I spend the last weekend with my friends from Goodreads TFG at Alabat Island, Quezon. Beach trips are fun, but the fun from spending almost 72 hours with friends that shares the same passion you have is unmatched.

The book I am reading is Isaac Marion’s Warm Bodies. We are the only people on the beach — which leads me to thinking that the guy in the background near the dead tree is a manifestation of my imagination of R, the lead zombie character of Warm Bodies.

Photo Credits: Tina(One More Page)

For the first time since I started blogging, I won’t try to write my own summary of the book I’m reviewing. I simply cannot do it. The summary at the back tells us that it is a story about a girl named Taylor Markham, five teenagers in the past, and a road where it all happened. But there’s more to this book than that. Although we spend more than half of the time inside Taylor’s head, Jellicoe Road is a lot bigger than Taylor’s search for some sense of home and security. As the synopsis suggest, it is also about those five teenagers — Narnie, Web, Tate, Fitz and Jude — bonded by a freak accident that happened 22 years in the past. It’s a story of how their friendship help one another withstand the despair that is eating them. It’s also about Jonah Griggs, a boy who is scarred for life and the story of how he was saved from self-destruction. It is also about Rafaella and Santagello’s friendship and missed opportunities; and of  Jessa’s wild innocence; and of Ben’s music and loyalty. Jellicoe Road is a book that is filled to the brim with genuinely sympathetic and nuanced characters. All of them are dear to me. I desired nothing but to step into the book and give each a hug — a hug that is not much of me comforting them but them reassuring me that they are going to be okay. I wanted to belong. Long to be. It’s a beautiful tale about loss, grief, and pain and at the same time of love, friendship and hope. I am in awe at how Ms. Melina Marchetta managed to do all this under 330 pages.

I know a lot of people say that the first half of the book was like a puzzle and way too confusing for its own good. Don’t get intimidated by that. There were tell-tale hints about how the two narratives come together, and I figured out in ways more than one the connection early on the story. I don’t mean to gloat. What I mean is that it is not rocket science and it is still well within the capabilities of an ordinary human mind. I figured it out and I don’t know how to tell you how that’s necessarily a bad thing. I knew it and I felt that Taylor also knew it and only seeks for confirmation — waiting for someone to tell us that it’s all real. Somehow that knowing makes the journey more painful and more lovely.

There were laughters shared and tears shed on the Jellicoe Road. There were mistakes made and forgiveness given. There was acceptance. There were tragedies and love stories. There were dreams shattered and dreams built. There was hope. I am thankful to Melina Marchetta for the opportunity to be part of those. I cannot think of better way to end this other than quoting a passage that perfectly summarizes everything I feel towards the book:

Rating: ★★★★★

Other Reviews to Consider:
Persnickety Snark | Angieville | Forever Young Adult | The Book Harbinger
Steph Su Reads | One More Page | Chachic’s Book Nook | Ficsation

Q. Tell us about yourself and your blog(the reason behind the name and how it came to be.):

Two years ago I carpooled to the National Book Festival in Washington, DC with Jennifer from The Literate Housewife.  After the festival she met up with a bunch of other book bloggers for dinner, and since she was my ride home, I tagged along.  That dinner was one of the highlights of the day.  The bloggers I met were just such a funny, friendly group of people it completely changed my (very ignorant) view of bloggers.

For the next three months I toyed with the idea of writing my own blog, but I kept telling myself that I shouldn’t, that I didn’t have the time.  (I was supposed to be spending all my free time working on my MA thesis.)  I finally realized that writing a blog wouldn’t keep me from my thesis; I would just find other ways to procrastinate!  So on December 26, 2009 I just went for it.

Believe it or not, you’re actually the first person to ask me about the name of my blog.  On the third floor of the library at Hollins University there is a room called the “Children’s Alcove.”  In that room is the library’s collection of scholarly work on children’s literature.  In any other library those periodicals and books would be shelved alongside everything else, but at Hollins they get their own room.  To me, it’s a testament to the value the school places on the work of past, present and future students, scholars and writers of children’s literature.  That room is my favorite spot on campus, and it seemed only natural to borrow the name for my own blog.

