I would first like to start off with the fact that i usually don’t read sci-fi novels, but this book is the absolute exception. I have never been fascinated by chemistry or astronomy but when the main character, Mark Watney, had to use those elements to survive you just get enthralled into the adrenaline. Also, thanks to the amazing sense of humor that is given to Mark, you want him to survive. I have not read a book that is entirely driven by one single character. The dual perspectives were also a main factor in this because as Mark is making it through Mars on his own, Earth is doing everything in their power to bring him back. You will be captured by the pure humanity of every character and be compassionate of someone you have never met.
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The middle of the month Book Cove book was Torment by Lindsay Anne Kendal provided by the author. After the cliffhanger that the first book left off I was excited to read what would happen with Kiera and the rest of the crew. I was definitely not disappointed!
New female characters were introduced which was great for making the gang less guy heavy. We finally get to meet Lilith and we get to see how her relationship with Kiera is a bit rocky and not exactly perfect like I had imagined it to be. Their relationship certainly made it seem more real for me since I know that every mom/daughter pair aren't always agreeing with each other and super perfect. There were some parts that made me uncomfortable; the whole suicide thing is always a hard subject for me to handle, so trigger warning for anyone that has suicide as a trigger. The less said about Tyler's attitude the better... Definitely my least favorite character of the gang. Torture and mayhem happens! Eligos is back! There's an engagement! There's torture and mayhem happens! New characters! And a cliffhanger! I rate this book a 4/5 overall and look forward to reading the third book and chatting with Lindsay again about her characters. Lindsay has done it again!!..This book was awesome (it had a few slow moments but the action made up for that) I cannot wait to see how this Trilogy ends..eeekk very excited!!
Spoiler Alert: you may never get to experience me writing a similar piece like this again so treasure it!. Readers may ask why this is a special post. The piece I am about to write is unique because I have never written a positive review on a book-to-movie adaptation before! Since book-to-movie adaptations began, the movie's have been infamously bad at portraying the books. Some adaptations have been bad to the extent of authors openly dissing their book's coinciding movie. Fun fact: Ronald Dahl hated the adaptation of Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory. Ronald thought the director had no flair and that the musical numbers were trashy. Here are a few infamously hated children and young adult adaptations:
The Martian is what every book of it's genre should be. The Martian is suspenseful, exciting, and a bit funny. The book makes us feel an overwhelming sense of compassion for a character that we just meet as he gets stuck on mars. The Martian makes you feel nonfictional emotions for a fictional event. The book shows how much humanity the world still obtains despite our beliefs. Another great thing about the book is the level of diversity shown in the book. You have a variety of different races, but racial factors are not the main theme of the story. Now onto the movie. Was the movie identical to the book? Not really? Was every single line the same as the phrase recited in the book? Nope. Did it matter? Not really. I believe that a book-to-movie adaptation should compliment the book not be exactly like the book. Unless you want to watch a five-hour movie on everything you read, then it is impossible to have a movie be the same as a book. The book to The Martian compliments the book is an astounding way. It makes you feel all the emotions you felt in the book. With only minor details about characters and plot missing (the only major one was the changing of one character's name to fit the actor portraying the novel. The character's initial named Venkat but was changed to Vincent), the similarities overshadowed the differences. Overall, the book and movie are incredible. I highly recommend! I really enjoyed reading this book..it had me gasping and on edge..you really feel for Watney ' predicament, I'm my case I wanted to help him soo bad it hurt..His sense of humor was fantastic..I give it a 5/5!
I generally don’t start off by giving away the amount of stars I give a book but let’s get that out of the way for now; I give this book 5 stars out of 5. I had very little complaints about this book and the story or of anything that was going on throughout the three days that I read it between work and laundry and general house cleaning.
