Wool - Hugh Howey

Hello everyone!
I'm back! Please forgive my extended holiday. It was the end of the school year and well, it gets super busy in schools as we try to prepare for the new academic year!
But yes, I'm back - with a long overdue review!
________________________________

“We are not the people who made this world, Lukas, but it's up to us to survive it. You need to understand that.""We can't control where we are right now," he mumbled, "just what we do going forward.” Hugh Howey, Wool Omnibus 

Maybe you read this a few years back? Maybe. I only recently came across it and I am absolutely glad I did!

This is a post-apocalyptic thriller that takes place in a silo buried deep in to the earth. Stairs run through the silo connecting the hundred or so levels. 

The only contact the people of the silo have with the toxic outside world is through a camera. A camera peers outside at the bland scenery and the population are able to see out. Any questions regarding life in the silo can see the perpetrators sentenced to 'Cleaning'. Cleaning is a death sentence... the prisoner is strapped in to a suit and is sent out to the outside world to clean the camera lens. The strangest part of the cleaning process though, is how always, without fail, perpetrators always, ALWAYS go and clean the camera.

Inside the silo they have farms, livestock, mines, hospitals etc etc. It's a very organised machine where people know their place and rarely venture out of them.

The Audiobook
Susannah Harker was the narrator for this particular version of the audiobook. There's another one narrated by Minnie Goode too, she did the omnibus version. 

Harker was ace though, I was strangely surprised as I usually like a more passionate performance and she was very slow and steady. There have been times where I've not been able to listen to an audiobook because of that type of pacing but Harker owned her voice and I thought she was magnificent. Of course she was also aided by excellent writing, and a great production too!

The Story
Okay, I admit it, I have a soft-spot for post-apocalyptic and dystopian novels. I just do, and this was right up my street!

The pacing is brilliant, the writing is awesome and although it is an exploration of a very popular genre - I found it re-imagined, unique and wholly entertaining.

I usually try and discuss the story in a bit more detail here but I don't want to spoil it. You see, this story is a spider's web and I'm sure that if I give any little parts away and you decide to read it... well, it'll all click too quickly and you'll curse me for it.

All I can say is this, keep in your mind the very strange phenomena of the prisoners being sentenced to go outside but then always choosing to clean the camera lens (CREEPY), and also keep in mind that the silo has everything that anybody needs; Farms, livestock, water, air, coal etc etc.

I really, really enjoyed this book but I will not give away any more than that... I promise!

If you go on to read it, please please come back here and let me know what you think. Maybe you'll agree with me, or maybe you won't at all! Anywho, enjoy and let me know!

Read More

Oblivion [2013] = Sci-Fi for Chicks

Look, I'm just going to say it. Oblivion was sci-fi for chicks. 

The story goes like this:
It is 2077 and Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) is a drone repair man. He and his wifey are living at the top of a wicked-cool house above the clouds of earth. Earth, as we know it, has been destroyed after a war against an alien race. Circling the earth is a mahoosive space station apparently harbouring the survivors from earth. The human race is collecting water from our planet, ready to take it to one of the moons of Jupiter. Humans are going to start again.
Massive constructs are sucking up the water from the oceans and the drones protect them. Some aliens have apparently been left behind on earth and keep trying to sabotage the collection of the water. The drones are routinely attacked too, and so Harper must wake up every morning to go find missing drones, fix them up and send them on their merry way.

I have to admit. It's a pretty original premise! I was impressed!

To cut a long story short though, things start to go wrong and those aliens turn out to be humans and well, it's all just a mahoosive conspiracy and well - y'know, you'll find out. I don't want to give it all away.Apparently this film cost around $120 million. $120 MILLION FOLKS! The CGI at times was truly quite wonderful. The movie is full of beautiful mountain scenery, gorgeous canyons, deserts, clouds etc etc. It's a feast for the eyes; but it seems that the director/producers thought that excellent special-effects were going to have us completely oblivious to the holes in the story.

This film is full of plot-holes. When I say full... I mean spilling over with them. It's just shocking. I love good sci-fi, I do. I don't need to understand everything; but come on, the plot-holes were CATASTROPHIC. So glaringly obvious that it started to look like the story-line was rushed.

Credit where credit is due, Tom Cruise was actually pretty amazing. I know, I can't believe I'm saying this too, but it was an excellent performance. If you imagine, 50% of the movie is Cruise alone on screen, I think he carried the movie very gracefully and was believable. Of course it's full of fighting, so for anybody who just likes to see examples of his 'prowess' you'll certainly get your fill in this film.

This movie have all the regular sci-fi movie tropes; aliens, advanced-technologies, action, suspense, clones, conspiracy, action, space-travel, explosions and romance... 
...hold up. Did I say romance? 