Q. Have your reading preferences changed since you started blogging?

I was about to say yes, but the more I think about it, the more I realize the answer is actually no.  I read a wider variety of books than I did before, and I read a lot of books based solely on the recommendation of other bloggers, but my core preferences are pretty much the same.

Q. What kind of book blog do you like best — review-heavy blogs, meme-heavy blogs or discussion post-heavy blogs? Name some of the blogs you frequent?

I love discussion-post-heavy blogs, but I’ve discovered that I have a tendency to skip them if I feel like I don’t have the time or brain power to devote to thinking and responding to the discussion.  I don’t read a lot of meme-heavy blogs, although I don’t mind the occasional meme.  Review-heavy blogs with random bookish or non-bookish posts thrown in tend to be my favorite.

Some of my current favorite blogs (in no particular order) are Jenny’s Books, things mean a lot, The Literate Housewife, books i done read, Estella’s Revenge, eclectic/eccentric, and Fyrefly’s Book Blog.

Q. I see that you have a wide-range of genre of books you blog about, but do you have a specific genre you favorite to review? Is there any genre you avoid reading and reviewing?

Not really, no.  I don’t pay very much attention to genre when I choose which books to review.  I review the books I feel like discussing.

I don’t read a lot of romance, particularly not (don’t shoot, blogosphere!) paranormal romance.  I’m not a fan of horror or books with lots of blood (I like my murders clean, thank you very much).  I haven’t been reading as much sci-fi and fantasy as I used to, either, although I’m not sure why.  But these aren’t hard-and-fast rules.  I try to keep an open mind, so if someone raves about a book that’s outside of what I normally read, I usually give it a shot.

Q. Do you have a blogging pet peeve?

An over-abundance of exclamation points.  I get ridiculously excited about books, too, so I understand the need for them.  But when there are more exclamation points than words, my brain starts to hurt.

Q. List 5 books from different genres you think everyone should read and why.

Only five???  Fine.  How about . . .

Juvenile Fiction:  Coraline by Neil Gaiman; illustrated by Dave McKean.  This is the book that made me fall in love with Neil Gaiman.  It has fantastic dialogue, a resourceful heroine, a sarcastic cat, a cast of oddball characters, and creepy illustrations.  It is also absolutely brilliant.

Classic:  To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  When I reread this book a year ago I was so worried it wouldn’t live up to my memory of it.  I was one page into the novel when tears suddenly spilled from my eyes, and I realized that yes, this book is still one of the most extraordinary things ever written.

Nonfiction:  Whatever it Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America by Paul Tough.  This book does more than just follow Geoffrey Canada’s work in Harlem – it explores every aspect of poverty and the U.S. educational system.  I am the child of two teachers and I used to teach preschool, so I am no stranger to our educational system and its flaws.  Yet even I was blown away by what I read.  Everyone needs to read this.

Adult Fiction:  Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich.  While I don’t think this is her best work, (that award goes to The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse), this is the Erdrich book to start with.  Her writing is filled with complex characters and storytelling so raw it will make your heart bleed.

Picture Book:  The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Talesby Jon Scieszka; illustrated by Lane Smith.  This book is sheer brilliance from beginning to end.  It is also fairly stupid, but hilariously so.  Read this, then read the rest of the Scieszka and Smith collaborations.  Then call me for a gush-fest.

Q. Give us three things that you always look for a book –regardless of the genre — before you consider it a favorite.

Characters:  I tend to gravitate toward character-driven rather than plot-driven books, so interesting, multi-dimensional characters are important to me.

The Mechanics:  By mechanics, I mean everything – sentence structure, grammar, transitions, dialogue, tone, subtlety, continuity (if a character is wearing a green shirt on one page they cannot suddenly be wearing a blue one on the next), etc.  I know I sound picky here, but I studied literature for years.  It’s really hard for me to overlook this stuff.

Humor:  You make me laugh, and I’m yours forever.

Of course, a book doesn’t have to have all of these things for me to consider it a favorite.

Q. Outside reading and blogging, what are your hobbies?

I love baking, especially desserts.  I make a killer cheesecake.

Q. The Doctor is going to give you a one-way ride in his TARDIS to a fictional place of your choice with ONE fictional character, where and who would that be?

Okay, it was hard enough picking just five books earlier, now you want me to choose ONE character and ONE place?  That’s just cruel.

