Sunday, February 22, 2009

Uglies

By: Scott Westerfeld

This was an excellent book written by Scott Westerfeld. At first glance people who are not into physical attractions might groan and drop the book right on the spot but it really is appealing to everyone. Well at least I thought it was. When I first saw it, I thought, “Ugh, another book filled with girls obsessed with how they look” but now I can see I was wrong. Uglies deserves a rating of five stars and is filled with betrayals and suspense.

Tally Youngblood is finally about to leave her ugly world behind and become pretty, where your only job is to have a great time. Just six days before Tally’s operation, her friend, Shay, is not sure if she wants to change. She would rather live on the outskirts of town and take the chances. Tally tried her best to keep Shay but to no avail, Shay runs away. On the day of Tally’s operation, someone tells her that there is something wrong and gets faced with the worst dilemma a sixteen year old girl can have: either find Shay and bring her back, or stay ugly forever and never turn pretty. The fate of everyone may lie in Tally’s hands.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Princess Academy

By: Shannon Hale
My Feelings:
Princess Academy, written by Shannon Hale, is a great book. I would give it a rating of five stars even though there are places where the book gets boring to me. It begins to pick up the pace and gets more exciting towards the end with a twist that readers will not have expected, other then jumping ahead and reading it. :P The poems at the beginning of each chapter were really creative and I thought the idea of it is really cool. Overall, it deserves its Newbery Award and I would recommend it to everyone who loves reading.
Summary:
Miri is a girl whose family has always lived on Mount Eskel. She has longed to work with the other villagers in a quarry, mining linder from the mountain they live on. Her father does not allow Miri to even step one foot in the quarry because she thinks she is too small. Soon, word comes from the lowlands that the prince is looking for a bride and the king's priests have said that the bride-to-be would come from Mount Eskel. In one year's time, the prince will come up the mountain to choose his bride and until then all eligible girls have to attend a makeshift academy to prepare them for a royal lowlander life. In the academy, the competition is bitter, but when the academy is in danger, it is Miri who has to think of a way to save her classmates and teacher.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Dragon Flight

By: Jessica Day George

An awesome book that even the word awesome does not describe how great this book is. Dragon Flight deserves a rating much higher than five stars. Just like its prequel, once I started to read it, I could not put it down. Jessica Day George knows how to weave a humorous and suspenseful fantasy story and fill it with excitement and the thirst for more. I really wish that there would be a third book following the first two books.

The Dragon War has long ended and so there should be no more trouble with the dragons anymore, right? Not the case. Creel is back to work as a seamstress but even if you are doing something that you love, life can also get a bit boring. Soon, a letter from Prince Luka, who is currently in a country named Citatie, says that Citatie has an army of dragons with soldiers riding on them. The king of Citatie plans to send the army of dragons and soldiers to destroy Feravel. The king of Feravel will not do anything so its up to Creel and her friends to figure out what is happening and to prevent a Second Dragon War.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’ll Have to Kill You

By: Ally Carter

This was a pretty good book and I would give in four and a half stars for a rating. I think it would be really cool if you could speak fourteen different languages and know how to kill a man in seven different ways. The knowing and speaking of fourteen different languages sounds unrealistic but I guess it can be true. It was very entertaining and suspenseful in many ways. Pretty much like everyone else who have read this book, I really want to go to the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women when I finished the story.

Cameron Morgan, nicknamed Cammie, is a fifteen year old girl and a sophomore in the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women. This is where exceptional young ladies are spies-in-training. They learn to master fourteen different languages, how to kill a man in seven ways, and many more spy-relating skills. All of this training and you think nothing can prevent her from falling. Think again. Soon, she falls in love with an ordinary boy named Josh Abrams. She is now on her most dangerous mission ever: Falling in love. Now she has to face extremely difficult dilemma. She can either risk the chance of Josh can find out that she is a spy-in-training or ignore Josh and go back to her normal life. But is it possible for Cammie to ignore her soul mate?

Monday, February 9, 2009

Rivers of Zadaa

By: D.J. MacHale

A very excellent book by D.J. MacHale. The sixth book of the Pendragon series has not disappointed its readers. It is filled with action and suspense until the very last page. I must say that once I started reading, I could not stop and it took a lot of self-disipline to put the book down.

After the Traveler's victory in Eelong, Saint Dane has chosen Zadaa as his next victim territory. This is also where Loor resides as a Batu and Bobby Pendragon has feelings for her. Saint Dane's influence has put the already weak treaties between the two tribes of Xhaxhu into a verge of war. The rivers of Zadaa have dried up and it was everyone's lifeline. Without the rivers, everything would perish and leave the city in the mercy of the other cannibol tribes of Zadaa. Problem is no one knows where the water went and it might just be some natural disaster but it can not be that simple. Pendragon and Loor, with the help of a few trusted friends need to figure out where did all the water go before the Batu and the Rokador go to war.
**Spoiler Warning**
At the end, when "Andy Mitchell" came into Courtney's room, was it actually Saint Dane? I'm a little confused about it.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Dragon Slippers

By: Jessica Day George

Oh my gosh! This was an awesome book to read and I would give it a rating of five stars. Once I started to read it, I just could not put it down. I even tried to since it was getting really late but I could not do it. Jessica Day George’s writing is filled with excitement and suspense that anyone, young or old, would enjoy. The sequel to this book is called Dragon Flight and I can not wait to get to read it.

