Insanity by Lauren Hammond

Title: Insanity

Author: Lauren Hammond

Book #: 1st of Trilogy


Publisher: S.B. Addison Books

Publish Date: May 8th 2012

Pages: 190

Format: Kindle Edition


Date Read (Throwback): November 7th 2012

Rating: ★★★★★  / out of 5

Life is pain. Life is chaos. It's never easy. Always a struggle.

Summary: 

Adelaide Carmichael and Damien Allen couldn't be more opposite.

Adelaide is broken down from her mother's abandonment and her father's constant abuse. Damien has a wealthy family and a bright future to look forward to. Despite what everyone says, the two fall deeply in love and plan to runaway together, living against society's rules. 

That is.. until Addie wakes up in an insane asylum with no memory as to how she got there. All she knows is that she wants out.

As she pieces together what took place, she comes to the conclusion that things aren't always what they seem and sometimes true love really never dies.

Review:

My brain is swarming with thoughts, my body pumping with energy, my fingers itching to write this review.. and I don't even know where to begin! I don't even believe that a "wow", or a "holy crapola" will explain my feelings for this book and give it the justice it so fairly deserves. 

I guess I should start with the first thing everyone sees when they look at a book: The cover.

This book should win a "Cover of the Year" award. I mean, seriously! This is the most beautifully breathtaking cover I have ever seen. Ever. It is so simple, yet at the same time a millions words could be said about it. The way the wind is blowing and covering her face makes you ask "Who is that girl? What does her face look like?" And the white dress she wears, how white symbolizes pureness. Is it irony or symbolism? And then the field of wheat she is standing in. We know from reading the book that she grew up someplace near a field of tall grass, but from the perspective of someone who has not read it yet, the field could represent being stranded or isolated, or in this case the time period and social class of the main character, as well.

__________

Powerful

If I had to describe this book in one word, that would be it. 

The talent this author has to be able to construct such a book is beyond me! If only this were a paperback book. This would be something worth getting signed by the author, herself. 

A few chapters into the book, and I felt myself fully tuning into Adelaide's emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. There were times when I wished that I could only start screaming and kicking like she was, when they started to hold her down and restrain her. And, not only did I feel for her when she was going through the things she did in the Asylum during the "After", my heart also broke for what she went through in her home during the "Before". 

__________

Her Father's drinking, her Mother's disappearance (view spoiler), and being beaten by her "Daddy". These were very strong emotions that the author brought into the novel, creating a sense that Addy was truly lost, hopeless, and broken. 

Then Damien comes along. At first, I was upset about their relationship. I wish the book was a bit longer, and that it went into more detail about how they fell in love. That is always my favorite part about romance novels. When you see the characters spending more time together, and when you hear the "click" go off in their minds when they realize they love each-other. That was sadly missing from this book. However, we do know that what ever happened in the beginning, they are deeply in love.

As the story goes by, I find myself in a trance. I desperately want to know how she got in the asylum, and is there is really a way out. 

Overall: Speechless!

Quotes:

"There was a brief moments, days after his death that I thought I might be okay. That I might be able to always remember our love, but be able to move on."

Note:
I did notice two small grammatical errors, throughout the book. I also kept wondering why there where awkward breaks in between conversations in the text.


On My Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/439541253

Fire by Terra Harmony

Title: Fire

Author: Terra Harmony

Book #: 2nd of Series


Publisher: Createspace

Publish Date: October 15th 2012

Pages: 366

Format: Paperback


Date Read (Throwback): November 4th 2012

Rating: ★★★★★  / out of 5



Summary:

The Seven has another leader, Kaitlyn is a new mother, and everyone is busy building their armies. During one battle, the secret to Akasha is discovered, and the race to master it is on. With all eyes on the prize, what matters most gets left behind. It is up to Kaitlyn to preserve the planet in the wake of the pure destructive power of Akasha, and the humans who wield it.
(Synopsis taken from GoodReads)

Review:

This book is yet another reason for me to declare my love for this series, and for the author who wrote it. 

This book kicks off right where the second one ended, and we finally meet the little baby! Her name, of course, is Bee. At first, I was as skeptical as Micah and Shawn were when they first heard the name. I kept assuming that it was just temporary and that she would eventually give her an actual name, but that just wasn't the case. And, honestly, I kinda grew into liking it. I mean, it is cute and adorable; just like she is!