Q. Three blogging guidelines you think every book blogger should follow.

I only have one blogging guideline, and I’m going to steal it from the Bard: “To thine own self be true.”  (Wait, what?  He wasn’t talking about blogs?  Hmmm, maybe I need to reread Hamlet . . .)

Seriously, though, I think bloggers should just be themselves.  Want to write serious, analytical reviews?  Go for it.  Want to be snarky and sarcastic?  Fine.  Want to gush for fifteen paragraphs straight?  Knock yourself out.  Sure, I may not read a lot of meme-heavy blogs, and lots of exclamation points drive me up the wall, but so what?  If that’s your writing style, then that’s your writing style.  We need diversity in the blogosphere as much as we need it everywhere else.

Did I told you she’s awesome? I agree a 100% on her blogging guideline. I don’t care one bit for blogs who doesn’t have any sense of individuality. It’s a bit harsh, I know, but there are a lot of book blogs out there, tell show me exactly why I should read you instead of the other or what makes you different from them. Blogs only get interesting if the personality of the blogger shines through in his/her blog. And readers only read interesting blogs. Don’t be the bi-product of society’s imposed standards, my friends!

Truth be told, I kind of hate my old theme. I love the background and I love what I did to the header, but the thing that I didn’t like is the font size of the posts. It’s too huge! It’s really hard to read even in my 15″ monitor and it’s very inconvenient to write a post on WordPress’ WYSIWIG editor. As shallow as it may sound, it was one of the reasons behind the infrequent update on my blog. I had to change it.

I have to think of a theme that will go well with my personality just like the first one did. Because of the Jason Mraz concert here in the Philippines on October, I immediately thought of his song that I play every morning a year ago. Seriously, I thought of it as a mantra during that time and I learned how to rap(a bit) because of it. Post title spoiled it again. Yes, it’s Geek in the Pink. No one would expect a guy blogger have a pink blog and I think that is pretty cool. But then again, a pink theme? That’s pretty hard to pull. Pink shirts look cool but a pink blog, how can I make a pink blog still look like maintained by a guy? It was a challenge and challenges I do love. Fuck it. I’m going to make Guy Gone Geek a pink blog using my minimal graphic designing skills. Few days later a brilliant idea struck me, why shouldn’t I turn the usual blue theme on its head? Blueprints! This time around on a pink background. And there you have it. What you see now is the product of a few hours patience with my always reliable GIMP editor. I used a 1370×740 model so the background is seen in its entirety on a 14-15″ monitor.

The theme won’t be the only thing that will change here on Guy Gone Geek. This blog won’t be limited to book-related post anymore. The reviews and other bookish geekery will still be there, but there will also be random updates especially about my favorite tv series. Basically, I will be blogging about all forms of my inherent geekiness.

Did you like it? Or did I enjoyed GIMP too much and went overboard? I would love to hear you honest opinion! The background image is 2.2Mb, does it take too long before it loads on your screen? Also, I have no idea what the machine in the background is supposed to do. If you have any (crazy) idea, leave it on the comments!

Tina of One More Page: She’s the one who encouraged me to start a blog. Her reviews are often thoughtful; the kind that makes you think and reflect even if you haven’t read the book. She writes what she feels and open to share her life to her readers. That is something I really admire and have to learn doing. Aside from that, she’s been really supportive and we often talk about the latest blogosphere gossip over at skype. She’s like a bookish big sister to me and she even dug the Point Zero when she went to Paris so she can give it to me! Best. Sister. Ever!

Chachic of Chachic’s Book Nook: Another blogger I know in real life even before I started blogging. Her enthusiasm for blogging and reading is very evident on her blog posts, tweets, facebook updates, and tumblr posts and everywhere else. It seems that she can’t get enough of books even her tbr pile amounts to 100+ books. Chachic is really really nice and that’s why she receives so much love in the blogosphere. She is also the culprit behind our local book blogger club and book depository’s free shipment here in the Philippines, hence her title, Chachic, Her Majesty.