And this brings me to why this movie is sci-fi for chicks.
The whole movie... we find out, all rests on a romance story. Yah, and some random love-triangle which lacked believability. It wasn't even believable romance. It was something else. Contrived. Forced. This movie could have been a beautiful homage to hardcore sci-fi fans but instead they decided to stick their middle finger up at true men and women of sci-fi and instead cater for chicks who were going to be dragged to watch the movie by their husbands/boyfriends. It just didn't make sense.

The Matrix, for instance, had a romance-plot, but it wasn't IMPERATIVE to the story, and they certainly didn't seem to decide a third in to the storyline that actually it is memories of lost love that will save the whole human race. The Matrix has a sci-fi romance-plot done right. 

Bah. Disappointing.
This could have been awesome; but it wasn't.

Read More

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell [Book Review]

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” 
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Spent the fortnight gone in the music room reworking my year's fragments into a 'sextet for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor; in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late.” 
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

If you're looking for a complex read... read this. 

This novel is split up in to six narratives about novella length. The novellas are then neatly sat within the next narrative. It's kind of like you took six books, you take the first book and slot a second book in to the first, you then take a third book and slot it in to the centre of the second, you then take a fourth etc etc (remember when you used to do that when you were supposed to be reading something and you hid a comic book inside and read that instead? Yeah, it's just like that) and so because that is the make-up of the narrative each story is interrupted by the next. 

Yes. Even my description is complex!

So, the first half of the first novella takes place in the 18th Century. We are introduced to a hypochondriac lawyer, Adam Ewing, who is befriended by a doctor who collects and sells teeth. 

The second novella sees us introduced to a young aspiring composer named Frobisher. Frobisher sends a series of letters to his lover in Cambridge, both mentioning the diary he is reading, but also how he is working for one of the greatest living composers in Europe. 

In the future, Luisa Ray comes across those letters and hunts down a rare piece of music by Frobisher and they inspire her to make sacrifices to become an amazing journalist. We are interrupted by Timothy Cavendish and eccentric publisher, and realise that Luisa Ray's narrative is a book he's been sent for perusal. 

Cavendish is victim to a series of very, very unfortunate events and his life is being watched as a movie by a clone, in the distant future called Sonmi-451 who is the unknowing leader of a revolution. 

The next narrative is from a post-apocalyptic future, Zachary a goat-herder and his tribe worship Sonmi as a goddess. A woman from the Prescients has come to study the way his tribe live. 

What do all these characters have in common? The key character in all of the narratives have a shooting-star shaped birthmark somewhere on their body.

The Audiobook
I bought this book from Audible (as usual) and I was very happy to see that they had recruited six different narrators for this awesome job. I think it was necessary so that the book felt as broken up as it should have. Sonmi-451's voice was simply brilliant. She had that robotic quality that we would imagine! Also, Timothy Cavendish's narrator sounded... I kid you not... just like Jim Broadbent (who played Cavendish in the movie); It was genius. The production was excellent! 

The Story
Although the book is complex, it is so very elegant. The book won't be for everybody, I admit, but it is so beautifully crafted I really did feel in awe. Mitchell knew exactly what he wanted to achieve with this book. He did not become lost. Although all the stories are connected and lay over and interrupt each other, he is master of all the characters and does not allow them to run away with him. 

Timothy Cavendish's story is a hilarious one, which I enjoyed so very much. Nearly all the novels are super heavy and so Mitchell offered comic relief to allow the reader to giggle. It was one of my favourites, but my real favourite was Sonmi-451's narrative. It was beautiful. Slightly disconnected but also feeling. 

The most amazing part, I found, about the whole book was how Mitchell managed to forge the English language to suit each time. Of course, the 18th Century Ewing would write in a way that we would expect from the 18th Century. Timothy Cavendish is in present day London and so his language reflects this. Luisa Ray's story takes place in the 70s and so the colloquialism is reflective. But then Mitchell does something extraordinary, he fashions whole new dialects for the narrators in the future. It is incredible. Sonmi-451's language is brilliant. Instead of using words such as 'TV/Television' she calls them 'Sony's'... because it is a super commercialised world she lives in, things are known by their brand names rather than their actual names (kinda like in the UK where a vacuum cleaner is called a 'Hoover'). When we fast forward even further in the future to Zachary's narrative, it takes a little time to get used to the dialect, well, it's just amazing. I'm sure you can tell that I was just so, so impressed.

The only issue I have with this book is that it was difficult to stay interested! For instance, I loathed Adam Ewing, I found his narrative painfully boring! But because it is pretty impossible to even skip a few minutes/pages of this book for fear of missing something crucial I had to painfully listen through it. 

I tried not to extract meaning from the books as much as others have. There is much discussion of the idea that the stories are just repetitions of each other from different time periods including the same soul, but y'know what... I didn't get that. I felt that they were connected because their lives effected both the future and the past, but I left it at that. When I re-read it I will try and decipher it all!

