Altered by Jennifer Rush

TL;DR a drawn-out chase of genetically engineered teens by the evil corporation that experimented on them

(finished 6/29/15)

I do have to give Altered credit in that I was able to finish it in spite of my reading slump. I sat down to read it in my free time, and it was easy enough to get into. However, I wasn't impressed by it. And I think I might be in the minority on this one. Keep that in mind. 

Altered just didn't feel all that interesting or unique to me. The narration wasn't anything spectacular (and was even cliche, thank you "I let out the breath I didn't realize I'd been holding" on pg 311). I wasn't particularly attached to any of the characters. They were easy enough to tell apart, though Trev and Cas were pretty similar to me. I think the characters bordered a little bit on cliche, too, considering Nick was all bad-boy archetype and Sam was the stereotypical hero. 

The concept of the story was good, I think, but I think I would've been more interested in seeing them in the lab than just on the run. It didn't feel like there was any character development and the plotline of "avoid the Branch" was pretty basic. It's been done before and there wasn't anything that really made it stand out. The plotline of trying to find and decipher the clues left behind from before the story started wasn't intriguing enough to me, either. I think some people could find it interesting, trying to figure it out alongside the characters, but I didn't care for it. The whole mystery aspect didn't appeal to me at all. 

I only sticky-noted the last quarter of the book or so, so I didn't have too many issues up until the ending really started. There was nothing that made me support the romance that popped up (thankfully it was kind of minimal, but my comment on the last sentence of the book is "gag"). The final conflict felt poorly set up to me, both in narration and how the characters tried to execute it. Their game plan kind of made me question how they managed to evade the Branch that long. 

A lot of people have reviewed Altered pretty high on goodreads, and I can only find a couple where the readers weren't impressed. I think I probably just wasn't part of the intended audience of the book. I'm definitely more for character-driven books than plot-driven. I think part of my issue with the book was just that I didn't feel invested enough in the characters. I wasn't given enough to really care about them. (Point in case: when some of the boys were injured and left behind, I was just kind of like "whatever". It honestly didn't bother me that they were going to be re-captured. Maybe I'm just a heartless person. I don't know.) 

My friends seemed to enjoy the book more than me, and one of them recommended the second book, so I'll probably give that a try if the chance arises. I'm not gonna go out of my way to track it down, though. 

TL;DR Altered wasn't my thing. It felt too cliche and I didn't care for the characters or the stake of the plot. 

Twitter Links -- June / July

I decided to start another blog post series! I follow a lot of different blogs, mainly about writing, and recently I've started sharing links via twitter to blog posts that I've found pretty awesome. I love Oh, The Books!' weekly recap blog post series, and while I don't want to copy their idea (nor can I pull it off every week), I want to share the love like they do and share some blog posts that speak to me.

Some of these are inevitably going to overlap with some of their weekly recap ones, so I'm sorry about that!;;

Why We Need Millenial Writers: this is important to me because I'm a millenial writer and sometimes I feel like I need encouragement. I'm a (figurative) small child trying to follow in the footsteps of the authors I love. And that's kind of hard.

Dear Writers: None of Us Know What the Fck We're Doing (as a head's up, this post has a lot of cursing. It's used really well imo, though.) This is also reassuring to me as a figurative small child author because I'm used to BSing my way through things. Knowing that adults do it too is nice.

Labels are for Soup Cans (and also for me)
I’ve got a girl in the war
Liraz’s Asexual Armor: Second-Guessing AceAro Representation in YA
Straight is Not My Default: Understanding Katniss Everdeen as an Ace Aro
Reading Without Role Models: Asexual Awareness Week Day #3
Let’s Save Some Lives, Shall We? Asexuality in Mainstream YA
This is a lot of links. Sorry. I kind of went crazy in the Gay YA "asexual" tag when I realized that was a thing that existed. Asexuality in YA is a very important concept to me (as seen here) and I was really happy to see that I am not the only one who has talked about the lack of representation. Please read these!! Especially "Reading Without Role Models", since I identified a lot with that one.

Healthy Friendships in Books

sailorenergy.net This is actually a Sailor Moon fansite that I found back in elementary school and managed to re-find! At some point, probably when we switched computers, I lost the bookmark I had for the page and I didn't remember enough of it to track it down again. I was really lucky that I managed to this time! There's also sailor-games.com, which I played puzzles on a lot, but whatever plugin it used to run them is no longer supported by Chrome and I can't use them anymore :c Anyway, I'm really glad I managed to find them!!