Steph of Steph Su Reads: I always look forward to reading her review and her posts. Whenever I read her review, it inspires me to write one myself, and I do really need some inspiration to write a review since I am a big procrastinator. Then she featured me on her blog and it was, by far, one of the best blogging experience I have. I am only a starting blogger that time(until now, I think) and for someone outside my real-life friends to notice that I am doing something right is the confidence boost I needed.

Rhys of Thirst for Fiction: An awesome awesome guy I met because of blogging. In a place dominated by female, it is really nice to know someone who shares the same preferences, same concerns as you do. He writes excellent reviews, sometimes I forgot he’s only sixteen! His blog is the place to go if you want some good male-friendly Young Adult books.

That’s it for now. There’s a few more I should mention who, in their own ways, helped me and inspired me to continue the life of Guy Gone Geek, but that would result to a pretty long list. Rest assured, those bloggers are on my sidebar. I don’t add links that easily. So people on my sidebar, thank you! You guys are awesome! I learned to like this community and I am definitely here to stay.

Brom’s Peter is far from the charming and talkative Peter Pan the animated movie and bedtime stories led us to believe. He is no Spieling Peter. In Brom’s version of J.M. Barrie’s classic children’s novel, Peter lures the abandoned, the abused, and the runaways into joining him and many others that shares the same fate to a place called Avalon. But a safe haven, Avalon is not. His recruits soon discovered that Avalon is a ruin land with only few remainders of the place full of color and magic it was once. They were taken to Avalon to turn them into Devils, some sort of army of children which purpose is to rid Avalon of Flesh-eaters. Avalon is on her knees. The years-long war may soon reach its conclusion, and the Devils found themselves on the losing end. Is there still any hope for Avalon, the Devils, and all the magical creatures that inhabits this once majestic land?

The strength of this novel lies on its characters. Brom doesn’t shy away from drawing(pun not intended) flawed  heroes and redeemable villains. I enjoyed reading about all the key players of this story; from Peter who is willing to sacrifice anything for his devotion to the Lady, the guilt-ridden and troubled Nick, selfish and cowardly Captain, religious fanatic Reverend, and even Ulfger who was blinded by his self-entitlement and jealousy. There was no white knight as well as a dark one in this story. Brom frequently challenge his characters — and in effect, his readers — of the moral ambiguity of their choices and actions. If I will base my judgement solely on its characters, this would have been among my favorite reads this year.

Now onto the bad bits. My first complain is the obvious one: the absurd length of this novel. It could have accomplish the same thing in a shorter length in the hands of a more capable editor. I can point out a number of scenes that can be edited out without having any effect to the narrative. We could have been also spared from the numerous cheese ball pep-talks and stilted dialogues.

There is also a glaring plot hole that some reader will ignore and just blame it on the character’s passionate intention to destroy one another. I’ll be treading on spoiler territory so if you don’t want to get spoiled this is the perfect time to stop reading this or head over to the next paragraph. We learned that purpose of the Devils is to rid off Avalon from the Flesh-eaters that wreak havoc in the land. At the latter part of the novel, we discover that the Flesh-eaters are wreaking havoc in their belief that once Avalon is destroyed they would be freed from the land that physically transformed them into monsters. I cannot believe that in their decades-long war, no one thought that they were actually fighting for the same cause. Sure, you cannot tell your foe, “hey, you know, we only had the misfortune to dock on the wrong port then your bat-shit crazy goddess raised the mist that trapped us into this equally bat-shit crazy land”, while sparring swords with him. It was even revealed later on that there were several times the Flesh-eaters managed to capture Devils with few them turn against their brothers, and none of these doofus told them what’s happening? I don’t buy it. Nick pointed out how ironic the situation was and blamed it on miscommunication, but I truly felt that was a cop-out.

Lastly and perhaps this is a matter of personal preference, I got sick of how perversely dark the novel was. I am well acquainted with the Grim and the Gritty books, but Child Thief was out of the line. It was devoid of even the tiniest fragment of hope. Yeah, there was an exhausting repitition of, “for one moment, he  dared to hope” passages, but there was never any reason to hope. Even the Lady who was supposed to be the symbol of hope is a lunatic and has her own subtle ways to inflict pain. There was a point when it is all madness it became repulsive. If there is a literary equivalent of metal music, Brom’s Child Thief would be that. The author has the name and the look for the part anyway. There are people who enjoys that kind of music so there has to be readers who will enjoy this novel — not just this guy.

