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 The Owl Keeper
by Christine Brodien-Jones
Maxwell Unger has always loved the night. He used to do brave things like go tramping through the forest with his gran after dark. He loved the stories she told him about the world before the Destruction—about nature, and books, and the silver owls. His favorite story, though, was about the Owl Keeper.
According to Max’s gran, in times of darkness the Owl Keeper would appear to unite owls and sages against the powers of the dark. Gran is gone now, and so are her stories of how the world used to be. Max is no longer brave. The forest is dangerous, the books Gran had saved have been destroyed, and the silver owls are extinct. At least that’s what the High Echelon says. But Max knows better.
Maxwell Unger has a secret. And when a mysterious girl comes to town, he might just have to start being brave again.
The time of the Owl Keeper, Gran would say, is coming soon. (goodreads.com)
This book was beautifully written. The story was beautiful, the descriptions were beautiful the relationship between Max and his owl and yes, even Rose was beautiful.
This story was also creepy in a way that I was not expecting. Guess what? I stumbled into yet another dystopian novel and didn’t even know it! I was just so happy that my crappy library had this book when none of the stores near me were stocking it! It was one of the first books I added to my Debut Author Challenge list and I couldn’t get my hands on a copy. Imagine my surprise when I was looking through my library’s almost microscopic English sector and found this book. I was beyond thrilled.
I get the feeling this is a middle grade book based on the characters and their dialogue (Max himself is eleven up to the end of the book on his 12th birthday). I am not entirely sure how old Rose is. Maybe a year older than Max?
I thought this book was going to be more of a fantasy novel, not realizing it takes place in the future after the Great Destruction of 2o66 and now the world is ruled by the High Echelon and people are being forced to live in domed communities, all books have been destroyed, there is no television, no libraries and the only books allowed are either comic books about superheros who promote the domed communities or the textbooks issued by the Government.
I have to say this book gave me the shivers more than once. I am not good with this type of scenario, but I was able to keep my creeped out factor to a minimum as I was so enthralled in the building relationship between Max and Rose and their quest to find the Owl Keeper and escape the Echelon.
The little silver owl won my heart quickly as well. And she wasn’t even the main focus. I so totally want a little owl now.
This brilliant debut novel is a must-read. It might be a little too dark and creepy for 12 year olds, but I don’t know. Twelve-year olds are a different breed than I was at that age. Even now I had nightmares caused by this book when I wen to bed last night and it was still on my mind when I woke up so I picked up the book and finished it before breakfast! It’s a deep, intricate book that is not dumbed down for kids at all. I even found the dialogue fitting for 11 & 22 year olds who are trying to impress the other by what they know and what they can do. The voices were very real in my mind.
Rose sort of reminded me of Pipi Longstockings at times (in a good way) with her bold, bossy and exaggerating nature. I didn’t think I was going to like her much but she most certainly grew on me as the story unfolded. Max’s caretaker and his doctor scared me to death and I felt suffocated when they were around as if I would never get away from them.
The ending of the novel leads me to believe there may be a sequel in the future, although I don’t know if there will be. It is a rather open ending where you can come to your own conclusions about what happens next, or have a second book to tell you. I’m not sure which I’d rather. I do know that if there is a sequel, I’ll be picking it up right away!
July 13th, 2010, @ 9:39 pm  Dystopian | Young Adult  Sapphique
Catherine Fisher
This is the sequel to Incarceron. I bought it after I read the first book and then it sat on my cedar chest for months until this week when I felt like finding out what happened to Finn once he Escaped the prison. Yes, my reading and loving of Inside Out prompted me to pick up Sapphique.
What did I think of this book? Well, I’m not sure. I remember thinking that Incarceron took at least half of the book to really pick up and grab my attention and oddly, so did this one. I found the beginning of the story slow and not really all that interesting. Finn has to get used to life at court and people are trying to kill him and he’s trying to get his friends Out from the prison and it was all sort of dry. Also? I hate Claudia. She was irritating in book one but downright unlikable in this book. I wanted to smack her each time she opened her mouth. I had no sympathy or empathy for her in this book at all.
