Philosophical Clones

Sorry for the black out yesterday, but my internets was being dumb...silly internets.  We are up and running now and will now do a quick ramble on a weird/cool/thinky/undefinable book I just finished.  The book is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.  I really don't remember where I heard about this book, or why I picked it up, but it was worth the read.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

I'll try and keep this briefer then my more current ramblings and try and focus on my thoughts and feelings of the book rather then every detail of the plot.  The book is in the form of a diary/confessional style narrative.  Kathy is our guide to this familiar, yet odd world.  We start with Kathy reflecting as her years as a Carer for people called Donors and how she will soon make the switch from one to the other.  We learn pretty quickly that Donors are clones that are required to donate their organs as they become needed, and Carers are clones who care for them until it is their time to donate.  Oddly enough, this is not really what the "story" is about.  I put "story" in quotes because it does not have a solid plot line like we are used to, instead getting flashbacks into Kathy, and her best friends Ruth and Tommy's life as she is reminded by various things of her past.  The first part of the book is mostly devoted to the the trio's life at Hailsham, a school where some of the clones are raised.  As they grow up, they are encouraged to create art in various forms to share with each other, with the best pieces going into a mysterious gallery.  As Kathy, Ruth and Tommy grow older, more and more is revealed to them about their role in society and what is expected of them.  Most of the narrative is spent in various scenes and vignettes of the trio and their evolving relationship.  The second part of the book follows our characters as they leave Hailsham for a place called The Cottages.  Here Ruth and Tommy continue to pursue a relationship and Kathy tries to figure out where she fits in. Ruth learns of a rumor that if a couple can prove that they are truly in love that they will get a defferal for their donations, getting to spend a couple of years together before the surgeries begin.  As time goes on Ruth gets more and more brash, Tommy starts to withdraw, and Kathy becomes a Carer. The last part of the book is where Kathy tells us what happened after the trio goes their separate ways.  After several years of becoming a top Carer, Kathy runs into Ruth after a particularly hard donation.  Kathy becomes Ruth's Carer and they seek out Tommy who has also started his donations.  Ruth admits that she kept Tommy and Kathy apart and want them to spend what little time they have left together, trying to get a deferment.  Ruth only makes it through one more donation before she "completes", which is what they call dying.  Ruth becomes Tommny's Carer and they hook up.  They find their old teacher and a woman they only know as Madame (Hailsham has been closed for years) to try and learn about the deferral.  Instead of this minor miracle they learn that Hailsham and the art were a group of humanitarian's way of trying to prove that clones had souls and should be raised and treated well until their donation time.  Unfortunately circumstances turned public opinion and the clones were once again raised in basic conditions.  Tommy and Ruth are disappointed, but understand.  Tommy asks Ruth to leave before he dies so she doesn't have to watch.  The book ends with Kathy ready to retire as a Carer and start her donations.

As I said earlier, this is less a beginning middle end story and more of a personal reflection, which worked well for this odd book.  This book is very hard to define, with the clones and donations you have a scifi/dystopia style theme, but it reads more like a classic fiction novel...strange, but original and kind of neat.  What struck me the most about this book was the sheer acceptance of the clones of their role in society.  Their was no talk of a revolution, or protest, or even people complaining of unfairness.  These kids are raised from birth to accept what they are with no questions asked. In fact at certain times, certain clones even seemed to look forward to starting donations.  I really liked how the author had the clones be in society, living, playing, and being among the normal people, but still apart in their own dwellings and their lack of meaningful interaction with non clones.  As far as I can tell, there is no visual way to distinguish a clone from a normal, so one would never be 100% sure if you were dealing with a clone or not.  The way the characters viewed life was understandably skewed with their exceptions of their future being so vastly different from our own, little things are more important to them, and they are able to face death in a calm and accepting manner.  At times the book got a little slow, with Kathy's narrative meandering here and their as her memories cropped up at random.  For somebody like me who likes to know things, the minimum of background information was a wee bit frustrating, but since that wasn't what the book was really about I was able to get over it.  Overall it is really hard to describe what was good, or bad, or eh about this book.  I love it for its undefinability and it's unique take on a scifi staple.  I do know that reading this has made me want to look at this authors other books, so that is good.  I give this book 7 out of 10 cassette tapes and recommend it to anybody who is looking for a unique book, a book that makes you think, or a book with a nice slow pace. Happy Reading Everybody!
Do you think society will accept anything give enough time?  How much does conditioning play into a persons acceptance of the horrible things in life?  Do I sound like a pretentious snot booger in this post?

Editing Humanity

I have finally finished that last book in the Divergent series, Allegiant by Veronica Roth.  All of my fellow bookies have been dying for me to finish this series so that we could talk about it.  I love all the various reactions to this book and how other people thought I would react to the book.  Some people thought I would love the ending, others thought I would hate it...in the end, as with this whole series I have mixed feelings.  As always SPOILERS, SO MANY HUGE DON'T READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU WANT ANY SENSE OF SURPRISE TO THE ENDING OF THIS SERIES, SERIOUSLY SPOILERS AHEAD!!

Ok, here we go with my new and improved shortened synopsis of this book.  As before we pick up right were we left off.  The factionless are now in charge and they are hellbent on revenge for all of their suffering through out the years.  Tris gets put on trial and using her super Divergent powers is able to resist the truth serum enough to get her and her friends set free.  Tobias pretends to break up with her so his mom (the factionless leader Evelyn) will continue to trust him, but really they just sneak out for almost sexy fun time.  They, along with their friends get recruited into Allegiant, a group dedicated to following the precepts of their ancestors, which includes reinstating the factions and sending the Divergents out into the world.  Of course our intrepid band gets chosen to set out into the big bad world including Tris, Tobias, Cara, Will, Christina, Uriah and Caleb who gets rescued from certain execution by Tobias.  Off our group goes and once they are outside the fence are almost immediately picked up by some former faction members who had either dissapered or supposedly died.  They pretty quickly learn that the video they found was mostly a lie to get the Divergent to come out of the city.  They are told that back a while ago people started messing with their genes to try and eradicate the bad stuff, selfishness, violence, cowardice, untrustworthiness, and

ignorance...sound familiar.  This led to people also losing the opposite of whatever they cut out...so selfless people had no sense of self preservation, truthfulness at the cost of tact and so on so forth.  Because all good dystopia's need a war the people with damaged genes fought the people with the pure genes, causing what is called the Purity war.  This lasted long enough and caused enough damage that the government could blame all the bad stuff on the people with the damaged genes.  This led to groups of what they call Genetically Damaged or GD's being put in sealed cities and treated with serums and experiments to try and fix the genes and then get them passed down to other generations...yeah it's supposed to make sense but never does.  Anyways when people are born with fixed genes they become Divergent, come out to the real world...and yeah.  So anyways in the real world it is found by our group that the GD's are very oppressed by the GP's (Genetically Pure).  The experiments are a big reason for the prejudice as all of the countries resources are being used to fund these experiments instead of rebuilding the country.  All kinds of chaos, and yet a whole lot of nothing occurs.  Near the end they find out that the leaders of the experiment are going to use a memory serum to wipe the memories of the people left in Chicago and start again.  Tris and her gang come up with a plan to stop this, while at the same time modifying the memories of the experiment leaders for a better world where both GD's and GP's can live in peace. Tobias goes and makes peace with his mother, and comes to terms with his father, stopping a potential massacre. In the end Tris takes the most risk and dies for it...yep Tris, the heroine dies...for real...I told you spoilers.  The risk pays off and everything goes as planned.  The country looks like it is one the right track, Tobias comes to terms with Tris's death and becomes a leader and they all attempt to live happily ever after.

