she should not have. The first book is very compelling.

Most of the second book consists of Cassia trying to find Ky, and frankly, most of it is filler material. As someone on Amazon pointed out, the book is like a long camping trip. While Crossed introduces several new characters and the reader learns about them, very little plot advancement occurs.

Fairly early in the book, something is mentioned about Xander having a secret, and this bothered me so much that I flipped through around 200 pages of the book until I discovered what it was. The fact that I could skip through that many pages without anything major to the plot getting spoiled tells how much filler material the book has. By the way, knowing Xander's secret earlier in the story, as a result of spoiling myself, kept me from being annoyed the entire time. Interestingly, the secret could make Cassia's final decision on which boy to choose easier in the end. I'm not sure that the author made a good decision.

The point of view switches between Cassia and Ky during the second book, and I kept having to look back at the first page of each chapter to keep track of who was narrating, particularly after Cassia and Ky were reunited. It isn't a big problem before they reunite, but after, it is confusing. I find that books that switch back and forth between two points of view tend not to be as good as books that stick with one character. This is why I don't like Rick Riordan's Kane Chronicles as much as Percy Jackson. The changes in point of view are distracting and often confusing.

The filler in the second book should have been shortened so that we could see more of what happens with Cassia towards the end. I can't say exactly what I mean without spoiling the content, but Cassia learns what her next move will be, and the plot finally advances beyond the long camping trip. Suddenly, the book skips ahead by months. I hate it when books do that. Why do authors insist on taking the easy way out to the detriment of the reader's enjoyment?

Most of the negative reviews for Crossed state that the book is boring. I did not find it boring at all, and I enjoyed the entire book. My primary problem is that the long trek through the canyon should have been shortened and the description of what happens to Cassia towards the end of the book should have been lengthened.

While the second book has a number of flaws, I enjoyed both of these books and will be reading the third book when it is released later this year.