Is the book a good one? Well, it's an amazingly crafted book. The language is amazing, the writing sensitive and in command. The characters are varied and brilliant. But as a story does it work well? I'm not sure... it would all depend on the person I believe. I've seen this book get rated 5/5 but also receive a mere 1/5. This book has the potential to frustrate some, whilst mesmerising others.

If you have a short attention span, or no real love for language or literary craftsmanship I would avoid the book. It'll make you angry! If though, you can be patient, enjoy beautiful writing, and can admire the time, love and dedication an author has put in to his work then I promise this book will definitely enlighten and awe you. 

The movie was released in 2012. I will be offering up a review of it too, BUT I must watch it again before I can! 

Read More

Warm Bodies - A Review

This movie was on my Upcoming Movies that Have Tickled my Fancy post. I had written... and I quote 

"I'm terrified that this movie is going to be some sort of crazy Twilight type of thing - but I'm hoping it will definitely be on par with Zombieland (which I enjoyed immensely). The premise is simple. The world is now full of, and run by zombies, there are few people who are actually alive. Strangely, a zombie and a real-life girl, fall in love and put in to motion a series of events that may just save humanity!"

and I was right... painfully so. It really is some strange rendition of Twilight. I find it quite bizarre that we're watching so many movies these days, that when we get down to it, are about necrophilia. 

So anyway, Warm Bodies. It's Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet gone wrong. R (he can't remember his real name) is a zombie who seems to be a little different. He has an internal monologue that is witty and hopeless but he is unable to express himself verbally and even finds it hard to do it physically. He's living in a world of zombies, but there are pockets of survivors around who are delicious and sometimes come out of hiding for food, medicine etc etc. Julie (the daughter of the president/leader of a group of survivors) ventures out with a group to find medicine. Unfortunately her boyfriend is eaten by R, and R falls in love with Julie through the memories he acquires from eating her boyfriend's brain. Love starts to change him and eventually it begins to touch the other zombies too. Suddenly a revolution has started that will change the future of the earth.

I found this movie a little uneven, and sometimes even a mess. There were some parts that were funny, and I did giggle, but ultimately it was slow, the CGI was... bleurgh, and unfortunately it really did border on boring a few times. The audience in the theatre seemed to really enjoy it. They laughed at all the right places (of course as we were coming out I realised that we were in a theatre with a bunch of teens).

Unfortunately the zombies just did not do it for me. In the movie there are zombies and there are  'bonies'. Bonies are what zombies turn in to when they give up... they kind of just rip their faces off and just become a bunch of skeletons who walk around eating everyone. It was all a little... confused. Y'see, at the beginning of the film we are told that zombies are slow, and take a long time to get anywhere, but then, if there is brain about they're suddenly sprinting and are super-beings. The bonies, they're fast too. Well, I don't know, the concept of the zombie had rules that they didn't follow and so as an audience member I didn't find them credible.

Although I had my reservations going to see the movie (originally we had been going to go watch Django Unchained again), it was interesting to see how this film kind of pandered to the necrophiliac swoonings of present YA books and culture. It seemed to be a movie created to cash-in on this buzz but at the same time try to be clever and Indie-ish. Unfortunately it failed. A sell-out is always going to be a sell-out no matter how you dress it up.

Nicholas Hoult seems to do as best as he can playing a corpse with little to no dialogue (although we do have the internal monologue playing over key scenes), but there are times that even he forgot what it was he was doing (maybe he was bored too). It's my opinion that Teresa Palmer is the star of the show, and that she really showed a brilliant range of emotion and carried the dialogue well. It's not her fault that the story didn't really make much sense. 

The soundtrack was actually one of its most redeeming features and that is something worth listening to again I think, for all of you guys who are inclined that way.

So my conclusion? Well, the best way to describe how I feel is disappointment. This really could have been awesome, but it wasn't. They even had a Shakespearean balcony scene which was an awesome nod in the right direction but otherwise it just didn't deliver. The action scenes sucked, and there just was not enough gore for a zombie movie. Strangely, although it was a love story - it was kind of uncomfortable and was far from believable  It is being commended as being something new - but really, truly, I did not find anything new in it at all. Sad, but true.

You may completely hate my review, maybe I'm being a little harsh? I don't know - but let me know what you think! Did you dislike it too? Did you LOVE it? If you did, I wanna hear why!

The trailer is below for those of you who are scratching your head wondering what movie I'm talking about!

Read More

World War Z - Max Brooks

“The only rule that ever made sense to me I learned from a history, not an economics, professor at Wharton. "Fear," he used to say, "fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe." That blew me away. "Turn on the TV," he'd say. "What are you seeing? People selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their products." Fuckin' A, was he right. Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure. Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells.” Max Brooks, World War Z

I had been quite excited to read this book. I started it before I left on holiday and is quite a quick read. 