Creel is a ordinary peasant girl who live with her aunt and uncle because her mother and father are dead. Thanks to a fever. They did not have a lot of money. In fact, they were actually pretty poor. One day, her aunt came up with an outrageous idea of sacrificing Creel to a dragon, hoping that a knight in shining armor would come rescue her and later on marrying her so she and her family would get rich. Now that was not the case. It was Creel who wheedled her way out of getting eaten and it is she who has the power to save her kingdom or destroy it because the country is on the verge of war.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

A Curse Dark as Gold

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

This was a very good read and I recommend it to anyone who likes the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin. I would give it four stars if I had to rate it because it sort of got pretty boring in the middle. By the ending though, things got more suspenseful until it actually got scary because I just could not predict on what was going to happen.

Charlotte Miller’s father as just died, leaving Charlotte in charge to her family’s beloved mill, Stirwaters, and a younger sister, Rosie. Even though the Miller family has worked very hard and made fine cloth with some exceptions, they seem to always run into a lot of bad luck. No son has ever managed to inherit the mill or even live to adulthood. The mill has been inherited in a rather zigzag way from uncle to nephew, long-lost brothers to cousins, etc. Now, Charlotte and Rosie Miller are the last of the family with no one to pass it on to, but they are determined to keep the mill. Not very easy to do. There has been a stack of debts and her uncle is not making anything easier. Soon, Charlotte is in a swarm of debts, superstitions, and curses. She must battle her way to the bottom of it and soon before someone comes and seizes the mill from her hands.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Black Water

By D.J. MacHale

Bobby Pendragon just came back from his defeat in Veelox and is determined on not letting Saint Dane win again. Saint Dane’s next victim is a territory called Eelong. After being in Eelong for a very short time, Pendragon learns that the people who live there are not human. They are cats but they call themselves klees. The humans that do live there are called gars and are kept as pets and slaves. Weird, yes? Everything is not well because Saint Dane has figured out a way that brought the poison from Cloral into Eelong. Because Saint Dane had won the territory of Veelox, his power grew and he keeps saying that the rules have changed. Pendragon is faced with a difficult dilemma between bringing the antidote for the poison from Cloral and the rule that Uncle Press told him in never mixing things from different territories. He must decide quickly because the klees think that the gars are planning something and they will not wait too long.

The Reality Bug

By D.J. MacHale

Bobby Pendragon and Gunny arrive in a territory called Veelox. Right as the exit the flume they meet Saint Dane. They try to keep him from escaping but abruptly four more Saint Dane’s appear, allowing the real Saint Dane to escape the territory of Eelong. Pendragon and Gunny part because one of them had to go to Eelong and prevent Saint Dane from doing more harm. Pendragon stays in Veelox and soon learns that the people of Veelox have found a way to live in their own fantasy. It’s a perfect life but soon Pendragon discovers that there are many flaws to this so-called Lifelight. The territory is dying because everyone is spending so much time in their own fantasy. No food is growing and all the buildings are crumbling. Aja Killan, the Traveler of Veelox, says that she has everything under control because she has made a virus that feeds on your fears to make everything less perfect. But soon the Reality Bug gets out of control and things that should not have happened are starting to happen. Pendragon and Aja need to destroy the Reality Bug before people start to get hurt or even die by their own fears.

The Never War

By D.J. MacHale

Bobby Pendragon and Vo Spader arrive at First Earth, which is in 1937, in New York after Press Tilton’s death in Cloral by bullets shot from a pair of gangsters recruited by Saint Dane. There they meet the First Earth Travel named Vincent "Gunny" Van Dyke, who works as a bell captain at the Manhattan Tower Hotel. Bobby and Spader are forced to work as bell hoppers in order to learn about a suspicious person named Maximilian Rose. They learn about the battle between Winn Farrow and Max Rose. Farrow and Rose were good business partners once but now they are more than worse enemies. Wanting revenge on Rose, Farrow has planned to destroy the things that mean most to Rose, which means destroying the Hindenburg. Bobby is faced with a difficult dilemma in on what to do because in his hands lie thirty-six people’s lives...

The Lost City of Faar

By D.J. MacHale

Bobby Pendragon is back from his adventure from Denduron and has successfully saved it from Saint Dane. Now it is time for him to save another territory named Cloral. Cloral is a vast world that is covered entirely by water. The desperate citizens of Cloral are on the endangered floating cities are on the verge of a massive war. The food supply got poisoned because of an experiment that could expand the world’s food supply by a lot but destroyed it instead. Now the food supply is running low and if someone does not do anything fast then everyone will starve. Uncle Press and Bobby arrive just in time to help and try to prevent this from happening but all is not well. Saint Dane can be said to have made the situation worse. The only key now is to search for a city that is only described in legends. Bobby, Uncle Press, and Spader, the soon to be Traveler of Cloral, must try and find the City of Faar before Saint Dane succeeds in destroying it.

The Merchant of Death

By D.J. MacHale

Bobby Pendragon is a normal fourteen year old boy and is preparing to leave his home for an important game in the state basketball semi-finals when Courtney Chetwynd, a popular girl from his school, comes by and admits her feelings toward him. After the first kiss between them, Bobby’s Uncle Press abruptly comes in and tells Bobby to come with him. This is where he learns that he is not the normal fourteen year old boy that he was before and that the Uncle Press that he knew now has changed. He learns that he is a Traveler and that there are many, many different so-called “territories” that are part of the whole universe. All these territories will sooner or later experience a turning point and the Travelers are supposed to ensure that the turning point will happen correctly so that the territory will live in peace but there is a evil Traveler named Saint Dane, whose goal is to take advantage of the turning points and turn the territory into turmoil so that he can rule all of Halla, which is all time, territory, and space. Bobby and his Uncle Press are on a mission to make sure that Denduron’s turning point will happen correctly and not let Saint Dane succeed in his quest of destroying Denduron.