Rating: ★★★★★

Other Reviews to Consider:
The Book Smugglers | Bart’s Bookshelf | Ficsation

Hello! Happy 1st of August! I haven’t done a IMM post for a while but that doesn’t mean I had been nice and didn’t add something to The Pile. It’s completely the opposite. This month of July I had been extra naughty and devise a number of schemes how to smuggle these books inside the house without getting noticed:

The month started with me getting invited to a dinner hosted by Scholastic Philippines. After a great dinner and a nice chat with my fellow bloggers, they people of Scholastic gave us personalized tote bags containing several books. My bag contained the entire set of Stuart Hill’s The Icemark Chronicles Trilogy[The Cry of Icemark, Blade of Fire, The Last Battle of Icemark] and Rachel Ward’s Numbers and its sequel, Numbers: The Chaos.

My book club also held its 5th meet-up this month. It has been a tradition in our group to bring books you want to give away. The people in our group are very generous and we always end up a having a gigantic pile of books. There were games held to decide who gets to choose what books from the pile first. We really had a huge pile this particular meet-up that even though the team I’m in lose the game, there were still lots of good titles left after the team winners made their picks. I was able to pick sequels of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series: Lost in a Good Book and The Well of Lost Plots. I already have read The Eyre Affair and I thought it was pretty cool so I’m really happy I got the sequels for free. I also got a copy of Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List.

Meet-ups are also the time for borrowing and lending books. Chachic lend me her copy of Fiona Wood’s Six Impossible Things. I’m really interested reading this book but it’s an Australian YA novel and it’s pretty hard finding a copy of Aussie YA books here in my place. I’m thankful I know someone who collects these books and generous enough to lend her copy. My bookish big sister, Tina volunteered to lend me her copy of E. Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. People are singing their praises to Frankie so I’m stoked to read this. You don’t get to read awesome girls in YA that frequently. I also borrowed another hard-to-find book from Ariel which is Brom’s The Child Thief. Because of this gigantic book I finally understand  the reason why Ariel created foot-long bookmarks that he gave away last December.

The much awaited NBS Cut-Price Sale finally started last weekend and it didn’t do good to me. At all. It’s only the first weekend and the damage is pretty huge already. There’s about three weeks more. Good luck to me.  All the books above except Patrick Ness’ A Monster Calls are bought only for Php99($2). It’s a long list so excuse me if I’ll just enumerate them:

• Green Witch (Green Angel, #2) – Alice Hoffman
• When You Reach Me – Rebecca Stead
•  The Tales of Beedle the Bard – J.K. Rowling
• Marcelo In The Real World – Francisco Stork
• Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker, #1) – Paolo Bacigalupi
• The Demon’s Lexicon – Sarah Rees Brennan
• The Book Thief – Markus Zusak

Finally, my copy of Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion that I won from Janicu’s Book Blog arrived. Everyone is basically saying that this is the most awesome zombie book to date. I love a couple of zombie books — Charlie Higson’s The Enemy and Jonathan Maberry’s Rot and Ruin among others — and I have yet to see if this will be added on that list.

So that’s the loot for the past month. I will really be trying to avoid bookstores for now. But I won’t promise anything.

On other news…

FeatherFlame50

John Wayne Cleaver is a clinically diagnosed sociopath and he has all the tendencies of becoming a serial killer. He sees serial killing as an art in itself and serial killers as true artist. However, he knows killing people is not right so to keep the monster inside him at bay, he created a set of rules he must strictly follow. So far he’s successful at trying to appear and act as normal as he can be. That is until a bona fide serial killer begins slaughtering innocent victims in his home town. John Cleaver thinks he is the only one who can understand the killer therefore the only one capable of identifying him, and ultimately, catching him. But to trace the killer’s activities means freeing himself from his self-imposed rules that may eventually unleash the monster the monster he was trying hard to contain.

The first thing that striked me when I began reading I Am Not a Serial Killer was John Wayne’s voice. Dan Wells managed to give him a voice that is both disturbing and refreshing. Being inside our main character’s head was no easy task. His thoughts and the way he processed them felt completely alien to me. At the beginning of the book, I saw myself as a mere audience to John’s dark narration. Take the first sentence of the second chapter as an example(note that John’s mother and aunt are the town’s local morticians):

    "We didn't get Jeb Jolley's body that night, or even soon
after, and I spent the next week in breathless anticipation,
running home from school every afternoon to see if it had arrived
yet. It felt like Christmas."