So...here we are...at the end of this series and I have to try and figure out how to explain my feelings on this book and the series as a whole.  Lets start with the good, shall we?  I have fallen hard for Tris, Christina and Cara.  Christina is just awesome, loud, adventurous, smart, funny and deals with life in a fairly realistic, yet healthy way. Cara is a super smart person who has had to come to terms with her own humanity and grows in leaps and bounds through out the books, especially this one.  She also proves herself to be a fantastic leader.  Tris is just awesome, I wasn't sure at the beginning, but by the end of this book, so much love.  I think this last book is where I finally picked up on what I love about her...she is not a push over.  At one point in the book Tobias pulls his stupid double standard paternal crap and Tris calls him on it so hard I just wanted to kiss her.  Another time Tobias does something really stupid, after Tris tried time and again to talk to him and in the end she pretty much broke up with him over it...in a totally mature, hey this is not cool and I am not kissing a guy who refuses to respect or listen to me.  Of course they get back together before the end, but still, I feel Tris can hold her own against him.  I also feel Tris is a good window into humanity in general, she has strong moments, weak moments, funny moments, serious moments, hard moments, and crazy moment I just really like her. Props to the author for writing a wide variety of positive females.  The other thing I liked in this book is the realistic way the author killed a couple of good characters.  I love it when an author realizes that when you have a violent book...people die.  Uriah's death was a sad, slow brain injury instead of the normal sudden violent death which is awesome because it gave the other characters time to reflect and respond in a totally different way then normal.  Tris's death was significant because, well, she was the main character and her death made sense and brought home the real cost of rebellions.  I loved it.

On to the bad.  I hate Tobias.  In this book the author had the narration go back and forth between Tris and Tobias and I hated hated hated it.  Tobias came across as a whiny petulant 14 year old girl with a bit of angry 15 year old wanna be gangster boy thrown in just to really annoy everybody. I liked nothing about him, at all, not even a little bit.  I was excited to finally find out about the whats and whys of the whole Divergent thingy, but the explanation just did not work for me...or anybody who has gotten past third grade science.  It probably seems super nit picky, and I know I drone on and and on about it every time I review a book in this series, but seriously, it goes against human nature, it goes against science and it goes against all reason and as before, it ruins the premise for me.  There was not a lot of world building outside of there was a war, stuff was destroyed now there are the haves and have nots...makes me miss the Dauntless areas.  I also hate when reveals make the first couple books irrelevant, which this book seems to do.  There seemed to be a disconnect through out this book, a kind of feeling like I should care more about certain things then I did.  There is so much more about the serums, and how they worked, and how does one tell a GD from a GP unless you are holding their genetic results in your hand, and how does the genetic damage and repair even work, and so much stuff that probably only bugs me so I will end this here.  Overall I felt about this book how I felt about the series, I enjoyed a lot of the characters, but the world building, the premise and the story just did not ring true for me.  I give this book a 5 out of 10 truth serum.

How did you feel about this book compared to the overall series?  Does the lack of any sensible science in this book bug you anywhere near as much as it does me?   Am I sick and twisted to be happy when an author actually kills off a character in a meaningful, adept, realistic way?

Serum City

Well the curse of the second book strikes again.  Just finished reading Insurgent the second book in the Divergent trilogy and I have to say right up front, it was mostly pointless.  So many of the issues I had with the first book were just made worse by this second one and a lot of what I enjoyed in the first one was completely missing in this book.  Oh well let's get on with this shall we?  As always so many SPOILERS AHEAD!

When we last left our main girl, the Divergent Tris, she was escaping a mind controlled Dauntless slaughter.  Tris along with fellow Divergent, and current eternal love Tobias (also known as Four), his abusive and squirlley father Marcus, her Abnegation turned Erudite turned whatever brother Caleb and a couple of others make it to the Amity compound.  There they are welcome with if not exactly open arms, they are at least fed and clothed and given a bed.  Turns out that Tris is suffering from a bit of post traumatic stress syndrome from killing her friend and watching her parents die, this manifests itself in an inability to use a gun and a bit of a suicidal bent. This of course sets Tobias off in some sort of anger pattern, instead of trying to understand and help his girlfriend, he spends most of his time giving her non-helpful ultimatums about bucking up and getting over it.  Stuff happens and Tris overhears a conversation about some sort of mysterious information that Abnegation was trying to get out to the general public, but along came Janine (the Erudite leader who orchestrated the whole violent overthrow) who decided that the information should not be given out.  After a bit of an altercation, Tris is "punished" by being given a serum that makes her super peaceful and it is

revealed that everybody in Amity (probably unkowingly) eats a bread that is infused with this peaceful serum.  Amity holds a meeting and decides that they depend to much on Erudite to piss them off so they refuse to take sides.  Dauntless/Erudite storm the Amity compound and the group makes a run for it. The group makes it back to the city and find themselves with a group of factionless led by non other then Tobias's mother...yep not dead...though her story is a little sketchy.  She either ran away and abandoned Tobias, or was exiled by Abnegation, or something.  They find out that there is a high percentage of Divergents within the factionless and that they are understandably unhappy with the way things are run.  They leave the factionless and end up with Candor where more serum is given, in the form of a truth serum where everybody has to spill their guts about stuff that has nothing to do with anything in order to partake of the safe haven within Candor.  Tris admits she killed Will (even though she had no choice) and Tobias admits his dad beat him on a regular basis. Tobias is pissed that Tris kept a secret from him, but refuses to own up when Tris calls him out on his own secret keeping.  Tris and Tobias hook up with some of their Dauntless buddies before once again the traitor Dauntless/Erudite once again storm a compound.  This time they only kill random Divergent, everybody else gets a dart that injects a transmitter into their system, once again turning the non-Divergent into potential mindless soldiers.  Somewhere in here Tris decides to turn herself in to Janine for further testing so that Janine will quit killing people.  During her captivity Tris discovers that her brother is a traitor and has always been on Janine's side.  Tobias tries to come to her rescue but it takes an old enemy Peter to actually get them to escape.  Tobias, Tori and some other guy are elected Dauntless leaders after all the other leaders are either killed, captured or turned traitor and decide to ally themselves with the factionless to storm the 

