Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Release Date: August 24, 2010
Number of Pages: 352
How I Got It: Signed Hardcover free from ALAN Workshop
BLACK HOLE SUN is a good guys vs. bad guys type of plot, with the uniqueness of taking place in a future where people have left Earth to create a liveable world on Mars. I was really looking forward to reading this book because I had been hearing good things about it, I thought it might be a good boy book, and Suzanne Collins blurbed it. Unfortunately, I was left a little disappointed - I think mostly because I spent much of the novel confused and trying to figure out this fictional world and because I'm not really a fan of creepy creatures and this book has a few of them. The jacket flap simply says: Durango is playing the cards he was dealt. And it’s not a good hand. He’s lost his family. He’s lost his crew. And he’s got the scars to prove it. You don’t want to mess with Durango. It's an intriguing teaser and shows that the book is all about Durango's journey, but it tells little about his friends that are on the journey with him, the science of this future society, or the sarcasm that you'll find in his character's interactions with his artificial intelligence brain chip. The book gets complicated, but I did want to keep reading to find out what would happen, it just was a little bit of a frustrating book for me as I tried to figure out what was going on..
There is one thing I really wanted from this book that I didn't get - a map of the world they live in on Mars and a glossary of all of the unique terms used in the book. Each chapter title is the location on Mars and the time the chapter takes place, but in this creative world the author made up with many unfamiliar words for me, I was left feeling lost because I had trouble following the action in the beginning. I would have liked a few more places with exposition in the beginning where the world was explained to me so that I could understand it a little bit more. Ultimately, it's a good book in a creative and unique world with an action-packed story of a boy trying to prove himself and fight off the bad guys, a group trying to figure out how to keep their secret hidden and battle an overwhelming enemy, an entertaining humorous band of secondary characters helping him out, and a lot of sarcasm and wit; but it's definitely a book that takes a lot of concentration and paying attention to keep track of what's going on and to figure it all out.
3 STARS for BLACK HOLE SUN
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