Shamran - Bjarne Reuter

Title: Shamran
Author: Bjarne Reuter
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 318
Date read: April, 2012

Filip and his parents move to a new house and here Filip discovers a giant painting that seems to draw him in. One night three dwarfs step out of the painting and take him with them to the country Tronn, whose mighty ruler nobody has ever seen and whose inhabitants are either deaf, mute or blind.

I think that if I had read this at the target age, I would probably have loved it. Unfortunately I am about twenty years too old, and so it didn't blow me away like I would have liked it too. There were MANY similarities between this and both "Dystopia" (one of my all-time favourite books) and "Mio, My Mio", but I don't know if that was deliberate or just a coincidence.

Fear - Michael Grant

Title: Fear
Author: Michael Grant
Genre: Dystopian
Rating: 4.5/5
# pages: 509
Date read: April, 2012

It's been one year since all the adults disappeared. Gone.

Despite the hunger and the lies, even despite the plague, the kids of Perdido Beach are determined to survive. Creeping into the tenuous new world they've built, though, is perhaps the worst incarnation yet of the enemy known as the Darkness: fear.

Within the FAYZ, life breaks down while the Darkness takes over, literally—turning the dome-world of the FAYZ entirely black. In darkness, the worst fears of all emerge, and the cruelest of intentions are carried out. But even in their darkest moments, the inhabitants of the FAYZ maintain a will to survive and a desire to take care of the others in their ravaged band that endures, no matter what the cost.

I think this most recent installment of the Gone series may actually also be the best since the first one. There's a lot more plot and not just non-stop action (though there's plenty of that as well). I like the new relationship between Sam, Astrid, Caine, Quinn and Lana. I want to know more about Petey though, although I do appreciate all the questions that got answered now.

Shades of "Breaking Dawn" with Gaia.... or is that just me?

As far as I know this is the second-to-last book which seems fitting. It's clear that things are drawing to a close - the end game, so to speak - and spinning it out longer would be doing a disservice to the intensity of the story.

I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You - Ally Carter

Title: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You
Author: Ally Carter
Genre: YA
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 284 pages
Date read: April, 2012

Cammie Morgan is a student at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, a fairly typical all-girls school-that is, if every school taught advanced martial arts in PE and the latest in chemical warfare in science, and students received extra credit for breaking CIA codes in computer class. The Gallagher Academy might claim to be a school for geniuses but it's really a school for spies. Even though Cammie is fluent in fourteen languages and capable of killing a man in seven different ways, she has no idea what to do when she meets an ordinary boy who thinks she's an ordinary girl. Sure, she can tap his phone, hack into his computer, or track him through town with the skill of a real "pavement artist"-but can she maneuver a relationship with someone who can never know the truth about her?

Cammie Morgan may be an elite spy-in-training, but in her sophomore year, she's on her most dangerous mission-falling in love.

Pretty good YA which turned out not to be quite as predictable as I had first feared. It didn't have much content of any substance though. I would have loved to read more about the classes and life at school rather than just life around school. Unusual schooling (like e.g. Hogwarts) always fascinates me, and there was FAR too little of that here.

Still, it was enjoyable enough and a quick read, so I wouldn't be totally adverse to reading more of the series.

11/22/63 - Stephen King

Title: 11/22/63
Author: Stephen King
Genre: Science Fiction
Rating: 5/5
# pages: 837, Audiobook ~25hrs
Date read: April 2012, December 2019

On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back?

Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning's father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake's friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane and insanely possible mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake's new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake's life a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

Wow...

I think this might just be my new favourite Stephen King book. "Under the Dome" is still a close second, but this one just seemed more complete and polished somehow.

Time travel has always fascinated me with all its complexities and contradictions, but Stephen King made it work quite nicely.

This is not one of SK's traditional horror books. It is dark to be sure, but neither particularly gory or scary. Instead it explores the psychological nature of man and the theory of the butterfly effect. I'm not entirely sure I buy his conclusions, but while I would have wished for another outcome, I guess it was inevitable.

But sad... SK really doesn't know how to write happy books, does he?!

Amazing book. Go read it! But make sure to wait for a vacation or at least a weekend, because putting it down to head off to work will be torture.