The passages get only darker as the story progress and as you read onwards the more you get pulled into John’s way of thinking. There were several points in the story when I caught myself completely inside John’s mind, seeing things the way he sees them. It really did messed up with my mind, but hey, I’m not complaining. You have to give it to Dan Wells. The guy knows how to make you see and think in a very different perspective.

One thing also worth noting is the book’s structure: it was one half crime investigation novel and one half supernatural-thriller. I can see how this may be a problem for some readers. It was easy to assume that the author ran out of idea on how to continue the story so he took an easy route by the unexpected shift of genre. But I am not in agreement to this opinion. The first half of the novel are spent on identifying the killer: who he is and what were his motives. In the similar fashion, this part also tells us about John Cleaver especially why he became who he is. Then at the second half, we see John battling with the killer/demon and at the same time — with his  set of rules having neglected– battling with the monster inside him. The more John devise the perfect plan to stop the killer the more he succumbs to his inner monster. By this point, it was difficult to distinguish his true reason. Is he really concern for the safety of the people in his town knowing beforehand that he doesn’t process emotions the way normal people do or is he just satisfying the hunger for the kill the monster inside him feels? This was not an easy question to answer and the author does not force on you what to believe. Having the two-different-genre-part structure highlighted the conflict between a demon with a very human motivation and a human boy who may possibly have monstrous motives.

I Am Not a Serial Killer was not an easy read. It really have ways to make you feel uncomfortable on your seat and send shivers to your spine. (That particular scene when John was fuming over his mother in the kitchen shocked the wits out of me.) Without a doubt, this is a stand-out novel on the YA category. Dan Wells wrote a thrilling novel heavily rooted on his well-rounded and curious characters. I cannot promise you that you won’t regret reading this because there’s a huge possibility that you will, especially when you read it during night-time but that makes it more tempting to read it, doesn’t it? I am not a serial killer, but John Wayne Cleaver? That, you have to figure out yourself.

Rating: ★★★★★

Other Reviews to Consider:
Thirst for Fiction | The Book Smugglers | Wondrous Reads

John Green and The Fault in Our Stars Manuscript

I can’t think of a more perfect way to start the morning other than hearing the news about John Green’s newest book which is now entitled The Fault in Our Stars. After watching John Green’s 1 hour and a half(that’s dedication for you) youtube video in which he read the first chapter of the book, here are some interesting bits of information I’ve gathered:

• Every pre-ordered copy of the book will be signed by John Green. You can pre-order your copy here.
• The book is called The Fault in Our Stars after the great line from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that goes “The fault, dear Brutus is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
• There is no definite release date yet but the book is going be released on either March or April of 2012.
• It is currently 272 pages long but it will be trimmed to a number of pages that is a multiple of 8. (John Green said that books are all published on multiples of 8. I don’t know why.)
• It’s dedicated to Esther but it’s not about Esther. The Fault in Our Stars is a fictional novel.
• It is the Yeti’s(Sarah, his wife) favorite book from him.
• No Unicorns, Storm Troopers or Zombies. Dammit!
• There’s cursing but there’s no “awkward blowjobs” or “aggressively unerotic oral sex”.
• It’s not the desert island book.
• There’s no cover yet but you can check out this tumblr site that features a collection of fan-made cover design for the forthcoming book.
• It will be available on Kindle. “Although obviously that copy won’t be signed because I can’t get inside your kindle to sign your book.”
• Before reading the first chapter, John Green read the first part of T.S. Elliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The quote represents as to what the book is to him.

These are the basic information from the chapter he read:

• First Sentence: In the winter of my 16th year, my mother decided I was depressed presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.
• Our narrator is a girl named Hazel Grace Lancaster, 16 years old and diagnosed with thyroid cancer. She is John Green’s first girl narrator.
• The other main character is Augustus Waters who has osteosarcoma and will probably the subject of many nerdfighter girls’ fantasies in the future.
• Basing from the infamous John Green formula, I am assuming the quirky sidekick character is Isaac. “A long-faced skinny kid with straight blond hair that swept over one of his eyes. His eyes were the problem. He had some fantastically improbable eye cancer.”
• Our characters, as you can guess, are part of a support group for kids with cancer.
• Hazel Grace religiously follows America’s Next Top Model.

