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Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

The Argent Star by Emerson Fray, YA Science Fiction/Fantasy

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Somehow I missed that The Argent Star is YA fiction until I recieved a copy from NetGalley (meaning I’m obliged to read it) and started in.  The book has several events that require leaps of faith, something I see in YA more than in adult fiction, meaning that things just happen, gadgets just happen to be available and people just happen to be around when you need them.

The basic outline could be fleshed out into a fairly good novel:  The Monarchy rules many star systems and has recently rediscovered the planet Novae and selected Ren’s father to be its new ruler.  Ren is no dummy and figures this is not as simple and clean as everyone tells her it is, and soon discovers Novae rebels are not so happy with the Monarchy and Ren’s family taking over.  There are hints of forerunner people and possible interesting back story elements but The Argent Star doesn’t explore them.

Ren is smart and a likable heroine who has a lot of common sense and the good taste to reject the suitor the Monarchy picked out for her. Unfortunately the plot doesn’t keep up with the characters as we have all sorts of events just happen that eventually set up Ren to negotiate with the Monarchy’s military leader for Novae’s independence.

Overall I think younger teens, say 12-15, would enjoy this, especially girls.  Ren is far shrewder than her brother Elian and outwits the Monarchy a few times, making her someone that younger girls will like.  The novel isn’t for adults.

I would rate The Argent Star 2 stars if rating for adults, but 3 stars for teens for whom Emerson Fray wrote the novel.

Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel, K A Holt, Funny YA Science Fiction, Space Travel

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Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel could have been boring. Our hero is 14 year old Mike Stellar whose biggest concern is keeping out of the detention clutches of  teacher Mrs. Halebopp – right until he hears at dinnertime his family is moving to Mars. Tomorrow.

Sound like something you have read before?  Do you think the author must have ordered stock characters A, B, N and Q, settings C and D, plots 1 and 6?  A 2013 novel version of The Jetsons?  Instead of being a rehash of sad old plots and characters this was fast, fun and interesting.

Characters

The kids in Mike Stellar are Mike and Larc with Mike’s best friend Stinky mostly a voice at the end of the forbidden phone.  Mike is smart, gets into trouble and is terribly afraid that his parents have sabotaged the ship.

Larc turns out to be a most unusual girl and makes friends with Mike.  Together they foil the bad guys, rescue the previous expedition and uncover the real guilty people.

Don’t these sound like the stock characters in any teen aged science fiction story?  True, they are not unique but the way they work together and how the characters handle conflict and fear make them three-dimensional and a lot of fun.

The adults are shown from Mike’s viewpoint and are not as well-developed as the kids, but we still get enough to see them as people instead of characters you can order off the menu.  The creepy Leslie Sugahbert (aka Sugar Bear) is one of those ever-smiling get-you-later types that Mike instantly distrusts.  He is proven right when Leslie (a guy by the way) turns out to be spying on Mike’s Mom.

Plot

The plot is a little more complicated than some YA novels, with terraforming gone amok, a missing expedition that isn’t missing, just shoved aside, corporate politics (thankfully in the background), multiple sides and goals, and e e cummings poetry.

Overall it is a lot of fun, even for adults.  There are the usual “a miracle occurs here” moments that would be more noticeable in an adult novel. For example, it’s incredible that a robot would have a critical power connector that could be shorted out by contact with a sweaty hand.  And it’s even stranger that we’d be terraforming planets in other solar systems before we visit Mars.  These are small things though.

What I was glad to NOT see were kids acting like wise grown ups.  Kids acting like kids are a lot more fun to read about than kids that act more adult than any adults I know.

Summary

Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel is anything but boring. There is a little coming-of-age going on (he is 14 after all) but mostly the story moves.  It is a fun read.  I looked for more by the author but found only a zombie novel in Haiku.  It might be good too, who knows.

4 Stars

The 5th Wave Rick Yancey Dark YA Science Fiction Alien Invasion

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What do you think of when you think “alien invasion”?  Independence Day?  Ender’s Game?  The 5th Wave will remind you of all these yet it is unique.

Alien horrors intent on destroying humanity? Check.
Young people fighting to save the earth? Check.
Now take this, multiply the drive to kill off humanity ten fold and throw in an ill-fated romance.  Unique, yes?

Really Rotten Aliens

What makes this book so good is the sheer viciousness of the alien plans and the preview we see of what the aliens will face when (if) they finally exterminate humans. The extermination plans are diabolical. First an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that wipes out all electric signals. That weakens earth’s nations and hobbles the armed forces. Then a giant tsunami that floods everywhere. That kills about 3 billion people. Then a plague to kill 97% of the rest.