Erudite compound and destroy all of their computers and gathered knowledge in an attempt to stop what ever it is they are trying to do.  Tris agrees to go with Tobias, but secretly makes plans with Marcus and a few others to try and retrieve whatever information it is her parents died for.  More chaos, more angst, more shooting.  Tris ends up in the security portion of Janine's secret lab and runs into another simulation...kind of.  She makes it to the inner sanctum only to find Tori holding Janine at gunpoint.  Tris tries to make Tori understand that they can't kill Janine until they get the info from her computer, but Tori doesn't listen and kills Janine.  Tobias comes in and agrees with Tori that Tris is a traitor (that was a lot of T's in that sentence), but Tris again calls him out on his bull headedness, reminding him that he is the one who said he loved her for her, and that the first time it was tested he bailed.  Tris is taken captaive, but Tobias actually listened and got Caleb to help him get the info they were looking for.  Meanwhile the factionless showed just how dumb everybody else is by getting all of their weapons, meaning to take over.  Before...or during...or after this happens the screens flick on and a video plays, showing images of violence and death and then a women saying something about locking everybody in the city to refind their humanity...but the problem was human nature...but the solution was the Divergents who were the epitome of human nature...and the Divergents should be set loose on the rest of the world to help them.  And that my friends was the end of book two.

As you have probably guessed this was not my favorite book.  So very many issues, so very few answers, but lets start with the good stuff so you know I actually read it with an open mind :-)  I think my favorite parts were any time Christina was on the page, she is by far my favorite character and seems to be the one who has the most realistic head on her shoulders.  She was pissed at Tris when she found out about Will, she eventually forgave Tris, but it took some time and not all at once, when faced with facts she thinks about them and makes her own decisions about things, and she is pretty funny. I loved it when Tris called out Tobias on all his double standard stupidness, especially at the end, I wanted to jump up and cheer.  I also appreciated how Tris was affected by all the death, not only of her loved ones, but the ones that she killed.  It goes so against her upbringing and she has had so little time to adapt to the Dauntless way of life that this seemed an appropriate reaction. Also I love the tree on the cover of this book. See there was a little bit of good stuff.  Now on to my issues.  My biggest issue is the same one I had in the first book, how the heck am I supposed to believe that humans only display one trait.  How am I supposed to believe anything the author says when she contradicts herself on the basic premise of the books.  We are told that Divergent's are

Divergent because they display more then one trait...but we are shown over and over and over confirmed non-Divergent's who regularly display more then one trait.  On that same line of thinking, any transfer would have to be Divergent by definition because they were raised in a different trait, but nobody suspects truth telling Christina of being Divergent...but Tris is because she knows how to be selfless?!  Makes no sense.  Does this mean any time anybody tells the truth that isn't in Candor they are automatically Divergent?   How many times does one have to hold open the door for another person in a faction not belonging to Abnegation before they are hunted down?  How does one distinguish between peace loving Amity and selfless Abnegation as many of the defining features are similar?  The factionless pose another interesting angle to this whole Divergent business as it appears that most of them could be considered Divergent, now I will give the author some credit for saying that there is a high percentage of Dauntless in the factionless.  That leads me to the ending of this book, I was warned that this is not most peoples favorite book, but the bombshell at the end is worth it. I did not think the ending was all that spectacular, I had suspected from the beginning that their was a reason behind the locked fence with nobody knowing what was outside it, so not really a bombshell.  The idea that this little experiment was because humans were too violent...well...we already are.  I thought it was funny that as the images of violence were flashing on the screen all I could think about was that is exactly what was happening inside the city, so no progress there.  I did not get what the experiment was, or what it was supposed to do, I was 

feeling of the nonsensical frustration I got when I was reading The Maze Runner series where the premise was just because and did not serve any real purpose.  The video stated that the Divergent's were supposed to have flexible minds, which to me means the people who were part of the experiment were drugged or something into strict factions (which may be backed up by all the serums that were used in this book) and that when people developed a resistance and became normal then they were ready to...do what I don't know. If the whole reason that the world got uncontrollably violent was human nature...then why do they want people who have proven to be the definition of human nature to be their saviors?  I don't get it.  Ok enough kvetching, I obviously have problems with the premise and a lot of the cool world building and Tris's development that I made the first book readable and almost enjoyable were very much missing in this book. I have heard rumor that the next book is much better...I sure hope so. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments.  I give this book 5 out of 10 serums.

What did you think of this book?  What type of serum do you think we need to use on a regular basis?  What is the deal with second books?  Does anybody know Candor's function in this society?

5000 Swooning 12 Year Olds

Saw the Divergent movie a couple days ago based on the first book in the Divergent series.  A couple of my station sisters have been reading the books with me and wanted to go see it.  Of course the only day we all had free was opening night, so off to buy our tickets we went.  We bribed the boys with Bourbon Carmel Milkshakes (sooooo yummy!) and off we went.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD.

The movie was OK, it seemed to be sanded down from the original story to more generic teeny bopper gook, they took out a lot of the tensenes between the Dauntless recruits and replaced it with lovey dovey gush.  They also changed to format of the challenges which kind of sucked  because I thought that was one of the best parts of the book. The producers or writers seemed to have the same problem with the faction premise that I did and mentioned Human Nature being a problem on a couple of occasions to try and nod to the fact that the way factions are set up would never really work.  I did like the casting for the most part, Zoe Kravitz as Christina was probably the best character in the movie (and one of my favorites in the book).  She looked the part, acted the part and generally kicked butt.  I liked the casting of Eric as well, he did not follow the book description but Jai Courtney played the cool cruelty like a pro.  Shailene Woodley as Tris was fine and Theo James as Four is hot and brooding, but nothing super special.  Over all I wanted to see more of

 Tris's journey like we did in the book, the struggle to shed her Stiff personality and become who she really is never came clear in the movie.  It was a weird mix of the movie trying to pack everything in and yet not really hitting any of the main points.  The other unique experiance I had with this movie is seeing it on opening night with 5000 swooning teenage girls who added their own special soundtrack and entertainment value to the whole proceedings.  The Chicago scenes were pretty cool, it's weird seeing somewhere you lived all decrepit and blown up (even if the stupid pink building survived) so that was nice.  Over all it had a very generic teeny bopper feel that did not capture the best parts of the book, and did nothing to dispel my dislike of the faction system.  The music was pretty awesome though. I will probably not watch it again, but I am glad I saw it at least once and will be interested to see where they go with the second and third book and movies.  But I think I will stick to the Hunger Games.