This book, again like the others, gives us a deeper look into the lives of "super-powered-tree-huggers" in the most fascinating and complimentary way possible. It really made me think about all the things that we do that are destroying the Earth; things that we do on a daily basis without even giving it a second though. Like, for example, turning on the lights and using power.

I love this entire series. 

The main character and I share names, which of course is totally and extremely awesome!

Overall, I love reading super-hero like stories, and when their powers are based on the elements I always find it even more interesting. The covers are so simple yet beautiful! The characters are all witty and enjoyable. (As much as I detest Shawn, he does have his "OK, that was pretty funny" moments)


On My Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/406044128

Thoughts on Thursdays: Perfect Ruin by Lauren DeStefano

Title: Perfect Ruin

Author: Lauren DeStefano

Book #: 1st of Trilogy


Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Publish Date: October 1st 2013

Pages: 356

Format: Hardcover


Date Read: November 15th 2013

Rating: ★★★★  / out of 5

Below us, is the ground just a larger version of what we have up here? Is there a bigger train that goes in a bigger circle? Do the people on the ground also fear stepping over their edge? What if there's a bigger ground below them? What if everything is floating in the sky?

Summary:

On Internment, the floating island in the clouds where 16-year-old Morgan Stockhour lives, getting too close to the edge can lead to madness. Even though Morgan's older brother, Lex, was a Jumper, Morgan vows never to end up like him. She tries her best not to mind that her life is orderly and boring, and if she ever wonders about the ground, and why it is forbidden, she takes solace in best friend Pen and her betrothed, Basil.

Then a murder, the first in a generation, rocks the city. With whispers swirling and fear on the wind, Morgan can no longer stop herself from investigating. Secrets lay at the heart of Internment, but nothing can prepare Morgan for what she will find — or who she will lose.
(Synopsis taken from Goodreads)

Thoughts:

I honestly just have no words. The amount of progress this author made from her first series to this second, new one is unbelievable  Here, DeStefano has completely rewritten herself as potentially one of my all time favorite authors.

__________

Since my thoughts are mostly going to be positive, I'm going to dish out the bad news, first: There are still plot holes.

The main problem I had with the Wither was that it contained a major plot hole, one that really disagreed with the entire story itself. I applaud DeStefano now, though, for while there are still plot holes in Perfect Ruin, they are minor and don't really cause too much conflict. 

Mostly, the plot holes are small things like, for example: The people of Internment studying the life on the ground to advance their technologies, including their knowledge of how to set wires underground and using indoor plumbing, yet they are not allowed to create a scope advanced enough to see people on the ground.

The Characters:

Morgan was a pretty decent protagonist, and when I say that I mean she is likeable. I wouldn't say that she is rolemodel like, because she wasn't very tough, or strong, or sure of herself. She was flawed, and she was a dreamer. She is not satisfied with now knowing, and questions her life and the life of people on the ground.

"Even if we do make it to the ground," I say, "who's to say it's any better? What if there's another king no less corrupt than ours? Or what if the ground is just another city floating of an even bigger one, and so on?"

"Then at least we'll be the wiser," she says. "I'd rather be disappointed than oblivious."

I think that's why I liked her, though. Her voice really added unique sound to the writing style. Her persistence to know these things, though, is what eventually causes life as she knows it to crumble. But I like that she didn't know. There are so many things that she is unaware of, and us too, for the most part, and as she learns them, we do, as well.

Then, of course, we have Pen, the best friend, and Basil, the love interest. Both, I felt, were great characters. Basil and caring and supportive, and so if Pen, but she is also strongly rooted in her believes that Internment is enough. As we get through the book, we learn about the personal demons that each of these characters are fighting, and it helped me to really see them as people, and not just being "there." We see how deep their relationships lie, and I know I will be devastated if anything happens to them in the books to come.

Now, Morgan's family is quite similar. Again, we have these relationships among characters that just feel so palpable and real. We don't really see too much of her father and mother, but what we hear about them through glimpses into her past, and through words shared between her and her brother, their love for their children is not nonexistent. What we mostly see are the ties that bind Morgan to her bother, Lex, and her sister in law, Alice. These three are always there looking after each other and we see some very tender moments occur between them.

The other, less focused on characters, including the rebels and the villains were, again I thought, well developed. We see, at first, how things appear to be a certain way and then how they are actually not how they seem at all. Especially after the conclusion of the book, I am looking forward to seeing how our current group of characters will react to their current circumstance.

The Story:

I think this is what got me the most. Despite those little plot holes, I found the story to be absolutely intriguing. And the world building is beautiful and fantastic. What I enjoy most, though, beyond the superbly realistic feeling added to the story that make life on this rock a fantasy yet also completely believable, is the fact that we still don't know how and why Internment came to be.

