Found Not Lost

This is another trilogy. This one is the Maximum Ride trilogy by James Patterson. Yep, he also writes teen fiction.

Maximum Ride is a fourteen year old girl who can fly. Max and five other children live by themselves in a remote are in Colorado. They are the result of a gene splicing experiment which spliced 2% of avian DNA into their human DNA giving them the ability to fly. Their protector, Jeb, stole them from the laboratory facility in Death Valley where they were created and ran away with them to this remote area in Colorado. It has been two years since they have seen him though, he mysteriously disappeared. Max, the oldest of the group has been taking care of younglings since.

One morning when the flock was picking strawberries, Erasers swooped down and kidnapped Angel, their youngest member and took her back to the ’school’ as they call the Death Valley laboratory. The erasers are another laboratory experiment. They are human who spliced with lupine gene making them part wolf and they are the laboratory’s ‘henchmen’ sent to hunt down the flock. In this first book, Max and the rest of the flock determine to rescue Angel from what is sure to be an unpleasant experimentation at the lab. What they estimated to be a six hour trip from Colorado to California turned out to be much longer as they get detoured along the way.

This is a very exciting read, stimulating the imagination through James Patterson’t vivid description. I love books with so much visual descriptions that it is almost like watching a movie.

Stay tuned for the next adventure. I am now reading the next book, School’s Out - Forever.

Specials is the third book in the Uglies trilogy by Scott Westerfield. For someone who had turned away from prettiness to join the rebel smokies, Tally Youngblood has transformed not only pretty but now she is special too.

In a future world where everyone is born ugly until they are transformed to become pretties, the specials are the pretty police. They are super pretties, modified to be superior in strength and intellect. They are the CIA, the NSA, and every top secret spy organization you can imagine. They are the Special Circumstances unit, they take care of special circumstances that are beyond the capability of pretty wardens to take care of.

The adventure, in the complex story telling of Scott Westerfield, continues to intrigue in this final installment. Read how Tally Youngblood finally completes the circle of her journey, changed by the process of getting there, and finally learns to see the bigger picture.

This series is an enjoyable and interesting read not only for teen readers but for everyone.

My reviews:
Book 2: Pretties
Book 1: Uglies

Pretties is the second book in the Uglies Trilogy by Scott Westerfield.

In the first book, Uglies, all 15 year old Tally Youngblood wanted was to become Pretty. She couldn’t wait for her sixteenth birthday when she would finally get the operation to make her pretty and she can join her friends across the river in Pretty Town. But before she could turn pretty she follows her friend Shay who has run away to join the Ugly rebels called The Smokes. While there, she falls in love not only with the idea of living in the wild but also with the boy leader of the Smokies who was raised in the Smokes and never was indoctrinated with Ugly vs. Pretty propaganda. But, things went terribly wrong and Tally had to go back to Pretty town to get pretty.

Book two is about Tally’s life as a pretty. She had always dreamed of being pretty, of being with her friends again and going to parties all the time. She should be happy, but something keeps nagging at her. Something that is just bubbling under the pretty surface. She meets Zane who becomes her new boyfriend and together they found a new way of staying ‘bubbly’ or lucid. See, one of the drawbacks of being pretty is that your brain doesn’t always function fully or independently. The pretty operation creates lesions in your brain that keeps it from functioning.

As agreed on when Tally left the Smokes in the first book, she will subject herself to being pretty in order to test the cure for Pretty lesions developed by Maddie, a rebel physician who also happens to be David’s mother. David is the boy Tally fell in love with while in the Smokes. Tally and Zane, in their Pretty mode, find the pills left by the Smokies for Tally to take. They decide to take a pill each rather than one of them taking the full dose. They figured a half dose is better than nothing. That decision will cost them a lot.

Make sure you read the book to find out what it’s like to be Pretty, but first make sure you read Uglies first or this book will not make much sense.

This is another book in the teen fiction category, borrowed from my daughter Jade. I had never read any of Scott Westerfield’s books before, and I didn’t even bother reading the synopsis or the back cover. I just dove right in. I’m kind of glad I did. It was like watching a movie without having seen a preview. I wasn’t really sure what to expect.

