BBAW: You guys are awesome!

Networking is a part of blogging I’m not really good at. If I would liken my blogging to a YA novel, it’ll be akin to Charlie’s story from Perks of Being a Wallflower — or in my case, Perks of Being a Blog Lurker. I rarely share and participate, I remain on the fringes and observe how it all unfolds. That is something I strive to change, I really do. I rarely leave comment even if the review or post got me thinking. I also read comments, you see, and if I noticed that what I want to say has already been said I won’t repeat it again. I have this theory that one day the data on the netspace will overflow the whole netspace will explode, then all the people who relied on it will be brain-dead because of too much rage, disappointment and regret. Yeah, I need to stop reading too much apocalyptic novels. Being the huge lurker that I am, there are only a handful of bloggers that I got to communicate with. They made my first year of blogging so much easier, I guess they deserve some acknowledgements.

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.

Review: The Child Thief by Brom

The first time I saw Brom’s Child Thief I immediately thought of it as the kind of book that is the answer to every 12-year old nerdy boy’s wet dream. You know that big black book found at the deepest corner of the school library that can only be read in secrecy? Small wonder I started reading it right after it was lent to me by a friend. This is not to say that children’s book. There were themes and several scenes a young mind might not able to handle, but I think I would have enjoyed it more had I read it when I was younger because the issues I have with the book would have flew over my head back then.

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

IMM: July Update

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by Kristi of The Story Siren, which highlights books that have been received  during the previous week.

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…

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Review: I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells

It’s not unusual to encounter a book claiming that its main character is not an ordinary boy. There are those born with the ability to master magic, or sired by a powerfuly deity inheriting his/her extraordinary powers, or someone who has the ability to wield a legendary sword. John Wayne Cleaver is not an ordinary boy but he is not the type expected to save the world. In fact, he may be the one to endanger it.

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’s New Book: The Fault in Our Stars

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.