Calvin and Hobbes embodied the voice of the lonely child

Why You Should Celebrate Your Blogging Milestones

DiversifYA: Nita Tyndall this is a blog post about identifying as asexual and kind of ties into all the other asexuality links above ;; sorry there's so much. (Not actually. I will talk about asexuality until I die.)

I'm not sure if I'll keep this as a usual monthly blog post, since it was kind of a pain to search back through my twitter feed, but I hope some of these links were useful or interesting!

Fave New Music -- June / July

The two months got combined because of my vacation posts. I ran out of time to post June's.

I just started using my Spotify account in June, and it's been really awesome for finding new music! Unfortunately, I created the account via Facebook, so I can't share my account without giving out my full name :( I'm still really disappointed by this fact, and I would've set up a new account if I'd figured it out before I added like twenty million songs to playlists. (That's kind of an exaggeration. Kind of. I've added a lot.) This isn't a complete list of all the new songs I've found on Spotify, mainly because I'm too lazy for that right now, so I'll either tack them onto the next Fave New Music or just edit them into this post later. 

There was also a lot of music in my June Vacation: Overview post, and I'm not gonna include those in this one. Check out the other post if you're curious about what I listened to on our vacation! 

Terror in Resonance

TL;DR "not so bad as they could have been" terrorists

(finished 6/14/15)

The tl;dr link goes to Funimation, where my friends and I watched it, but I'm not sure if it's behind a paywall so here's the Hulu page for it. It's apparently not on Crunchyroll. 

On to the review! This is the first anime that my friends and I finished during our now pretty frequent Anime Nights. I figured Terror In Resonance wouldn't really be my thing considering the genres I like, but it was good! It was a little different than I expected. In a good way. 

There's not too much that I feel like I can talk about without spoiling things, because to me it seemed layered along the same lines as Mekakucity Actors. You learn more as it progresses. The science behind it seems pretty legit, since my friend who is well-read with the science sides of Reddit was able to guess what Nine and Twelve were doing and explain it to us about a minute before the show did, and he was spot on. It was pretty cool. 

The content warnings I can think of off the top of my head: terrorist attacks, bombings, explosions, blood, emotional abuse (and maybe physical). There might be a few more, but these are the ones that really stuck out to me, so if any of those bother you Terror In Resonance probably isn't your thing. I'd also avoid it if you don't like suspense and life-or-death situations. 

The premise of the show was pretty interesting to me, especially Nine and Twelve's methods, and I was surprised to see character growth with them. The friend who had already watched Terror In Resonance and re-watched it with us had problems with Five as a character, but I'm not sure if I agree with his argument that she was a useless character. I haven't really tried to imagine what the plot would be like without her. 

Terror In Resonance is only 11 episodes, so it's really easy to get through. It only took us two Anime Nights to finish it. I'd recommend it if you like mysteries (since it also focuses on the detectives trying to foil Nine and Twelve's plots) and if the content warnings won't bother you. 

The Winner's Crime by Marie Rutkoski

TL;DR Kestrel and Arin kind of screwed themselves over in The Winner's Curse and are now trying not to go down in flames

(finished 6/20/15)

I reviewed The Winner's Curse back in December. I rated the first book really high, and though I rated the second book only three stars, it's not a detrimental downgrade. I actually really enjoyed reading The Winner's Crime, but I wasn't all that happy with it, if that makes sense. My three-star rating is mainly just my "... what" response towards the ending.

I don't remember if I mentioned this in The Winner's Curse review, but I really like the mood of the narration. It's really poetic but it doesn't push purple prose (imo) and I really liked how it set up the capital and the Queen's city. I sometimes have trouble with fantasy set in different worlds but this series hasn't been too bad for me. The map on the inside of the cover really helped. Somehow I got the impression that the Valorian capital was to the east of Herran, not the west, so it took me a little bit to fix that in my mind. 

I was kind of frustrated with the characters. I mean, in their situation, there's not many other options without essentially killing themselves in the process, but I really wish they'd have been a little more honest with each other. It's not even just Arin and Kestrel. All the characters lie and hide things, which I guess is to be expected, but more than once I wondered how the plot would've been affected if Kestrel had told Arin the truth about the engagement from the beginning and not the eventual way that she did. 

Honestly, the plot didn't feel as exciting to me as it did in The Winner's Crime. It wasn't a struggle at all to finish the book, but I think that was mainly because of its mood and aesthetic. I wasn't all too impressed with what all went down by the end of the book, and where it left off, I'm not very sure that I want to read the final book. I probably will. It's just not very high on my priority list. 

TL;DR I liked the aesthetic more than the plot or the decisions of the characters. It probably depends on what you thought of The Winner's Curse.