Book Review: When We Wake

Took me a bit longer than I would have liked to get to this book, considering how big a fan I am of Healey's other works, but I got to it within the year which is an improvement for me! That said I was a little nervous about it, it's a completely different genre from her other books and my track record with YA science fiction is surprisingly spotty (occasionally I find books I've already read in the library and can't help but shudder and move on) but thankfully this was one of the better books.

When We Wake by Karen Healey

Summary: In the near future Tegan was an average Australian teen with family and friends she loved. And then she wakes up, horrified to find out that she was killed in a botched assassination attempt and, thanks to the forms she had signed donating her body to science, has now become the first person to be successfully woken up after 100 years of being frozen. And the world has changed in a lot of ways in 100 years but one thing that hasn't is that games of politics are still played and it seems like everyone wants Tegan on their side for less than savory reasons.

The Good: THIS is why I say that dystopias are an easy, lazy way of setting up a plot most of the time, while Tegan's new world can't precisely be called a dystopia (it doesn't have the all controlling government aspect) it is an even more deeply flawed and twisted world which makes it all the more realistic. So yes I am celebrating that this is a horribly depressing book, often when I read I think "so what point in this story would I want to live in, the beginning, middle, or end?" and here I wouldn't want to live in either of Tegan's presents, especially because of how horrifyingly real some of the things talked about (rising temperatures, first world countries dumping their pollution and garbage on third world countries and then blaming them for not having the resources to deal with it, etc). Moving on from that, I was happy to see that Tegan manages to have a best friend in here who is a girl and their not fighting over a romantic interest (I'm sad how rarely this seems to happen in fiction these days) and that ended up being my favorite relationship of the story (second to Tegan's relationship with the scientist who revived her). And that also sums up the world she woke up in, while it might be crap the social issues that plague us today have gone a long way towards being resolved and she sees this as the one bright hope in this brave new world of hers.

The Bad: While the ending is a bit ambiguous I was alright with that but I've now heard that Healey is working on a companion novel which retells the story from the point of view of one of the other main characters and I'm suspicious of it. Will this add anything new to the story or continue on past where this one ended? Which would indicate something was missing in the first place and, well, I rather like the ambiguous ending so I'm a bit worried at how this book plans to end. Strictly speaking this isn't a problem with WWW but I've known a few series, mostly anime, where a sequel has completely messed up the ending of the previous installment so I'm twice burned extra shy now. Other than that, some groups did come off as rather flat and it's a bit hard to believe that there seems to be so little activism/people weren't able to prevent what happened to the world (since there truly is some amazing technology in the works right now to prevent the world from becoming an overheated and polluted wasteland) but I'm a bit of an optimist so I'm supposed to question whenever someone creates a story with a bleak world and apathetic people.

So I give this book 4 out of 5 stars for being heart-breaking in a good way and something which caused me to need a lot of chocolate and cute fluffy things to read when I was done, that seems to be the trend with the 2013 books I've read this year (looking at you The Summer Prince). 

Book Review: The Shattering

It's probably a good thing that the two books I had to read right after Death Watch (or get more library fines) were two that I had been interested in for a while and this one was the one I was more interested in. I've read Karen Healey's other work, Guardian of the Dead, and absolutely adored it since it's a modern day urban/low fantasy that completely understands how important setting is to a story and I've really wanted to read her next work and just didn't have a chance until now. It's also set in New Zealand (although instead of being centered around a college in a big city it's in a small town) and I have no idea if the two stories are connected or not but I wouldn't be surprised either way.


The Shattering by Karen Healey

Summary: When Keri's brother suddenly and mysteriously commits suicide she's naturally shaken and suspicious about everything and her suspiciousness leads her to fellow classmate Janna and out of towner Sione who both also had older brother's die under mysterious circumstances. Armed with nothing more than hunches and records of the town they begin to realize that there is something truly sinister going on in their west coast town. 

The Good: I really like the plot here, a "main character(s) against a greater power" conflict is fairly common in fantasy (and this is urban fantasy/magical realism) but the greater power is slightly different than usual and I thought it an interesting and quite sinister take. Just as great are the characters, Keri, Janna, and Sione are all viewpoint characters and they're all honest enough that it wasn't jarring to see one scene from one characters point of view and then see it again from another's (and thanks to the fact that Keri was first person and the other two were third person it was easy enough to tell them all apart). There was romance which, even though it ended up being crucial in the end, there were plenty of other relationships as well and in addition, they characters had other problems completely unrelated to the main plot! They cussed, people never let their teenaged characters cuss!* I really loved this whole book and while I don't think we'll have another book related to it, it wrapped up quite well, I wouldn't be unhappy to see some short stories of the characters or see them show up in other stories.   

