The Blending Time by Michael Kinch + Giveaway!

Published October 1st, 2010.

In the year 2069, turning seventeen means mandatory Global Alliance work assignments that range from backbreaking drudgery to deadly canal labor. Trying to survive in a world that's been ravaged by plagues and environmental disasters, three "s'teeners" from the harshest backgrounds think they've gotten lucky. Jaym, Reya, and D'Shay are chosen to be among thousands of blenders, whose task is to help repopulate and rebuild Africa after a devastating solar flare.

But the continent itself - roiling with civil war and mercenaries intent on crushing the blending program at any cost - poses the gravest danger. Separated, the three friends struggle to escape the violence and chaos, and somehow reunite. But will following rumors of a mountain hideout lead them to sanctuary, or cost them their lives? (book back blurb)

This book was a weird one for me. I wanted to really like it but at the end of the day, my like for it ended up falling pretty short of where I thought it was going to be.

My favorite aspect of it was the grittiness. I love gritty books that actually make you feel gritty and not in a grossed out way. I've read books where the characters are just gross but the world around them isn't. That just makes me gag, dirty characters. But when the world is gritty, and the author's awesome enough to actually project that onto your person through words, that's fantastic. It helps me anchor into the book more. I feel like a greater part of it and even if I end up not liking it all the way through, I at least felt something from it. Kinch does such a good job of portraying this dusted, wasted world that was once ours that I couldn't help not feel its grit all over me.

I really liked the characters too. I was rooting for all three of them as they tried to make their way through such a disorganized, corrupt society that disguises itself as something functioning. They're extraordinarily brave for taking the role of a blender a world away just to escape certain death in the canal. Despite the fact that they could be walking into it all over again. And again, I have such a soft spot for authors that beat the ever-loving snot out of their characters. I think Reya took it the worst but came out all the stronger for it. That's not to say D'Shay and Jaym had it easy but, well, to save some spoilers, what Reya went through was infinitely more terrible than what the boys had to handle.

Most importantly, once they all got to Africa, the story felt real to me. The presence of the pseudo-government faded and the realities of a dying world floated to the surface with all of their open sores on display. I believed what I was reading for that part. I didn't so much buy what was going on in the US and the total dissolution of society in a span of 50 years. I felt that wasn't time enough for all of that to happen. But I was able to suspend my disbelief enough to get over that hurdle and to Africa where I think Kinch really nailed it. There it became less about what the world had become and more about how people were trying to survive. I liked the focus shift that THE BLENDING TIME provided in that respect.

I didn't like the slang that was used. Not for any particular reason. It just really grated on me. It's basically just a lot of words chopped in half. It came off more lazy than anything else and it grated me every time I read one of the characters using it. Like 'scrapers for sky scrapers. I just didn't find it necessary.

Other than that I don't really have a valid reason for not loving THE BLENDING TIME. Maybe it was just the timing I had reading it. Or my mood those couple of days. Ultimately, it's a really good book. A hell of a lot better than some of the dystopians that are coming out now that completely spit in the face of worldbuilding. It just didn't grab me. I don't think I run into instances like this a lot but when I do, it bothers me. Why didn't I love this book? I have no idea. It just didn't hit me right. I don't know what else to say.

But I'd definitely recommend it to others and I know I'd like to keep reading the series to find out what happens with the characters. It's a great dystopian that, I feel, is more deserving of a place on the shelves than some of the other prettier covers that act as nothing but a facade for lackluster verbiage. Despite my lower rating, you should read this. Hopefully it'll hit you harder than it hit me.

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I'll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip. by John Donovan

First published 1969. Reissued by Flux 2010.

When the grandmother who raised him dies, Davy Ross, a lonely thirteen-year-old boy, must move to Manhattan to live with his estranged mother. Between alcohol-infused lectures about her self-sacrifice and awkward visits with his distant father, Davy’s only comfort is his beloved dachshund Fred. Things start to look up when he and a boy from school become friends. But when their relationship takes an unexpected turn, Davy struggles to understand what happened and what it might mean. (goodreads.com)

DNF. And I feel kind of bad about it because it's supposed to be this amazing, moving story that was ahead of its time when it was originally published. But I just couldn't take another talk about Davy's dog.

I really liked the voice. It was simplistic in its telling yet carried with it a depth that could only be held by young words looking for ways around the darkness. There's a heaviness to the story that Davy skirts on the edge of, focusing his time on his dog. I didn't feel it dated at all, either. Having been written in 1969, Davy could have rightly been walking around today. Any elements that hint at a decade are subtle, letting the most important aspect of the book, the story, come through.