Same for Keiro, Finn’s “oath-brother”. Although I didn’t like him at all in the first book. Why people let him get away with the things he does is beyond me. He’s supposed to be a kid right? Well, a teen at least? I think the adults should be competent enough to deal with him once in a while.
I really enjoyed the second half of this novel. I couldn’t put it down at all, unlike the first half where I’d read a bunch of pages, stop, harvest some crops on FrontierVille on facebook, chat on twitter or spray my dogs with the hose. But the last 250 pages? I read them until my eyes hurt from lack of moisture. We had to go out (to renew my library card!) and I didn’t want to leave until the book was done. I needed to know what was going on in Incarceron! I needed to know if Finn was really Giles! I needed to know what Jared found out! (Also? Jared? I keep picturing him all old like Gandalf or Dumbledore, but apparently he wasn’t even close to 30 years old. My bad.)
I’m not entirely sure what happened at the end of this book. I reread a lot of it and am still a little confused. Something about Incarceron’s power also controlling the Outside. Nothing was real. So I have no idea what that was all about. If you read this and understood it – please email me! The whole Incarceron as a person as Rix as Jared as Sapphique? SO BLOODY LOST! I don’t think I was smart enough for this book at all. Yikes.
That being said – I LOVE Catherine Fisher’s writing style. I love it so much in fact that I bought other books by her from the Book Depository when I got this one. I am excited to read more by her and hope they aren’t nearly as smart as this book was. Heh.
Incarceron series
- Incarceron
- Sapphique
 Inside Out
by Maria V. Snyder
I’m Trella. I’m a scrub. A nobody. One of thousands who work the lower levels, keeping Inside clean for the Uppers. I’ve got one friend, do my job and try to avoid the Pop Cops. So what if I occasionally use the pipes to sneak around the Upper levels? The only neck at risk is my own…until I accidentally start a rebellion and become the go-to girl to lead a revolution. (goodreads.com)
Ok, first? WOW! Holy wow! Brilliantly fantastic book!
Second? A myriad of things that lead up to the review – I think my biggest regret from BEA (and yes, I still have to write my recap posts!) was that I was unable to get the Spy Glass ARC from the Harlequin Teen booth. Why didn’t I? As it was likely one of the books I desperately wanted the most? Well mostly because after waiting in line on the Wednesday to “meet” Maria V. Snyder, I was so unimpressed by the mob and lack of organization for their 4-author signings that the next day I wasn’t about to wait in that mess again and did something else on my schedule. Turns out the Thursday signing wasn’t nearly as messy as the day before and I missed out getting the one book I wanted most. Argh! But I did come away from that trip with a signed copy of this book, so it was all good.
My problem? I didn’t want to read this book. I have been so enchanted by Snyder’s other two fantasy trilogies that the thought of some sort of sci-fi, dystopian, NEW thing terrified me. I didn’t want to read it and hate it. I didn’t want to hate anything by Maria V. Snyder and I was scared that this would be the one thing I did hate. I am not a sci-fi fan. I didn’t know much about this book but the summary didn’t really catch me.
Then I read this post by Rhiannon over the weekend and it made me look twice at the signed book sitting on a table in my hallway. Not only do I think Rhiannon is awesome but I truly love her honest reviews of books and when I read that she had the same trepidation about starting the book as I did I certainly perked up.
So, since I have about 5 books going right now, all that have been put aside for the other and have been unable to really focus on a book in the last 2 weeks (I blame the extreme heat wave we’ve been having), I thought, why not try Inside Out and see what I thought?
People, I read this book in a day. It would have been just a span of a few hours had I not put it down a couple of times to go spray myself, my husband and the dogs with the hose and do other things around the house (did I mention the heat?) but I stayed up way past when my body told me I should be asleep to finish this book.