You can watch the entire video by clicking on this link. If you want to watch only the first chapter reading, it starts from mark 0:38:00 to mark 1:03:00.

The Fault in Our Stars is a book about illness and death. There are tons of books that has been published about those topics recently but basing from the first chapter, it still has the same quirky humor that all of John Green’s previous books have. I guess that’s what makes this book different from all the other “dying teenager” books. I don’t know. I haven’t read that many books with this kind of theme.

You have no idea how excited I am for the release this book. I am running out of John Green books to read and the only books from him I haven’t read yet are his collaboration novel and his short stories from some short stories collection book. We badly need a new John Green book, you guys! The probability of 2012 being an Awesome year is getting bigger and bigger.

As always, dftba.

Rigg can see path human and animals made whether it’s from the distance past or the near present. He has been living most of his life isolated in the woods with only Father as his companion. Father taught him a lot things, most of which Rigg believes he will never need. That changed when Father suddenly died leaving him a task to find his sister, 19 jewels and his name. A name that could also be his death sentence. Rigg soon realized that Father prepared him for something bigger than what he can ever fathom and there’s more to his ability than just seeing people’s path. At the beginning of each chapter, we follow the character of young Ram as he command a ship journeying from Earth to a distant planet for human to colonize. It will only take you half-way through the book before you can put two and two together and see the larger picture.

Orson Scott Card combines tropes commonly found from young adult fantasy and science-fiction and produced a book that proves his mastery of both genre. Although marketed as a young adult novel, Pathfinder possess a very complex and sophisticated narrative involving space and time-travel and filled with secrets and intrigues that will keep the reader turning the pages. At the acknowledgement page, the author stated that he started writing the book knowing that he’ll challenge common rules of time travel, and he did. I don’t consider myself an expert on time-travel but neither am I a novice. I started reading Pathfinder with my preconceptions on how time-travel works. I had a hard time wrapping my head around the rules Card set for this novel. But after I suspend my preconceptions, everything made sense and needless to say, I love every bit of it. I guess it would not be an empty statement if I say that Pathfinder has a very intelligent plot the we rarely get to see in young adult novels. Pathfinder doesn’t force you to think so you can follow the narrative or else you’ll get left behind. It dares you to and that’s one of the many the beauties of it.

Space time travel plays a huge part in this book but it is not the only thing this book can offer. The main storyline(Rigg’s) was set in a land called Aressa Sessamo. This land was previously ruled by a monarchy that was decreed to be ruled only by the females until an uprising came that turned the government into People’s Revolution. Fast forward to present time, there are factions who want to maintain the Revolution but there are some that wants the female-ruling monarchy back and a few in favor for a male-ruling monarchy. The political intrigue in this novel is very complicated and for an unfortunate reason, Rigg is in the centre of all of it. For some this could mean that Card has got into his political babble once again. Not for me. The political situation of Aressa Sessamo is a consequence of what happened in the land’s past therefore will play a vital part on our heroes future.(Excuse the vagueness of that statement. I am carefully treading on a spoiler-mined land here.) And I’ll be honest, it was really fun figuring out whose on which side of the fence.

Genius is what Pathfinder is. The only reason I can think of for you not to enjoy this is if you hold bias over the author’s opinion on certain topics before reading the book. I am also in opposition with some of the author’s perspectives. He can have his opinion and I can have mine, but this won’t stop me from enjoying his books. It’s not like he is exploiting his fans like other fan-fiction writer authors do. Having an opinion is not a crime, is it? A great storyteller is a great storyteller no matter what. There’s a reason why Orson Scott Card has been in this business for a very long time and Pathfinder is definitely one of those. If you haven’t tried any Orson Scott Card novel yet(my god, what’s wrong with you?), this is a good place to start.

Rating: ★★★★★

Other Reviews to Consider:
King of the Nerds | Good Books and Good Wine | Dreams Stuff Books