In that same vein, I felt like I was reading a day-by-day diary of a boy walking his dog. Halfway into the book and the love interest had just barely made an appearance and he's a bit of a jerk. There's something there that's making him that way but I just didn't have the patience to stick it out.

I wanted the story to get to the point. It's a short story; coming in at just over 200 pages. And halfway into it I was still working through the set-up. Maybe that's attributed to the style at the time. Maybe in order to broach such a sensitive topic it had to be eased into gently. My patience just didn't like that.

Still, I'd urge people to give it a try. It is supposed to be an amazing story and I can tell you, the writing is really good. You're just going to need a little more patience than what I had at the time to get through it.

A Blue So Dark by Holly Schindler + Contest!

Published May 8th, 2010.

Mom knew that the mermaids - hand-carved from driftwood by the owner of a souvenir shop - were all I wanted to take home from Florida. As she bought them, she looked down at me, her eyes not just glittering but snapping with fire like two Fourth of July sparklers. She ran her fingers down the length of my nose, almost like you'd stroke a favorite pet, and said to the salesman, "We're just alike, me and Aura."

And you know, back then, the idea of that didn't scare the absolute hell out of me. (book back blurb)

For once, a book about teenagers with real problems. That's not really to undermine the issues that teenagers have. At that age, when you don't have any other worries, what your reputation is, who you're dating, who you're friends with, etc. is everything. But this is real. This is the real that makes all of that other stuff trivial shoe dirt. On the one hand you have a girl that's been saddled with being the sole caregiver to a schizophrenic mother and on the other, you have her friend that could go on the Teen Mom show, complete with deadbeat dad and the 'I know it all and my parents know nothing' attitude.

I was sucked into the story immediately. Aura just has a great voice; so much more mature than a lot of the other stories I read and for good reason. If you had to take care of a mentally ill parent all by yourself, you'd age really quickly too. But while I believed the voice as a whole, I didn't necessarily believe all of the references she made. Like equating her grandmother to Imelda Marcos. I'd like to meet a fifteen-year-old that even knows who Imelda Marcos is let alone how to use her person correctly in a reference joke. But those little things aside, Aura held her own throughout. You see just how strong and solid of a character she is by how she handles everything going on around her. I'm sure a lot of others would have ceased to even function in her situation but Aura carried on strong. She did what she could to protect her mother, who was number one to her even above herself.

But with that being said, it's also a horribly sad situation. You have the deadbeat dad that's perfectly content with stepping out of the situation and saving himself, leaving his teenage daughter to handle the problem that's no longer his because he signed on the dotted line making you empathize with Aura even more. Unfortunately, that really is an all too common situation, sad as it is to say. And the school not stepping in to help out? Unless you have outstanding teachers that actually want to help out their students (or super important students), the public school system is not there to function in that manner. Again, another sad thing to say, but it is true. When your bottom line is to have the kids functioning at a high enough level to bring in government funding, if one slips through the cracks, well, it probably would have been one that brought down the curve anyway. And if there aren't parents there to rally for that child, they're going to fade away. So while I think these elements help to isolate Aura even more and force her to function more independently (thus making them look a little contrived), they're not really out of the ordinary situations and they just made the situation all the more real.

I could have lived without Aura's love interest. I just felt like he was a jerk from the beginning. "Paint my board." No please, not even asking. Just do it. Why haven't you done it yet? Where's my board? I just wanted her to say, "dude, I burned it in the pit in the backyard." Granted he didn't know Aura's situation but even mutually exclusive from that, I thought he was a jerk and not worth the notice Aura was giving him.

I even really liked Janny for the basketcase that she was. New moms in desirable situations have a hard time adjusting and here you have a new mom that's barely 16, just emancipated from her parents and without the sperm donor helping out. As much as I wanted to slap her from backing away from Aura when she needed her (and as much as I didn't think Aura leaning on Janny earlier in life was touched upon like it should have been), I didn't hate her for it. She had enough issues on her plate and she couldn't fit Aura's on there anymore either. I get that. Still, I would have liked to have seen Janny be the lean-to earlier in life (as opposed to just a stronger personality) for Aura in order for the situation to be a little more balanced. While I did understand Janny's situation, without that weight behind it, it looked like she was just plugging her ears, demanding that Aura understand her situation but not offering the same understanding in return. It could have been the way I read it and just missed it. But it looked unbalanced to me.