It was fantastic.
I loved Trella from the start. I loved the secondary characters, I loved Cog, I loved Logan and Anne-Jade, I loved Riley and Doctor Lamont. Most of all, I loved Sheepy.
The story reminded me of Incarceron, where people are living in a contained facility where it is all they know and there are rumors and myths about a place Outside this facility. The Upper and Lower classes were distinct and interesting to learn about and learn how ignorant of each other they really are. I want to know why these people are living in this facility, how did it come to that? What’s on the Outside. Who are the Controllers? And I think I’m going to have to wait for the second book to learn more about that! (March 2011 is so far away!)
One thing that Rhiannon commented on in her post was the blasé reaction that the Scrubs had to torture and “recycling” of human life. (Rather than go to jail, people are killed and sent to Chompers where they are chomped up and used as fertilizer. Ick.) Whereas I think the torture parts were slightly breezed over without reaction, I think I understand the lack of reaction to people being killed and executed. If you’ve grown up with this always being the way, the rules, it sort of desensitizes you to the horror we, the reader would feel about it if it happened to us. This is all the Scrubs know. It’s a way of life for them, my guess is as normal as if someone got sent to jail for being bad. Rather than jail, due to lack of space, they are just recycled. Yes it is harsh, but I get the feeling because they don’t know any other reaction to punishment it’s normal to them. They feared it, but were able to continue on with their lives with little grief because their situation doesn’t have time for it.
I don’t know if any of that made sense. I’ve been writing this post all day with a migraine and keep coming back to it. Oops. Forgive me.
Maria V. Snyder did not let me down with this novel. Not only that, there is a minimal focus on romance as I was concerned there would be being a Harlequin novel. I didn’t have much luck with the first one I read (see, The Iron King review). But this was subtle Maria V. Snyder romance mixed in with an enchanting cast of characters that you see grow and relationships form and because of that you form relationships with them as well. Something happened at the climax of the novel that shocked the heck out of me and I am still blinking rapidly because of it. I am still trying to believe that it actually happened and dealing with grief for a character. It took me by surprise it wasn’t anything that I was expecting or contemplating would be the climax. Well done. Mean, but well done!
I shall have my Spy Glass by the fall to complete the Glass trilogy and then have to wait until March 2011 for the sequel to this novel to come out. I can’t wait to see what Maria V. Snyder publishes next. She’s up there with Sarah Addison Allen I think with the creation of characters so likable you want them to be real and your friends forever.
Inside Out series
- Inside Out
- Outside In (March 2011)
January 7th, 2010, @ 2:27 pm Dystopian | Young Adult  Incarceron
by Catherine Fisher
It took me a while to read this book. Well, for me “a while” is more than a day. I started this book right after I completed Knife by R.J. Anderson on the last day of 2009, and yet it took me 5 days to complete it. I had to put it aside for a while as I found it difficult to get into.
I’m sad to say I found the start of the book very slow and uninteresting. I am not generally a fan of books that are told from two points of view – in this case Finn a young boy on the Inside and Claudia a young girl on the Outside of Incarceron. I think the main problem for me is that this book has much more of a Science-Fiction feel than fantasy and I am not a big Sci-Fi person. I tend to prefer sorcery and mythical beasts to technology and dystopia.
Actually, it also felt rather Victorian to me, though I know that is probably odd. Also not a fan of Victorian literature. Science-Fiction, Victorian literature? There’s a combination!
Around half-way through the book I got hooked. As the action and suspense built up I became much more interested in the lives of Finn and Claudia. By the end of the story I had already made up my mind that I would be placing my order for Sapphique, the sequel, over at The Book Depository soon.