Weir starts off by pointing out that the main character of the book, Mark Watney, astronaut, botanist, and mechanical engineer to Ares 3 (the third manned mission to Mars, is not dead. He is very much alive and very much stranded on the red planet due to a dust storm that was strong enough to detach an antenna from the communications array and impaled him with. All the rest of his teammates saw was Watney get impaled and blown away by the dust and wind. If getting impaled hadn’t killed him then probably losing pressure on his suit would have so there was no point in endangering the rest of the Ares 3 crew when they too could be stuck on Mars. Watney comes to the realization that he’ll have to live long enough for Ares 4 to come pick him up in five years’ time. For that he has to stay alive long enough for that to be possible. He needs food, water, and other things in order to survive and it’s a lucky thing that he has enough food from the rest of the crew since they won’t be eating it. He begins to log all of his experiences (what the reader is reading) in order for some future archaeologist or NASA mission to be able to learn from him and what it was like for him before he dies on the planet. I went through a roller coaster ride as Watney tried everything possible to just survive one more day in a planet that seemed to be so set on killing him every single step of the way. A good chunk of the science I couldn’t wrap my head around and I was super glad that Watney dumbed it down enough so that the common folk that weren’t NASA engineers could know what the hell he was doing on Mars. The book kept me at the edge of my seat the entire time I was reading it and I don’t know how Watney just kept his cool the entire time he was going through all this considering that everything just seemed to go wrong whenever he fixed it. I’ll be watching the movie (and reviewing that, too), to see just how Hollywood imagined the characters in this book. It was so amazing and I don’t want the big screen to ruin all the images I had in my brain for it. I would recommend this book to any space enthusiast. I would recommend this book to anyone that enjoys a good edge of your seat story where you don’t know whether they’ll be a happily ever after or not (after all, rations can only last so long before they run out and you have to start thinking about eating your hand or something). I would recommend this book to anyone that judged it by its cover (like I did). I would recommend this book for everyone and anyone that just wants to sit down and be immersed in science that’s explained in such a way that you understand exactly what’s going on without feeling dumb. Complaints about this book: 1. Andy Weir/Mark Watney, I don’t think ghetto means what you think it means. It’s irritating and jarring to see it in the middle of my reading when Mark says “I’ll have to build a ghetto whatever.” Bro, not cool. 2. Would have liked to see more reactions from the public and not just NASA and other scientists. 3. WHY WOULD YOU EVER TAKE SHORTCUTS IN NASA? SEEMS LIKE A RECIPE FOR DISASTER! Things I’ve noticed and loved: 1. Teddy’s OCD and how he had to have all his papers and books aligned with his desk. 2. Mitch Henderson’s total devotion to the Ares 3 crew and keeping them in the loop at all times and being the guy that wanted to rescue Watney. 3. China National Space Administration 4. Rich Purnell is a genius 5. Mindy being a space paparazzi/interplanetary voyeur. She’s obviously the hero in this book. Without her no one would even know about Watney. She was shy once upon a time but then she became the go-to gal for Mark Watney updates. 6. The names of the places on Mars as well as the names of the equipment. I loved the map at the beginning and I loved knowing exactly where Mark was at all times and how exactly he was going to get from one place to the next. 10/10 would totally read this again. I suggest you read it as much as possible and then lend the book to your friends so that they can understand the awesomeness that is this book. If I could leave a review that was only heart shaped emojis and happy faces I would. Alas this is not that kind of review blog. The Bookcove had to read this book for the middle of September and I'm so glad that I waited so long to read this book. If I had read it in high school when it came out I probably wouldn't have appreciated it as much as I would now. The book started out with an action scene that immediately grabbed my attention and introduced the bad guy vampire. Then it goes straight to introducing the main character, Vlad Tod, an 8th grader at Bathory Junior High/Middle School, his best friend Henry, and Vlad's legal guardian Aunt Nelly. Vlad is a typical pre-teen and I absolutely loved the fact that the author didn't write him like a tiny adult that didn't cry or felt jealousy or any of that. This book was a breath of fresh air and a super quick read. I literally read this in three hours between doing laundry and going to the post office right before work. It spans approximately seven to eight months, from Halloween night to the end of the school year. I would say more about the book but it's so short that I feel that just summarizing little bits would give so much away. I give this book 4.5 stars out of 5, only because it was short and sweet. I've already planned to read the rest of the series and I look forward to see how Vlad handles being a vampire in high school and how his relationship with his friends and family develop. This was such a fun read and I recommend it to anyone that's having a hard time getting back in the groove of reading or if you have three hours to kill (it's probably less but I'm a slow reader).
Non-spoilers – Where everyone is safe and happy
This book was a fantastic, quick, exciting read. There were moments where I felt the writing got a bit confusing but, over-all, it was a great book. I loved all of the characters (even when they were acting like giant jerks) and the plot was engaging and entertaining. I definitely recommend this book to anyone 17 and older (or for those more mature younger people) because there are scenes that a little more graphic in nature. Overall, I give this book a 4 our of 5 stars and can’t wait to continue on with the trilogy. Spoilers – Be warned, the demons live here! I enjoyed reading this book a lot. It sucked me in within the first dozen pages with its mystery of what Keira was and who the other four boys were. I felt emotionally connected to the characters – so much so that I cried when Keira died, partially because of her death and partially because of the way it affected all the other characters. I felt tense when the group was fighting with one another and I was relieved and happy when they were getting along. In short, I felt like I was one of the group and I enjoyed every moment of it. There were times when I wanted to kill Lucian for acting like an a-hole after Keira healed Jake (especially since, in my opinion, he should have just been grateful that his friend was alive.) I also was a little annoyed with Keira when she went a little boy-crazy and couldn’t decide between Ergios, Tyler, or Lucian. It seemed a little unnecessary and a bit cliché. Not only that but I don’t think my main concern would be which boy to date if I had just discovered I not only was the missing piece of some centuries old coven, was the only person strong enough to save that coven, and had demon blood in my veins to boot. If it were me, I think my plate would already be super full. I found some of the ways in which the writing was being intentionally vauge about what Keira was in the beginning annoying. I got confused when Keira would make a reference to what she was but never put a name to it. As a reader, we want to be with the character all the way through and, as such, want to know what the character knows. However, as the book progressed, the writing was able to stop being ambiguous and instead showed how little Keira really considered what she was a lot of the time because, to her, it was natural. It was everyday life for her so why should she have to explain. This also becomes clear in her conversations with the boys when they ask her how she manages to do some of the things she does. I really liked the ending. While I was pretty sure she would come back to life (because the story would end if she didn’t) I was relieved when she did. I also liked the mystery that was brought into the final chapter because it makes the second book that much more enticing. I can’t wait to read the rest of the trilogy. |
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