This book is as real as real can get. It's the effects of a mental illness not on the sick individual but on the family around them. When one spoke is broken, it gets harder and harder for the rest to pick up the slack and that's seen here with Aura and her mom. There is only one path to crazy for Aura and it's through creativity so she tries to stifle it as much as she can, in herself and her mom when she gets too bad. Stamp out the crazy and you can stamp out the sickness, keep it from coming back to haunt. At times it's painful to read but it's something that should be read. I'm sure there are more kids going through something like this than the numbers care to admit and like Aura, they're suffering with it. They're beating themselves up over their decisions when they shouldn't even be making decisions like that in the first place. It's sad but Aura's strength is revitalizing. Throughout the entire story it's a beacon of hope. You can see she knows what the right thing to do is. The real right thing to do. It just takes her a while to actually get there.

This is one of those stand-out books in the pile that is YA. There's nothing paranormal about it. There's no love triangle. Actually there's barely any love at all and what love is there is shredded, stressed to its breaking point. But there's perseverance and strength and you won't be able to help but root for Aura from beginning to end. You want everything to work out okay for her. You're desperate for it. It just has to. And that'll keep you turning the pages until the end.

Contest Time!!!

Want my copy? Then just fill out the form below for your chance to win. Open to US residents 13 years of age and older only. One entry per person per email address. Duplicate entries will be deleted. Contest ends January 17th at midnight, EST.

Prophecy of Days, The Daykeeper's Grimoire Book 1 by Christy Raedeke + Contest!

Published 2010.

When her safe-cracker mom and code-breaker dad inherit a dreary Scottish castle, sixteen-year-old Caity Mac Fireland is not happy. Ripped from her cushy life and friends in San Francisco, Caity's secret fantasy of being discovered by a Hollywood agent, talent scout, or even just a pageant coach seems more unlikely than ever.

But when Caity stumbles across a hidden room in the castle, its walls covered in strange symbols, her life takes a bizarre turn. She find herself center stage in an international conspiracy involving warring secret societies, assassins, the suppressed revelations of the Mayan Calendar and the year 2012, plus the fate of humanity.

With the help of her friend Justine back home, and Alex, a gorgeous and mysterious Scottish boy, Caity must race to decipher the code and reveal its message to the world before time runs out. (book back blurb)

This was a very weird book for me, not in regards to content but how I felt about it overall. The writing I felt was both kind of dull and yet compelling. I had a hard time connecting to the plot yet I couldn't stop turning the pages. It's an odd juxtaposition and it kind of made the reading slow but at times I could plow through chapters. I don't get it myself.

Caity's your typical teenager: kind of bratty, kind of spoiled and kind of hard to like at the beginning. Although I did like the beginning. Why? Because it makes fun of itself. Yeah, it's one of those books about the family inheriting the castle and the fate of the world lies on the daughter's shoulders. And it's Caity poking fun at herself which is pretty cool. That's why I was able to tolerate Caity's character a little more; because I knew she would come around. If I didn't have that prologue, I don't know if I would have had the patience.

The "action" in the castle itself with the inspector seemed kind of forced and out of left field. It just happened out of nowhere and then it was gone. It kind of made my head spin. I'm not sure if that was the point but I wasn't really scared at all for Caity like Caity was for herself. I was just thrown off balance by it all. This wasn't the only action moment that had me feeling like this.

How everyone fell into place for Caity was both convenient and compelling. Yeah, it all happened really easily but the underlying message (really, it's not all that underlying, actually, the weird Mayan dude pretty much just comes out and says it) of the story itself is creating a harmony. Once you strike one fork, the rest will follow in tune, as the book says. One fork was struck in Caity's life and each subsequent fork played right along. So it was both self-serving to the story and fueled the story even more. See what I'm talking about with these juxtapositions?

I just wish I could have connected with Caity a little more. She's a pretty great character but even going through what she went through, I didn't feel for her. I was compelled to keep turning the pages to find out what happened to her, but I didn't feel it, you know?

It's all very strange. But the Maya were an interesting people. I even downloaded a 3D Mayan calendar app onto my iPod and I check it every day now. It really is amazing just how accurate these "primitive" people were and maybe, just maybe, we are missing something they already knew.

So while I was pretty much all over the place with this story, I do know I want to read the next one. I can totally sympathize with the fact that the planet is nine different levels of fucked up and something needs to be done to fix it. Soon. I also want to see how Raedeke ties all of the Mayan stuff to Caity and hopefully more of her family's past will come into play. It's only kind of alluded to in the greater picture but I know there's a lot more story there.

A good, and much more entertaining, edition to all of the End of Days stuff coming out now.

Contest Time!!!

Want my copy? You know you do! Just fill out the form below to enter. Open to US residents 13 years of age and older only. One entry per person per email address. Duplicate entries will be deleted. Contest ends August 10th at midnight, EST.