What did you think of the movie compared to the book?  Is it possible to do a YA book as a movie and not make it teeny boppery?  Am I a horrible wife for dragging Hubbin to see this?

A Divergence Of Opinion

Word of warning, this is going to potentially be a really long, really meandering post, so be prepared.  I try very hard not to pre-judge a book, or let other reviews or opinions influence me to much before I read and ramble about a book.  It is impossible to be completely unbiased as one usually picks up a book for a reason, the cover, the blurb, the hype, authorship, genre all of these obviously lead to some sort of assumption about the book, but over all I try very hard to read each book with an open mind.  Divergent (book #1 in the Divergent Series) by Veronica Roth is one of those books I have had a hard time reading with an open mind.  On one hand many trusted sources loved this book and recommended it, and they are usually dead on, on the other hand the whole premise of the series just does not work for me on a gut level.  So I figured that if I was to follow my own rules, that if I was going to comment on it, I should probably actually read it first.  I went in hoping it would surprise me, that the premise would have a plausible explanation and that I would not want to toss the main character off a cliff.  I was both pleasantly surprised and understandably disappointed in this book. Why you ask, well lets start with a quick synopsis then you can all listen to me ramble for a couple of paragraphs :-) As always SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!

Sometime in the future the world, or at least the people of Chicago Illinois USA (Happy Birthday Chi-town) have survived some sort of something and have divided into five factions.  The factions are divided on how people think to best avoid another war.  The Amity faction uphold peace at any cost, they are the hippies of the world.  The Candor group believes that complete and utter truth will avoid war.  The Erudite's feel knowledge is the answer to the worlds problems.  The Abnegation Faction is sure that if everybody were selfless war would be extinct.  Finally the Dauntless believe that courage is key to keeping the people safe.  Children live and learn the precepts of their faction until they turn 16, they then undergo a test, kind of an aptitude test that shows what faction a person is most likely to end up in, though that does not mean the person has to choose that faction.  For the most part children tend to stick with the faction they were born into, but there are always exceptions.  Beatrice is one of those exceptions.  She was born into Abnegation a daughter of a ruling council member (in this world only people from Abnegation are allowed to rule as they are seen as being above corruption and always working for other people).  As much as she loves her family, she struggles with being eternally selfless.  She takes her test and is told in hushed tones that she is Divergent, as far as I can tell that means she fits into more then one faction profile, in her case Dauntless, Erudite and Abnegation.  This is potentially bad juju for our heroine and she is told to never tell anyone.  Beatrice

chooses Dauntless as her faction and her brother chooses Erudite, leaving their parents with no children remaining in Abnegation.  Beatrice, or Tris as she now calls herself is put with the other transfers and made to go through a series of bloody, violent, fear inducing tests.  The recruits are told that of the 20 recruits only 10 will be allowed to remain in Dauntless and the rest will have to live factionless. We also meet Four, one of the training instructors, and Eric a sadistic young man who is part of the leadership.  Tris initially does not do so well, but she quickly learns.  Meanwhile the Erudite's have been spreading lies and rumors about the Abnegation leadership, attempting to start a revolution to take power from them. Tris's mother comes to Visiting Day and reveals that she was originally from Dauntless before she chose Abnegation, which completely takes Tris by surprise (GO MAMMA).  Stuff happens, violence ensues and they move on to the second stage of training. This stage is where you start to face your fears and Tris quickly learns to manipulate the simulations, tipping Four off that she is Divergent.  Tris and Four strike up a relationship that is actually kind of sweet and does not involve Four manhandling Tris into compliance with his manly whims.  More stuff and things, more rumors and mayhem, more skulking and secrets and then the final test.  The final test is to go through your fear landscape and find a way to face your fears.  The average number of fears is between 10-15.  Tris finds out that the reason Four is called Four is that he only has Four fears, heights, confined spaces, killing his mom, and his abusive father...who just happens to be the leader of Abnegation.  Tris gets through her test with only 6 fears (she is so special) and is then injected by Eric with a tracker

serum that he says is being given to everybody.  Tris and Four come to an understanding about life and go to the celebration banquet where she finds out she is #1 on the rankings and all her friends made into Dauntless YAY!  She goes to bed and wakes up when her bunkmates all start sleepwalking for lack of a better term.  They all board the train to the Abnegation sector with Tris playing along at being controlled for the sake of trying to save her family.  Four also turns out to be a hidden Divergent and can also resist the commands of the serum.  He and Tris try and save people, but end up captured.  Turns out that the Erudite leader Jeanine and the Dauntless leadership have decided to team up and murder the Abnegation council to take over.  Knowing that most soldiers would never murder innocents in cold blood, the Erudite's created a serum to control them and anybody else they deemed to non docile.  Tris escapes with the help of her mother who also turns out to be Divergent and was sent to Abnegation for her own safety.  Her mother dies protecting her, fulfilling the ultimate selfless act.  Tris finds her father, brother and Marcus (Fours abusive father) and devises a plan to destroy the transmission that is controlling the soldiers.  Along the way her father is also killed protecting her, again displaying the selflessness of his faction.  Tris is able to break Fours conditioning and they stop the transmission.  All is chaos as they head toward the Amity sector for refuge and to decide what to do next.  The End.

As always there is more to the book then what I synopsed (is that a word?) but that is the gist of it.  Now on to my self important rambling about why this book drove me CRAZY!  It was actually a well written book, especially if you compare it to books like The Maze Runner series.  This book had good well fleshed out characters, believable conflict, even the requisite love story had a decent flavor.  My big problem with this book is the basic premise.  The idea that humanity can be divided into one of five emotional/mental states is very interesting, but completely unrealistic.  I can see them trying it as an experiment, but I would guess that it would not hold any sort of pure form for very long.  Humans are made to think in various ways, even the most sheep like of people when pressed will find that nothing is as simple as a single concept.  I have a whole entire list of notes I made while reading this book and they kept coming back to the fact that this society cannot exist, humans would never be able to maintain that kind of discipline, nor would they want to. So 'cause this is my blog I am going to discuss some of the things I think would make this society impossible.  First off if you are forced to choose a single precept to live your life by, I'm pretty sure 16 is the wrong age to do it.  I know as a 16 year old if I was given the choice I would be torn between Erudite and