Yes, as I have seen other's point out, it gets a little sloppy towards the second half, but I also found that at that point I was flying through the book even faster than I was before. There is never really a point where it is made definite that the characters are going to find a way to leave Internment, but the idea of it is also not abolished. Through those last chapters, I found myself wondering, at which point will the book end? Will they make it off? Will they be caught just before? I think the author did a great job with her ending, though I could kill because of that cliff-hanger!

The Writing Style:

I normally don't talk specifically just about the writing in a book. Normally, I will briefly mention either how much I either enjoyed it or how much I did not. But, in the case of this book, I really just want to dedicate a bit more of my time to really appreciate the beauty in the words of this book.

There was one phrase that I was not to fond of: 

Her burden of eyelashes (page 105)

I don't know why, but this just didn't agree with me. Looking beyond that one line, though, we get passages like this:

The evening sun catches every bold and scrap of metal on the train, and for an instance we are suspended in an atmosphere of stars.

The lake is serene.
It cases a flawless reflection of the stars, as though it isn't a lake at all, but a hole in the city itself.

Who decides what is good and what is bad? Who decides what is saved and what is lost from our souls?

In my fully honestly opinion, the writing in this book just as good as the writing I admire in the books in The Raven Cycle and the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series.

Overall, I am immensely satisfied with this first book in what seems to be a very promising new series. 

Quotes:

I stare at the edge of my desk and imagine it's the end of my little world.

I could imagine such great and impossible things there. Things I didn't have words for. 
The madness of youth made me unafraid.

I close my eyes, trying to pretend that I'm blind, trying to understand what it means to be in this world without seeing any of it, now knowing where anyone is, if they're safe.

The only one who could quell this restlessness was Alice, always Alice, who swears she was born already in love with him.

We're both trying to quiet out laughter so as not to disrupt the solemn mood of the train.
"Is this what passes for romance between you two?" Pen says.
"Yes," I say. "And we like it this way, don't we, Basil?"
"Quite," he says.

Every star has been set in the sky. We mistakenly think they were put there for us.

"But those are intangible," Basil says. "Spiritual. What I mean is, what if there's more land up there? What if there are people living on the stars?"

I don't know why this makes me feel at peace. Like everything is connected in some way, that humans are just that, whether they're on the ground or in the sky, and that we all belong to the same greater something.

Sometimes Pen destroys her art, and when I see the crumpled pages enter the recycling tube, I feel that a piece of her is gone forever.

"Nothing is infinite," Pen says.

"How do you know something that doesn't exist to be known?"

"Forget who are you are and what you think is there, and you'll discover things that don't exist to be known."

She is everything I've grown up waiting to be, and as the sunset steals through the curtains, it sets her hair ablaze with auburns and golds. She's unbreakable.

I lean against her and she wraps her arms around me. "Oh, Morgan," she sighs. "What's to be done?"
We've always been alike, Alice and I. We're fixers and messengers and helpers, and when things are greater than we can manage, we can't rest until all is right again.

Plenty of rules are laid out for us in our history book. They were discovered by first being broken.

She loves my brother entirely, even the parts of him he'd like to forget.

"I'll be a mapmaker by then," she says, "penning maps by candlelight until all hours. Maybe I'll turn irrational. But not the bumbling, stupid irrational. The quiet sort, whispering things to glass jars as through they'll hold my secrets. No one will ever know."

But I've learned not to take stock in what people say.

I've seen no proof, only words, but words can be powerful. Words can be what puts a boy to death.

He knows that I'm not like other girls- the normal ones- that part of me is slipping off this floating city, and he doesn't care. He doesn't care.
Maybe we're both beyond saving.

Love should be a staple in our history book. Wasn't it an act of love when the god of the sky chose to keep us? Isn't love what makes living bearable, and unbearable?

"But we aren't ghosts," he says.
"No," I say. "Not for a log time."
"Sixty years," he says.
"A thousand," I counter, and tug him by the collar until he's kissing me, and everything we believe is true, and everything in the world is ours.

"We didn't make ourselves," she says. "We aren't the greatest things to exist. I can't believe that. I won't believe that. We have too many faults."

Death is the end of some things. Not everything.

I think of the white, frozen dust that falls from the clouds and covers the ground. How green and new the world must be when the sun melts it all away.