That still leaves about 100 million human beings. The aliens, the Others, don’t want to hurt the planet, so they can’t drop an asteroid or set off nuclear weapons. As the book begins the Others are killing off the remnant off one by one with the fourth wave and are preparing for the fifth wave.

Spoiler Alert!!

The most evil of all their plans is their death camps. They bring in busloads of kids, reassure them, kill off about half immediately, then train the remaining half to do the killing. This is the fifth wave.  This is the part that doesn’t make much sense;  I can’t see why they would use kids and I sure didn’t understand why they blew up their own main base.

Puzzling Future Problems

The aliens will have a problem and we see glimpses of it in the main male character, Evan. You see, the aliens have no bodies. They gave their physical forms up when they left their home planet 10,000 years ago. They downloaded themselves into human minds to complete their work. Evan is one such human / alien meld and he finds being human all too tempting. He tells Cassie that most of the Others feel being human would be beneath them. Yet they must take on bodies to affect the physical world and finish the extermination.

I kept wondering what the aliens will do. If they have no bodies and they don’t want to be human, then do they continue to download themselves into human infants? Aliens die when their host body dies. How will they reproduce? If they intend to stay pure mind and not take on bodies, then why do they need to kill of humans? What use would they have for trees or animals or food?

The other point that puzzled me was the purpose of the fifth wave, human kids killing off humans. The fourth wave, Silencers or Others who look and act like humans, were effective killers. Why enlist little kids? Unless the Others were so twisted that it pleased them, I didn’t see a reason to switch from using Silencers to using fully human kids.

5 Stars but With a Catch

Overall I liked this book and look forward to a sequel. Yancey is an excellent writer who knows how to tell a story and enlist us in his characters’ lives. I felt like I was Cassie, alone, cold, frightened, driven to survive. I didn’t feel so much empathy for the second male character, Ben Parish who was at the boot camp learning to kill people. The whole boot camp section just didn’t make a lot of sense to me. In fact I put the book down for an evening because I got a little tired of it, a few too many cliches.

The first half with Cassie was excellent, 5 stars without a doubt. The second half with Ben was weaker and we had a bit too much of a miracle ending. So give that second half 3 stars for the Ben sections and 5 for Cassie.

Truly YA Fiction

Many of the YA fantasy fiction novels are classified as YA only because the characters are young. The 5th Wave is written for older teens. Adults will enjoy it as I did, but we’re more likely to look askew at the basic premise of aliens becoming human to kill off humans and we’ll be skeptical of the whole boot camp section.

If you can put aside your natural skepticism and take the book’s premise as valid you will enjoy this.

Infinity Ring – A Mutiny In Time – Clever Game and Story YA Science Fiction

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Infinity Ring Book 1: A Mutiny in Time by James Dashner is the clever first book in the Infinity Ring series. Two friends, Dak and Sera, live in an alternate history under dire threat by SQ. Dak’s parents invented a device to travel in time that Sera was able to complete. The two friends and Dak’s parents go back in time but his parents are stranded when Dak and Sera return.

A group called the Hystorians (spelled with a Y) are convinced that history has gone off course and have spent centuries watching for time travel to become real.  Now that the Infinity Ring is ready the two groups, Hystorians and SQ, will face off. Dak and Sera are tasked with returning to the points in history that Hystorians believe are “break points”, times when the wrong outcome threw the train of history off its tracks.

It’s puzzling how in stories like this the kids are the ones who do the work, but that’s the beauty of young adult fiction. Dak and Sera are like real kids, smarter and less socially adept than some, but you could imagine having them in a class or seeing them at the mall.  Parents be warned, these characters are bratty, disrespectful know-it-alls.

The gimmick in this series is the Hystorians planted clues. You have to wonder why the clues are so mysterious since it’s unlikely someone will actually show up from the future to deal with them, but that’s the plot. The bound book includes a front section to fold back that will let the reader explore Revolutionary France in 1792 with links the the Infinity Ring website. That’s a nice way to get younger kids interested in history!

The book is very fast paced and a fun read. I was puzzled by why it would have mattered whether Christopher Columbus led the expedition to America or whether his lieutenants mutinied and completed the trip. The book never hinted why it would matter who discovered America. It’s also far fetched to think two societies, SQ and Hystorians, could maintain successful organizations for centuries on the off chance that someone might show up someday from the future. These points are minor, but the sort of thing that bother adults and might not occur to younger readers.

Many YA novels are classified as Young Adult Fiction because they feature young protagonists but the books have adult themes and conflicts that make them suitable for adults. Abhorsen by Garth Nix is a good example. The Infinity Ring series features kids and the writing, themes and plot are aimed squarely at the middle school readers. I doubt I’ll read any more in the series since it truly is written for young people, plus I don’t care for books about brats.

Infinity Ring Book 1: A Mutiny in Time is available at Amazon and probably at your library or school library