Dauntless...as would the vast majority of the other 16 year olds I knew.  Who wouldn't want to be the bad ass group, or the group who got to do things.  I cannot think of very many 16 year olds who would purposely choose a life of self sacrifice, especially when you go to school with the other factions and see how much more fun they are.   And then what happens when you grow up, I can tell you right now what I thought was awesome and perfect and wonderful, is not how I think now x+ years later and I am pretty sure in another 15 years my views will have modified again.  So you make a choice based on your impulsive, hormonal, young 16 year old self and have no other options until you die...not gonna happen.  Ok so moving on.  Apparently the main indicator that you are the dreaded Divergent is that you score high in more then one faction during your aptitude test...which the test itself is kind of dumb.  Not only that, but it doesn't matter what the test says you can choose a different faction regardless...so is anybody who chooses a different faction from their test results Divergent?  Also don't most of these factions actually have to spill over into each other, as one character says, it takes a lot of courage to be selfless...so again...wouldn't most humans be Divergent.  This takes me to another issue, their seems to be contradicting information about the rules of factions and Divergent's.  Sometimes the initiates are encouraged to think like other factions, they are told to do some research and be prepared, or to be honest or whatever as a way to enhance and improve.  Other times when a recruit does any of those things they are derided for acting like another faction.  And what about the transfer initiates...are they not automatically Divergent as they spent the last 16 years being trained in another ideal...you don't just lose that training.  Moving on to what the purpose of the factions is.  Apparently in this society if you are in a faction, there are a limited number of jobs you can do.  Abnegation is the ruling council and head of all the volunteer work to restore the city (from what I don't know) and make sure that the

factionless have jobs, food, clothes and shelter (more on the factionless in a minute).  Dauntless can pretty much only do security...and piercing and tattoos of other Dauntless.  Amity farms and gardens.  Erudite does pretty much everything else that is non menial. Candor...well...I'm not sure what Candor actually does other then annoy each other.  All the menial jobs like bus driving and janitorial jobs are forced upon the factionless who are treated like dirt. I hate that the only option to being in one of the five super specific factions is to live in abject poverty as a third class citizen, there is no recourse, no possibility of re factioning, and the worst part is that there are no rules on how or when a person can get kicked out.  Of the 20 initiates in Dauntless they are told at least 10 will be factionless by the end of the trials...16 year olds who had no idea how the trials work and they are screwed for the rest of their lives, not cool.  Again, I do not know of any group of humans who would allow this weirdly skewed society to exist (also if Abnegation were truly selfless, wouldn't the let all the factionless into their faction?).  The reasoning behind Divergent's being a threat finally comes out in the end...but this is a recent development and I am not sure if being Divergent was just recently recognized, or it did not matter before, or what, but again more convenient then sense making.  I could go on and on and on and on and on about how this type of society is impossible with out giving people drugs or shock therapy or a lobotomy, but I think you get my frustration.  It was hard because I would get into the story (and again it was fairly well written) and then they would dump the Divergent premise in their and all I could think about is NO THAT

WOULD NOT HAPPEN.  I am weird though and seem to be in the minority (shocking right ;-) ) Again, it sounds like I hate the book, but I did not, I really enjoyed the characters and their motivation, I loved loved loved the time they spent in the Dauntless challenges, and I even liked the relationship between Tris and Four (yay for no stupid love triangle). Also as a girl who did the Chicago scene for several years (and got myself the worlds best Hubbin while there) I loved how recognizable, yet destroyed the city was.  I will happily read the next two books (though I have been warned about book two) and hope that the author can find a way to convince me that put together the whole series makes sense.  I understood the comparison to the Hunger Games series and not just because it is a YA dystopian trilogy.  There are violent contests, friends, bucking the government and a girl lead who is finding her inner strength, but this is not by any means a copy cat of Hunger Games, it has its own story, its own setting, and its own premise.  I now cannot wait to see the movie and see how it stacks up to the books, and I will get to the next book in the series soon.  I would recommend this book to anybody who enjoyed the Hunger Games...just beware the premise.  I give this book 6 out of 10 lip piercings.

Do I let the premise of books take up to much importance?  What is the most important aspect of a book to you?  What faction would you choose?  What faction would you create? Why is every YA dystopia compared to the Hunger Games?  

This Makes Us All Cranks

Still cold, so so so cold, was at the station running calls in the cold and ice, so so so so so cold. I usually don't mind the cold, but this is excessive and it is making me cranky...you might even say I'm a Crank...which by the way happens to be what the crazy people are called in the Maze Runner series by James Dashner of which I just happened to finish the last book The Death Cure...which also made me a cranky Crank (do you like my babbling segues today?). Anyways  lets get to it, as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

When we last left our tortured her Thomas he had just been "rescued" by WICKED a group that is supposedly working on a cure for a deadly disease by torturing teenagers.  Thomas is finally released from his padded cell and reunited with his fellow torturees.  The apparent head Doc whom the group calls Ratface informs them that they are almost to the last step of the cure and that they will now give them there memories back (remember part of the whole maze deal was that there memories got swiped).  Thomas along with his fellow Gladers Minho and Newt decide that they don't trust WICKED to put back their original memories and decide to stay clueless about there past.  This leads to a confrontation with Ratman who has decided that they don't get a choice in the matter. He tells them that one of the reasons that they were all chosen for this torture experiment is that most of them are immune to the Flare and that they are trying to map their brains to see why they are immune.  We also find out that Newt is one of the non immune, he gives Thomas a letter and tells him not to open it until the time is right.  Thomas is restrained and taken to get his memories back when he spots Brenda (a friend he made while slogging through the scorch) who with the help of Jorge (another Scorch friend) helps the boys escape.  They end up in Denver where a Flare outbreak is decimating the city.  They also learn that Immunes have been disappearing all over the place and that WICKED is going to start the Trials over again as they did not seem to get the information they were looking for. As they are running around the city they find out about a group called the Right Arm, a quasi-military group who is very anti WICKED and join them.  Meanwhile Newt has started to go crazy because of the Flare and sends Minho and Thomas away.  Later Thomas remembers the note and reads it, the contents essentially ask Thomas to kill Newt when he starts going crazy. Next time he encounters Newt, Thomas does as he wishes and kills him. The group eventually hooks up with the rest of their friends and plans an attack on WICKED.  Thomas goes in alone as Ratman has told him that he is the final candidate and that his brain holds the last piece of the puzzle for the cure for Flare.  The point is for Thomas to get in and plant a device that renders all weapons useless and then be rescued by the Right Arm.  Unfortunately Ratman has other plans, turns out that the final piece of the puzzle is literally Thomas's brain, that they in fact have to cut it out and dissect it, meaning Thomas would die. Thomas is put under and he wakes up in an empty room with nothing but an envelope with his name on it containing instructions on how to get the captive Immunes and escape with them to a preprepared place.  Explosions, fighting and death occur, but in the end Thomas, Minho, Brenda, Jorge, Teresa, and all the rest of the Immunes are transported to a peaceful meadow like area where they can start a new life and eventually repopulate the world with other little Immunes.  In a final epilogue memo we find out that the government purposely released the Flare virus as a means of population control after the devastating sun flare.  The memo also goes on to state that while the attempt to find a cure was noble, a second try was not worth it and that the author of the memo was sending the Immunes somewhere safe.  And so ends our long and torturous journey of pointlessness.