We accept gods that don't speak to us. We accept gods that place us in a world filled with injustices and do nothing as we struggle. It's easier than accepting that there's nothing out there at all, and that, in our darkest moments, we are truly alone.

Please, he's said.
"Please," he says now.
I'm a little girl in the trees. I can't find the footholds to return down to him. I can't go back to that day and undo it.
I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt you. I'm sorry.

They'll find pieces of a girl who followed the rules.
That girl is now gone.

I love you. 
Is this what love means? That the rules aren't the reason you stay together?

There's a bright moon tonight, split to pieces by branches. It's an organ with veins and arteries. A non-beating heart. If there's a god at all, he's dead in his sky.

He won't ever stop searching for her, even if they tell him she's dead. But that search will be fruitless, and Pen knows it. When she thinks I'm not watching, her lips move.
"I'm sorry," is what they say.

"But we must be brave, remember?"

Free will isn't quite the same as freedom.

We are taught that curiosity is a thing to be feared. But our first trains came from curious minds. As did medicine, and clocks, and first kisses.

Her hair is full of icy wind and daylight. She is every princess, every queen, in the history book. In this instant, I don't see a bratty princess, but rather I see greatness in her.

She doesn't bother with the ladder. She turns to face the strange world beyond the door, and she jumps.

Discussion Questions:

1. What do you make of the religious aspect of the book? Are you on the side that believes there will be spiritual powers at work to keep Internment in the sky, or do you think there must be a science behind it?

2. Do you for-see a love triangle coming on between Basil, Judas and Morgan?



On My Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/703697322

Waiting on Wednesday: Lockstep by Karl Schroeder

"Waiting on" Wednesday

"Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly event that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating." (Hosted by Jill @ Breaking the Spine)

November 13th

Lockstep by Karl Schroeder

When seventeen-year-old Toby McGonigal finds himself lost in space, separated from his family, he expects his next drift into cold sleep to be his last. After all, the planet he's orbiting is frozen and sunless, and the cities are dead. But when Toby wakes again, he's surprised to discover a thriving planet, a strange and prosperous galaxy, and something stranger still--that he's been asleep for 14,000 years. 

Expected Publication: March 25th 2014

__________________________________________________

I love science fiction, space travel, and anything that has to do with life on other planets and in other galaxies. That being said... this book is right up my alley and I am very excited for it! I love the cover, too. It's very "Deadspace" and I hope the book inside it just as good.

Top Ten Tuesday: Covers I Wish I Could Redesign

Top Ten Tuesday

(Hosted by Broke and Bookish)

November 12th

Top Ten Covers I Wish I Could Redesign

1. Into the Still Blue by Veronica Rossi

2. Entangled by Amy Rose Capetta

3. Return to Paradise by Simone Elkeles

4. Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray

5. Shade/Shift/Shine by Jeri Smith-Ready

6. Sever by Lauren DeStefano

7. Delirium by Lauren Oliver

8. Sunrise by Mike Mullin

9. Enders by Lissa Price

10. After Eden by Helen Douglas

Thoughts on Thursdays: Allegiant by Veronica Roth

Thoughts to come!

Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 15 by Hiromu Arakawa

Title: Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 15

Author: Hiromu Arakawa

Book #: 15th of Series


Publisher: VIZ Media LLC

Publish Date: December 18th 2007

Pages: 183

Format: Paperback


Date Read: November 5th 2013

Rating: ★★★★★  / out of 5

How could we have fallen this low?

Summary:

The horrors of the Ishbalan campaign occurred years before Ed became a state alchemist, and has serious repercussions, which set the tone for the complicated dealings of present-day state politics. Lieutenant Hawkeye reluctantly tells Ed all the dread details of the role Colonel Mustang and the other state alchemists played in this tragic event.
(Synopsis taken from Goodreads)

Review:

We finally learn everything about what happened in Ishbal, but while this answers some questions, it also brings up new ones. 

Who is the Red Locust Alchemist?

Quotes:

Riza: "No matter how difficult things get, no matter how foolish you look struggling under the weight of your burdens, you have to keep living for the people you love."

"All tiny parts come together to form the great flow that makes up the world. So if negative feelings pervade our world, the flow of the rest of the world will become negative."

Why is alchemy being used to kill when it's supposed to help people?

Riza: "Can I truly believe that there will be a future in which everyone can live happily?"

It's the hand of man, not God, that we have to be wary of.

Mustang: "Then for future generations to be happy, as payment, we must carry corpses on our backs across a river of blood."


On My Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/757546440