The Bad: Of the three leads I found Sione the least relatable since a lot of his internal problems had to do with self-esteem (which I never sympathize with as much), and considering relatively small reason is why I didn't sympathize with him as much I think that says how realistic I found Keri and Janna. It was a bit convenient with how easy it was to work magic in this book, would have been nice to have known a little bit more about how it worked, but it never turned into a deus ex machina and it was understandable why the characters didn't know any more. 


In short, I was completely satisfied with this book and plan on buying my own copy (along with a copy of GotD, I have a lot of buy these days it seems) sometime. I'm also sure that if I had read it back in 2011 it would have gone on my favorite books of the year list and would have no trouble recommending it to fans of YA fantasy or even realistic fiction.    




*which, let me tell you publishers, you might not like the idea but teenagers cuss, a lot, having recently been one I can attest to this. And I am noting this specifically since I've seen several authors, I think including this one, say they have to fight to keep it in so let me say, Yay I'm happy it was in since yes, it helped flesh out the characters. 

Book Review: Guardian of the Dead

When I first heard about Guardian of the Dead I was pretty stoked since I hadn't ever read a book set in New Zealand. Since then I've read Margret Mahy's The Changeover but if I had missed just a few details I wouldn't have realized that was even set in New Zealand. I'm not saying that a book needs to beat me over the head with how "foreign" it is, but the descriptions in there rather reminded me of Diana Wynne Jones' stories, set in a place that's slightly different and a bit English but nothing really remarking on. In Guardian of the Dead however the setting is a major player in the book and, considering I've had a hard time finding more than a few non-fiction books on New Zealand, it was a refreshing change of pace and delightful to read.

Guardian of the Dead

 The one on the top is the US cover and the one on the bottom is the Australian cover which I like more. Not entirely sure why, just not that fond of the American cover scheme and I suppose my inner photographer prefers images to be arranged according to the rule of thirds instead of halves. Anyway, I also found an interesting blog post about some of the trouble she had with her covers, glad that this all worked out for the best.

Summary: Ellie is off at boarding school for the year while her parents are touring the world and it's turning out to be even less fun she hoped for. She does have a good friend (Kevin), fight scenes to choreograph in the play (run by the lovely Iris), and even a mysterious boy to crush on (Mark). But everything is about to get a whole lot more mysterious before it starts making sense, between every myth a person believes in becoming true, legendary creatures from fairy tales being a lot more real than she guessed, and a classical journey to save their small world, Ellie is going to have to learn on the fly and learn to accept what she'd rather not.

The Good: In short, not only is the setting creative in the way it is used and influences the characters more than some of the characters do themselves but the characters themselves are very creative and innovative. None of this whining that "this can't be real!" just the acceptance that something is strange and if it's magic, well, it's magic. Even though I have very little in common with Ellie I found her to be incredibly sympathetic, Mark was much more 3D than I feared when I heard he was the "mysterious yet alluring boy," and I found myself cheering for Iris for being such an awesome side character*.

The Bad: I was expecting Kevin to get a little more screen time than he did and I'm a little puzzled by him. I heard some other people praising him for being a good representation of asexual characters in fiction but all he did was say very early on that he just had no interest in sex. That is honestly what an asexual person is, but does that one line make him such a well done asexual character? I mean, he spends a good deal of the book in a love enchantment which seemed oddly ironic but that certainly didn't help develop his character and I just would've liked a little more from him in the end. The ending itself bothered me a little as well. It wasn't the events or the people or anything major like that, it just felt a little off like we were forgetting some important plot point.


Ironically enough I had just gotten to the point in the book where they are talking about earthquakes and then I hear about the major Christchurch earthquake. Oddly enough it sounds like that has a happier ending than the earthquake the book was discussing but it was certainly freaky and made me hurry up to finish the book in case anything else like that happened. And now that I have finished the book I am certainly putting it on my book to-buy list, not sure when I'll get it since my manga and anime to buy lists are huge at the moment but that's what Christmas money is for, right?

Also, since I just got a job on campus (only six hours a week but) and that's in addition to my five classes and four clubs I'm probably going to slow down on the reviews. I actually still have a little backlog since I've been constantly reading/watching, well, all the free time I have (especially since I usually get sewing/knitting/eating done while I'm watching stuff) but I'll still be putting up one review, more like two or three probably, a week. I've got a huge backlog from the library and I'd hate to have to re-check them out later so I've got the incentive, just not quite as much time.


*Seriously, I think it was her line that she would beat Mark with her other shoe if he didn't tell her was going on and then you remember that she just threw her other shoe at an invading supernatural creature, finally someone whose on the same wavelength as me (as violent as that sounds).