I actually found this book to be a tad less problematic then the previous two. Some of the decisions and reactions were actually plausible and the action tended to have some kind of point to it.  That being said, it was still way to...I don't know how to put it, I just wanted it to be done.  I found myself wanting to skip all the angsty pages and move on to the next sparse tidbit of storyline which does not make for an enjoyable read.  Ok things I did not hate.  I liked that they made one of the core friends sick and that he did not survive, but was reduced to the "enemy" that they all feared so much.  I liked that Thomas and at least some of his friends decided to quit being the puppets of WICKED (no matter how much Teresa insisted that they were good) and finally fought back.  I also appreciated how so many people finally came to the realization that the resources, time, and angst that were being poured into the Trials to find a cure would have been better spent containing and treating the symptoms of the Flare, instead the whole world went to hell while they were waiting for this nebulous possible cure.  Thomas having to question what a cure was worth in terms of both personal, and the groups well-being.  Was it ok to torture a couple hundred people if it could potentially save millions?  At what point is torturing and killing people for a cure going to inflict a damage that out weighs the benefits of a cure?  All good ethical questions.  Things I did not love.  The whole, non explained (not really) reason that torturing Immune teenagers would result in a cure was not sound in any way shape or form.  I work in the medical field and I have never ever remotely heard of a virus infecting somebody because of the way they think...or at least not in the way the book tried to present it.  While positive or negative thinking can have an effect on your health...it won't "cure" anything.  I hated that their was absolutely no mention of them even trying to find a cure or vaccine from more traditional virus killing methods that actually work in real life.  Nope it was all about the killzone (which is the stupid name they gave the brain 'cause the virus makes you go crazy).  So obviously since it is a brain infection...only a thought pattern can cure it, hm I'll have to tell that to my next viral encephalitis patient.  I also thought that the fact that the Flare was released on purpose was pretty non-plausible, I mean what government purposely releases a horrible, non-lethal (it's not the virus, but the going crazy and not being able to take care of yourself part that kills you), uncontrollable, uncurable, unvaccinable virus into the world, seriously who does that...oh right only crazy people.  This was annoying  cause it made an already implausible story pretty much as unpossible as possible (and that is totally a word, Lewis Carrol says so).  I hated that the government did not think to isolate at least some of the immunes, heck or even healthy people once they saw the scale of destruction that was happening.  They obviously had a place prepped, they new the Trials may fail...so why not save as much as humanity as possible?  You could even still run the pointless trials while preserving the human race?!? This book made more sense then any of them, but it was still a very frustrating read.  Questions were still not answered (what the hell were the Trials for?  How were they gonna use the patterns?  What was Teresa, Thomas and Aries role in the beginning?) which may be answered in the prequel...which I will read 'cause why not.  Also a lot of stuff that got set up in earlier books was completely pointless by the end of this book, again a case of the second book of a trilogy being beyond completely pointless, in fact all three books could have probably been combined into one semi-decent book.  In case you haven't figured it out, this is not my favorite series.  I keep hearing people comparing it to the Hunger Games trilogy which while not perfect, at least had a point.  Just because a book is about a bunch of tortured teenagers does not put it on the same level as a set of well written books that also happen to be (among other things) tortured teenagers. I will read the prequal The Kill Order because one I already have it and two just in case it gives me any more information.  I give this book 3 out of 10 Death Cures.

What did you think of this trilogy?  Was it comparable to the Hunger Games?  Will you watch the movie when it comes out and tell me what you think so I don't have to?

Everything Is Catching Fire

Hubbin took me to the movie Catching Fire last weekend, based on the book of the same name and second in the Hunger Game series. The main thing I took away from this film is that the director took the title very seriously and pretty much set everything on fire.  Clothes, trees, people, villages, food, whatever it was all on fire.  But lets get to the good stuff shall we, the big question is always how did it compare to the book.  This was an interesting one for several reasons.  One I was not a huge fan of the second half of the book, so my caring level for the movie was already at a lower threshold then for the first one.  Second, this movie had a much bigger and flashier budget then the first movie did so instantly the costumes, sets, and effects were already better.  Keeping both of those things in mind here is how I felt about the movie compared to the book.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD! Also I am going to assume you have either read the book and/or watched the movie and not spell out the plot.

As far as the Hunger Games trilogy was concerned I always wanted to combine the first half of Catching Fire with the second half of the third book Mockingjay to make a perfect book.  I felt the second half of Catching Fire as a book kinda was an excuse to have another Hunger Games and it felt like a recycled idea.  The first half however, dealing with the aftermath of the games and the realization that there was never going to be an end, that even as winners they were the Capitals playthings until they died was pretty heavy and awesome.  The movie I felt went a bit further away from the book then the first one did, focusing on President Snow (I love you Donald Sutherland!) and his need to keep any and all possible dissension controlled. The movie

rolled through a lot of stuff pretty quickly, the victory tour, Peeta and Katniss being weird with there partially pretend romance, Haymitches excessive drinking, and the crackdown on District 12.  This all was explored pretty thoroughly in the book and was shown in pretty quick succession in the movie. What I thought they did really well was show Katniss trying to quell the rebellion by following President Snow's orders, she was never trying to incite rebellion, she was simply trying to stay alive and after the games keep her loved ones safe.  I liked the progression the movie showed of her realizing how much danger her family was in, how hard she tried to "behave" and then finally realizing nothing she did would ever be enough so she may as well fight back. I felt that they glossed over the whole Peeta and Katniss love/fake love/maybe not fake love story, which normally I am all for 'cause I am not a huge romance fan, but in the book the added tension of these two trying to survive in close quarters while this huge thing hangs there was kind of great and added some dimension to the typical teenage love story.  In the movie it was all resolved in the first 20 minutes with a quick chat and then poof all better blah!  I actually liked how they did the Quarter Quell better in the movie, with it seeming to be more obvious that the President was using the games as a means to eliminate all the victors, while in the book it seemed like a happy coincidence that the old founders of the game wrote up this version of the game long before President Snow needed to rid his country of the victors.  I wish we had gotten to see more of the other
victors in the movie.  In the book they studied old videos of the various victors to try and figure out there strengths and weaknesses and we learn some surprising things about various people. At the Capitol in the book there is also a lot more conversation on how the victors are used and abused.  Finnik especially is blunt about what the victors have to do to survive post-games.  We get a bit of that in the movie but not nearly as dark and heavy as in the book.  Also can I just say I am not a Jenna Malone fan and it sadly ruined the character of Johanna for me, which is sad 'cause I liked her bitchy only helping 'cause I've got nothing left attitude in the book.  The casting for everybody else was very well done and I am still in love with Stanley Tucci as Caesar Flickerman...seriously if they made a spin-off with him I would watch it every day.  The costumes were stunning, the makeup surreal, the sets fantastic, special effects well done and the camera work motion sick inducing...seriously they kept zooming in on weird things, I think I saw Katniss's left nostril at least three times.  Overall I enjoyed it, it kept completely to the plot of the book, adding a bit here, leaving out a bit there but nothing to change the basic story.  I hear they are going to make Mockingjay into a two parter (groan) so we shall see how that goes, probably more running around and angst.  I would recommend this movie to anybody who read the books and/or watched and enjoyed the first movie.  We have a couple more book inspired movies coming out so I shall watch them and post on them later.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Do you find that you lose all the tension when you watch a movie that you already know the outcome?  How important is casting to a movie made from a book?  Do I spend way to much energy on a simple pop film?