As for the characters? I did like Claudia, even though I can not stand that name (no offence to people named Claudia!). She has a good head on her shoulders and was just stubborn enough that I enjoyed her rather than was annoyed by her. The cast of characters living in the prison? Well, I suppose I like Attia the most, a girl who joins the journey later on in the story. Finn bothered me. I’m not sure if it was that he seemed whiny or weak, I just didn’t like him all that much. Claudia was certainly the stronger of the two main characters.
Nothing in the story surprised me, not that I knew right from the first pages how it was going to end. I just didn’t find there were any big reveals in the story that I wasn’t expecting.
This review sounds much more negative than I actually felt about the book. I mean, I DO want to get the sequel, so I obviously did not hate the book. It just didn’t WOW me like the other books I have read so far this year have. Honestly, I think that was mainly due to the Sci-Fi feel to the book.
And yes, this is the UK edition of the book. I bought it a while back when I pre-ordered a bunch of other books. I like the look of the UK editions. I need to move to the UK I think.
Incarceron series
- Incarceron
- Sapphique
 The Stone Key: The Obernewtyn Chronicles 6
by Isobelle Carmody
I refuse to write this review. If I write this review it will mean I have finished reading all 6 of the available books in the Obernewtyn series and it will be over. OVER! And I just can’t have that. I have been so deeply immersed in the world of Obernewtyn that I don’t want to face the world we live in, or even, in another book.
The good news is that book blogger Rhiannon got to meet the author (along with Justine Larbalestier) at an event in Australia AND Isobelle Carmody said that the 7th book – The Sending - will be out in 2010. I am hoping for the early side of 2010 and that it also comes out in North America at the same time and we won’t have to wait until 2011! (This has happened to me before with Kate Forsyth’s Witches of Eileannan series. I didn’t want to wait TWO years for the final book to come out here so I had a friend pick it up for me in Australia and I paid for shipping. Heh. Keep this in mind, Rhiannon. *innocent look*)
But, back to the review I refuse to write…
[NOTE: So I got that far on Tuesday the 25th and was so exhausted I had to stop and now it's 5 days later and I'm going to try again.]
Elspeth has made it to the West Coast, the same West Coast that has been blocked off by the Council and Faction and Herders, etc. The Misfits who had been trapped there are living in the ruins where Dragon was discovered a few years ago. Dragon, who appears to be missing again, I guess because she’s dropped off the grid story-wise. Elspeth makes some stupid decisions once more and ends up on a Herder ship trying to sneak onto Herder Isle and the North land. Again she is alone and rescued at the last second by Misfits who just seem to show up.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t find the stories repetitive or anything, but I am slightly frustrated by Elspeth’s decisions that only SHE could do something and not ask for help. Ok, sure, so the prophecy she’s following dictates that she can’t tell anyone that she is The Seeker and she seems to have people tell her to go off on her own a lot, but I still don’t think she should be deciding that she shouldn’t discuss the options with others. Afterall, others are punished for making their own fool decisions as well. And inevitably she will be captured, possibly tortured and on the verge of death before someone miraculously appears to get her out of trouble. For someone who should be in her early 20s (?) by this point, I think she behaves rather immaturely.
And you know what I keep thinking through all of this? In one book there is a dog named Darga, who was always with Jik and Elspeth thinks the dog was also killed in the firestorms along with Jik, though she is told through dreams that he survived and would be back to aid her in her quest. And yet, I think 3 books have passed and there is still no Darga. And I don’t know WHY I am so keen on having this dog reappear, but I am. It’s one of the niggly parts of the story that has stayed with me.
I’m also looking forward to more Dragon discoveries and you know, possibly having her return to the story. It’s obvious she has a huge role to play for the end of the story.
I’ve got 2 more books to long for now and I hope I remember all that happened in the first 6 by the time they are published. They are heavy reads and I don’t think I would be able to reread them all again before reading the new ones!
The Obernewtyn Chronicles
- Obernewtyn
- The Farseekers
- Ashling
- The Keeping Place
- Wavesong
- The Stone Key
- The Sending - early 2010?? I hope!
- The Red Queen - NO CLUE!
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