The book is quite literally what it sells itself to be 'An Oral History of the Zombie War'. 

The text begins after the war, and what you're reading is a bunch of interviews by Max Brooks - interviewing ex-military, doctors, crazy dictators, scientists etc etc. This is the type of book, I imagine, that in 2000 years it'll be found, and our descendants will believe that we lived through a Zombie apocalypse and survived. The interviews are chronological, the first interview given by a doctor in China who was one of the first people to diagnose the problem. 

So was this book any good? Well, it was interesting, very interesting in fact. It seems that the author certainly did his homework. He looked at the world as it is now, politically, economically spiritually and I believe pretty much described what we could realistically expect if a plague such as the one described really did spread. So, if anything, it is a fictional commentary of countries and how they responded, as well as the people involved.

Unfortunately, as it is a bunch of interviews and I knew that mankind survived, there was no real drama. There wasn't a particular group of characters that I couldn't bare to see die. I didn't feel suspense, or anxiety over their well being. I knew they survived because they were being interviewed after the fact - if you catch my drift. The writing and many voices were excellently executed and to ignore that would be unfair. Although I read for the drama of it, I also read to meet characters that I care about. Unfortunately this was an impossibility with this book. 

The book read like non-fiction, so much so that when I finished reading I really did think - hmmm... well, I've definitely learnt something new; and then I had to remind myself that this is just a prediction of how the world and its peoples would respond to a calamity such as this one. And yes, it's a prediction, but as far as I am aware, I really do think that Mr. Brooks got it SPOT ON. Maybe I seem that I do not have much faith in the human condition - but that's not it. I'm a realist, and I think, looking at the world around us now - most of us would really be able to predict how things would unravel.

Anywho - I recommend you read it if you want to read something interesting. Don't read it for a plot line, or to love characters, or for drama, or horror, or for thrills... or well, anything like that! Read it because you like history and you're interested in psychology - and only slightly interested in zombies - as they don't really feature much!

Oh - and apparently the movie will be coming out in June 2013!

Read More

Pandora - Maggie Waters

Like the Hunger Games? Then you'll like this!

Whilst trying to decide whether I would be dedicated enough to the Kindle if I bought one, I recently downloaded the Kindle App on to our iPad. I then decided to have a peek for free Kindle books, and subsequently downloaded them.

Deadlocked was one of those books, and Pandora (part 1) was another. You've seen my review of Deadlocked, and here is what I think of Pandora.

Well, Waters certainly knows how to grab the attention of an audience, even skeptical ones like little old me. We're introduced, quite suddenly, to the fainted Hope as she comes around after one of her spells that she's suffered from for most of her life. 

We're quickly introduced to a type of Orwellian, Hunger Games-y type city that spends a few months of every year battling a new plague. The plagues all have obvious names such as 'The Strangling' (any guess what that does?) or 'The Paralysing' (you may find this one tough) or even 'The Bleeding'. 

Hope lost her father to 'The Paralysing' and now her and her best friend Jake are trying to discover the secret to the plagues and whether they are government made... trying to target the suburbs and kill off poor people. After given information through a type of flash-drive, a photograph of Hope as a sixteen year old flashes up, with the name Pandora written across her face... there is no more information, but Hope starts behaving like she knows something and well - she faints before Jake can get any details from her. We are left, puzzled, and curious with Hope waking up in hospital, and Flex fighting for his life after having been pushed down a flight of stairs.

So yes, it has most certainly made me very curious. It's an interesting start and a great and very short read. It kept me interested, and intrigued, although I feel that at times it tried too hard to be mysterious and cryptic, but other than that - it was pretty good.
Hope seems like an interesting individual, whilst Jake, rather than being this stereotypical strong-man type seems to be a weaker character than her. 

I'm a fan of the post-apoc genre, and whether this book is meaning to to, I don't know, but  post-apoc conventions seem to be running through it. Well if I'm honest, other than the lack of televised tournaments that involve teenagers killing each other, Pandora smells quite like The Hunger Games.

The interesting thing about Waters is that from what I've seen and from the research I've done, she's basically writing a TV series in book form. Small books that pick up and stop in dramatic places to keep audiences riveted. Not as heavy as intricate novels, but short clips - I honestly felt like I was watching the first episode of a TV show. The Pandora Chronicles is a forerunner in how books will probably be in near future... mini-digestible stories, published every few months, quite like they used to be back in the olden days (where authors would publish to a magazine or journal and then you put their short stories together and voila, you have a novel!) 

I'll most certainly be going back for the rest of the series methinks. I just have to know what Pandora and her box has to do with a white-haired girl named Hope living in the not-so-distant future (around 2037 I believe). 

Read More