Slogging Through The Scorch

Sometimes I just have to force myself to finish a book and that's all there is to it.  I had expected to get through The Scorch Trials (the second book in the Maze Runner Trilogy) fairly quickly, considering I read the first one in about a day.  I had mixed feelings about the first book, but wanted to finish up the trilogy, if nothing else to see what the heck it was all for.  I really tried to go into the second book with an open mind, but ugh, I had a really hard time with it.  To me it had all the problems of the first book with very little of it's good points.  Anyways here is a quick and probably jaded synopsis (I apologize to those of you who love these books, it is just my own personal take see this post for a fuller explanation).  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!

This book starts off where the last one left off.  The boys awaken in there nice cozy beds ready for some well deserved R&R.  Of course this does not make for a good story so instead they are set upon by crazy, sick, oozy people called Cranks.  Apparently the disease called Flare takes up residence in your brain and eventually makes you cuckoo.  Luckily for our boys they are safe behind barred windows.  Shaken up, but determined to figure out what the heck is going on they go to find there rescuers from before.  As they wander into the kitchen, trying to find some answers, they come upon the horrifying sight of all there rescuers dead and hung from the ceiling...WTF!  They all gather and talk and discover that instead of Teresa in her
room it is a boy named Aris who informs the Gladers that he was the "Teresa" in another Maze situation that was completely identical except that it was full of girls instead of boys. The only other differences are that more girls made it out then boys (well duh! :-) ) and that his partner Rachel got killed in front of them, since they didn't have a Chuck to jump in front of her.  A man appears behind a force field and informs the Gladers that they have all been infected by the Flare and that they had exactly two weeks to make it 100 miles across the Scorch (an area that has been devastated by a mega sun flare ((this has a serious SyFy channel feel to it)) and is pretty brutal on its own) and make it to a safe haven where they will all be cured. So off they set and as you can probably guess all kinds of horrific, non-sensicle things happen to them (seriously a head eating ball is just one of the horrors they  deal with). Teresa also shows up randomly to add additional torture to poor Thomas (who is still our main character).  After many deaths and injuries they make it to this city type place that is over run by Cranks in various states of the disease.  They make a tentative alliance with a pair named Jorge and Brenda who have just been diagnosed and exiled.   The group gets separated, Jorge and the Gladers wander around and Brenda and Thomas get into a couple of scrapes.  Cranks are crazy and do crazy things.  Eventually they all meet up again to continue across the Scorch.  Teresa shows up again with Group B (the girls) and captures Thomas.  They are supposed to kill him, but he talks the girls out of it.  Teresa and Aris get together and kidnap Thomas and take him to this box thingy that is supposed to kill him.  It releases some gas that heals him and Teresa and Aris said it was all part of the plan that he felt betrayed...yeah.  Thomas is understandably unable to forgive Teresa, or even believe anything that anybody is saying at this point.  They all meet back up with the other groups at the supposed safe haven site.  About 30 minutes before the deadline, weird monstery humany things appear and start trying to kill the kids.  Most of them hang on long enough to get to the deadline.  A ship appears in the sky and collects the kids.  They tell them that they are safe now (we've heard that before) and that everything will be explained.  Thomas falls asleep to Teresa talking in his head, telling him that WICKED (the group behind all this crap) is good.  The book ends with a memo talking about removing the mind wipe and telling the kids which of them are immune to the Flare.
Whew done with that!  I have not been so happy to finish a book in a while...and I still have two more to go!  This book had all of my most hated pet peeves in a second book.  It felt fairly pointless and unnecessary.  The whole point of the book seemed to be to torture teenage kids...and that is about it.  We do not get a whole lot of information about the world, or WICKED that we did not get in the first book.  In fact the only thing that was really new was the fact we find out that it was Thomas, Teresa, and Aries choice to go into the
Maze.  We keep seeing the WICKED people talk about patterns, and creating patterns, and that all this pointless stuff will result in patterns...but not a single mention of what the heck it is.  I will give the author props for inventiveness when it comes to the myriad of tortures he puts his characters through.  Walks down pitch dark tunnels resulting in peoples heads being eaten by balls of metal, random boxes of fear, giant monsters men who can be taken down by popping orange bubbles.  All very terrifying.  The character development was not as complete as the last book, while the friendships between Newt, Minho, and Thomas stayed refreshingly intact and very bromance, the new characters were just kind of tossed in there to further the "plot" which is pretty sparse to begin with.  Overall not one of my favorite books, it was very frustrating to watch these kids get jerked around, tortured, hurt, killed, lied to and then tell them "it's for a reason, but we won't tell you the reason".  As a reader, I personally can only take so watching characters get relentlessly punished with out any payoff, it starts to feel icky and squirmy, like I only am reading it so I can watch them suffer.  Like I said earlier, I will finish off the series to see if there is any pay off, but I think the open mind part is starting to suffer.  Those of you who enjoyed these books, please let me know in the comments why, because I really want to know!

How does this book compare to other second books in YA dystopia series?    Have you ever made your self finish a series?  How does one come up with head eating metal sphere of doom?