At first, I was a bit confused by the references to Pretty Town and being pretty versus being ugly in the first few pages. Then it dawned on me that this is of the fantasy genre. lol! Uglies introduces a world where there are uglies and there are pretties. In this world, everyone is required, at 16 years old, to undergo an operation which will alter their physical appearance to conform to a ‘pretty’ standard. Whatever imperfections or uniqueness that they were born with which doesn’t comply with the standards set by the ‘pretty committee’ is eliminated and they are in essence air brushed so that they look as pretty as everyone else.

Tally Youngblood is a typical 15 year old in temprerament. Her best friend just became pretty and now she is all alone in the ugly dormitories across the river from Pretty Town. She looks across the river and counts the days until she too will become pretty and be able to join her friends. That is, until she meets Shay, another ugly who has the same birthday as Tally and who has also been left behind by her friends. Unlike Tally though, Shay doesn’t want to become pretty. She wants to stay just the way she is.

And this is where the adventure starts…

This weekend, I finished the second book in the House of Night series, Betrayed by the mother/daughter team P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast.

In the first book, Marked, we are introduced to a world where vampires always existed in the human world. Vampires don’t get ‘turned’ but rather they are ‘changed’. They start out as humans who are chosen by a tracker (it hasn’t been explained yet how people get chosen) and marked by a symbol on their forehead, signifying their new status as fledgeing vampires. From the time they are ‘marked’ they then have a day to get to the vampire school, the House of Night, to start learning how to be a vampire and where their physical transformation can be monitored by adult vampires.

Zoey Redbird is a sort of a prodigy fledgling, having been chosen by the vampire goddess Nyx to be her eyes and ears, gifted with multiple affinities, previously unheard of among fledgling vampires, which gives her an advantage over all the other vampires. These affinities and the obvious favor of the goddess makes her a candidate for high priestess.

In this second book, Zoey has finally settled into school and has made great friends. She is torn between three guys vying for her favors; yes, Heath is still in the picture. Worse, he and Zoey have imprinted on each other thanks to a super hot make out session. In the meantime, she is still with her vampire boyfriend Eric but also enamored with a young part-time teacher, Loren. All of this happen amidst the turmoil of humans, most of them previously connected to Zoey, started disappearing and being found dead later. The first suspects are vampires.

Zoey, in this book finally finds her footing, so to speak, and is slowly growing into the blessings she has received. Her journey is not smooth though, not only does she have to deal with the usual teenage growing pains, she also an suffers incredible loss, and as the title implies, betrayal. With her loyal friends beside her and supporting her, she slowly comes in to herself as she learns to harness the power she was gifted with.

This was a good book, overall. Engrossing. But now I have to wait a few weeks before the next book comes out. The next book, Chosen, will be out on March 4th.

Marked is another book borrowed from my daughter and her friends who are right now into vampyre books, so I guess I am too. I must admit though, that so far, I have been enjoying all the books they’ve let me borrow. This is another easy read, partly because it is short, just a little over 300 pages and mostly because you get hooked from the beginning and can’t put it down. Again, this book was devoured in one sitting.

This book is written by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast, a mother-daughter team of authors. How great is that?

The formula for the story reminds me a little of the Harry Potter series. In Marked, vampires exist among humans and it is generally known and accepted. Once in a while, a human becomes ‘marked’, they are located by the tracker who then marks their forehead with a crest or a half moon. This means they have been marked to become a vampire and they must go to vampire school in order to be trained. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? No matter though, it is still an interesting premise and it is still full of all the teenage issues like cliques and insecurities only a bit of magic and vampyrism is thrown in the mix.

I won’t summarize the story for you here (I never do), there is plenty of them out there including at Amazon if you’d like a synopsis. Amazon! They are a vampire tribe too. hehe!! You’ll have to read the book to see what I’m talking about.

Marked is first in the House of Night series, so be prepared to read on. It was also interesting to note that P.C. Cast has a blog on Blogger.