Running And Running...Yep Still Running

On my road trip last week I finished a couple of books that have been on my list for a long time.  The book I will be rambling about today is one that is recommended for fans of the Hunger Games trilogy or just the YA dystopian genre in general.  I like me a well set up dystopian society and this series came highly recommended so off I dove into The Mazerunner the first book in a trilogy (plus a prequel).  Overall I have mixed feelings about this book, and hope that finishing the trilogy will fill in some of the gaps and make a better or at least more complete impression.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD

 

We start the book in a small dark room, where our protagonist wakes up with no memory but his name, Thomas.  The door opens and he is greeted by a bunch of teenage boys who are not very helpful in providing any details of his situation.  He is in what the other boys call the Glade, an area of several acres that contains a farm/slaughter house, gardens, a small forest/graveyard, and a ramshackle house called the Homestead.  The whole thing is contained by massive walls with giant gaps on all four sides.  Thomas is assigned to Chuck who until Thomas's arrival was the newest boy. Chuck informs him that a new boy is brought to the Glade every 30 days without fail.  That night Thomas witnesses the walls closing, completely sealing the boys in the Glade.  He finds out that outside the walls is the Maze, which the boys hope by

solving will provide the key to there release.  Thomas has an extremely difficult time getting information about his situation, but eventually figures out that nobody in the Glade has specific memories of their life before arriving, just general knowledge memories.  He also learns that everybody is assigned a job based on their talents and that the Runners are a group of boys who go run and map the Maze everyday in hopes of solving it.  Oddly enough even though nobody remembers anything about their prior life, a boy named Gally insists that he knows Thomas, that it is his fault that they are all stuck in the Glade. The next day while taking a tour with Newt the second in command, a boy named Ben who has been going through what the boys call the Changing goes crazy, screaming about seeing Thomas and attempting to kill him.  He is stopped by Albie, the leader of the group and condemned to banishment outside of the walls.  Thomas is told that banishment is akin to a death sentence because anybody caught out in the maze after dark is always killed by Grievers.  Grievers are a cyborg type monster that look like giant blobs of slimy pink flesh that are augmented by any number of lethal metal devices.  If you are stung by a Griever you must get back to the Glade as fast as you can so you can receive the Grief serum, which brings on the change, which also gives you back some of the memories of your old life.  You would think this is a good thing, but the process is so horrific that even if you don't go crazy like Ben, the boys still refuse to talk about any memories they might have gained.  As all this is taking place withing a day of Thomas's arrival, the alarm for the metal box goes off again and when it is opened a girl is inside.  This is unusual for many reasons, a girl has never been to the Glade before, she came only one day after Thomas, and she bears a message stating that she is the last one, there will be no more.  She goes comatose and is taken to the Homestead do recover.  Thomas is immediately put under suspicion because even though he has only been there a day, nothing strange happened before he got there.  Thomas thinks this is ridiculous as he has no memories of his own, but oddly does feel a sense of familiarity about the girl.  Albie and the leader of the Runners, Minhoe go out to the maze to investigate other strange things and get stuck when Albie gets stung by a Griever.  Thomas, against orders goes into the Maze to try and help them.  He is able to not only defeat several Grievers, but manages to save Albie and Minhoe as well.  When they get

back to the Glade everybody is astonished and Thomas is made a Runner.  Albie gets the serum and goes through the Change.  When he wakes up he tries to tell Thomas some of his memories but is prevented by some mysterious force.  The girl starts talking telepathically to Thomas while still in a coma, telling him that she has initiated the ending...whatever that means.  She wakes up and tells him her name is Teresa and that she remembers that the Maze is a code.  Everybody is mistrustful of the girl, especially since what ever she triggered caused the doors of the wall to remain open after nightfall, allowing the Grievers to come into the Glade.  Gally comes back and tells everybody that the Grievers are going to kill one person a night until it is all over and then sacrifices himself to the Grievers who then leave until the next night. Knowing that he has the memories of how to end this stuck in his head, Thomas intentionally gets stung by a Griever and goes through the Change.  He comes back and tells everybody that he and Teresa were forced by scientists to help create the Glade and the Maze, that there telepathic link made them very special somehow.  The scientist were then got tired of the experiment after a couple of years and dumped Thomas and Teresa into the Maze to finish it up.  They figure out that the shifting Maze is actually a code that needs to be input into a computer that is hidden in an optical illusion of the edge of a cliff.  The gang fights there way through the Grievers, losing most of the boys and finally make it to the outside.  In a supposed final test Chuck is killed by a zombie Gally?  Maybe?  Not quit sure what happened there, but it did.  The remaining boys and Teresa are rescued by a group claiming that they are against this type of cruel testing and explain the current state of things.  A super sun flare fried a good chunk of Earth the same time a plague, called The Flare started ravaging the remaining humans.  The boys were put into the Glade to see who would not give up looking for a solution, even when there was no solution (yeah doesn't make sense to me either).

 Apparently they were looking for a group of boys who would be able to keep up the search for a cure for the Flare, not because they were smart, or had medical inclinations, or any sort of training, but because they kept looking for an impossible solution...even though there wasn't one. Anyways the scientists got sick of waiting for the boys to not give up on finding a solution, even though they claimed there wasn't one, even though there obviously was one 'cause they found it, but that wasn't the point so they sent Thomas and Teresa in to finish it up...to prove who knows what.  The boys and Teresa are put into separate rooms for the night and told they will be completely filled in the next day.  The book ends with a memo from one scientist to another, stating that the fake rescue went off without a hitch and they are looking forward to the next phase of testing.

If you actually read through that whole long synopsis you may have gotten the vibe that a few things did not work for me :-)  I think the hardest part for me to swallow was the premise of the whole experiment, which was to find boys who would not give up looking for a solution, even though they kept saying there was no solution...but there was a solution because they used it to get out in the end.  There was a lot of contradictory information like that in the book, which to me takes away some of its credibility.  My other big issue was that essentially the whole book was about these two kids (Thomas and Teresa) who get dumped into this

experiment and pretty much give the boys step by step instructions on how to get out of the Maze. It seemed like a huge cop out.  Also for having so many info dumps, I was still left very confused on the whole point of the experiment, why it was only boys who were chosen, what was the point of Teresa and Thomas and well pretty much everything.  I get that finding a cure for the plague was pretty much impossible and they were looking for people who would not give up the search, but I still don't understand how torturing a bunch of teenage boys is going to result in people capable of finding a medical cure for this rampant disease.  If I were any one of those boys who had to watch my fellow mates suffer and be killed and then dumped in this horrible world, I would do everything in my power to NOT help anybody.  All that being said I finished the book in less then two days, the story kept me turning the pages and I still want to know what the heck is going on.  The character development of most of the boys, especially Minhoe and Chuck were really well done and watching a group of young guys who were working together to make a peaceful, productive society instead of a savage, fighting, Alpha male one was very refreshing.  I will be reading the next two books and the prequel because I am hoping that all together they will make a coherent story, but at this point I am a bit disappointed. You all go read it for yourself and tell me what you think Ok?

What is your biggest pet peeve in reading?  Have you ever read a book that is page turning and not so great all at the same time?  Do you love how my ramblings are almost as long as the book?