BRAIN JACK by Brian Falkner

Title: BRAIN JACK
Author: Brian Falkner
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
Release Date: September 28, 2010
Number of Pages: 349
Source of Book: Library Check Out
Author's Website: www.brianfalkner.com

Goodreads Summary:
In a dystopian near-future, neuro-headsets have replaced computer keyboards. Just slip on a headset, and it's the Internet at the speed of thought. For teen hacker Sam Wilson, a headset is a must. But as he masters the new technology, he has a terrifying realization. If anything on his computer is vulnerable to an attack, what happens when his mind is linked to the system? Could consciousness itself be hacked?

Brian Falkner, author of The Tomorrow Code and The Project, delivers an action-packed and thought-provoking sci-fi thriller in which logging on to a computer could mean the difference between life and death.
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BRAIN JACK is a great boy book, especially for those into computers, code, or the hacking world.  I've always been intrigued by those who have the technological skill to be hackers and this book showcases them in an exciting way. This book is an exciting, don't-want-to-stop-reading, dystopian, techno-thriller full of action. The interesting thing the author did is created the action through much of the hacking moments by writing the coding actions as if they were a battle themselves, thus making it more exciting. This world Falkner created where neuro-headsets are used to make your computer usage faster by skipping the brain to hand keyboard and mouse step, is a scary vision of where technology could go. It's definitely a commentary on how far we should allow technology to go - and is there a time where the technology could get smarter than the people using it? This book has a future world where online gaming is now an addiction as we see drug use in today's society - people can't unplug and it ruins their lives. There are terrorist attacks all the time (in fact Vegas is now a radioactive wasteland) and there are secret and not-so-secret government groups protecting the people and looking for the terrorists - by trying to find the computers from which they are hacking in. It's a book that makes you question who is good and how do you know?

I never knew what was coming next and each time a plot point felt wrapped up and I couldn't imagine where he would take it next, a twist would be thrown in that I was never expecting. It kept is exciting and made me not want to put it down and stop reading. There wasn't too much character development compared to stories that I'm used to, but as far as thrillers go, I think it was fairly typical - this book is more about the action and excitement and suspense. However, I did love Sam and Dodge was great comic relief. This book is one to read, but with the caution that there are some very technical terms, so if you're not familiar with coding/computer technology, it may take a little getting used to, but it's worth the effort.

4 STARS for BRAIN JACK

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE by Beth Revis

Title: ACROSS THE UNIVERSE

Author: Beth Revis

Publisher: Razorbill (Penguin)

Release Date: 1/11/11

Number of Pages: 398

How I Got It: Won a signed hardcover copy from publisher's facebook contest

Author's Website: www.bethrevis.com

Goodreads Summary:

A love out of time. A spaceship built of secrets and murder. 

Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, three hundred years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end fifty years too soon and that she would be thrust into the brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules. 

Amy quickly realizes that her awakening was no mere computer malfunction. Someone-one of the few thousand inhabitants of the spaceship-tried to kill her. And if Amy doesn't do something soon, her parents will be next. 

Now Amy must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets. But out of her list of murder suspects, there's only one who matters: Elder, the future leader of the ship and the love she could never have seen coming.

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I'm struggling with what to say about this book, but in a really good way! ACROSS THE UNIVERSE is one of those books that just stays with you even after you've finished reading it.  It's deep and haunting and shocking and intriguing and scary and hopeful. I finished it late last night and it's been haunting the back of my mind all day. It's a book that starts off kind of subtle, but the more you get to know and the more you learn as you go through it, the more intrigued you are to find out what's really going on. It becomes one of those books that you just don't want to put down because you want to know what's going to happen next.

There are themes in this book that slap you across the face as you read them, and things that come as a complete surprise when you come to them (some even a little heartbreaking). This book feels claustrophobic being stuck on this ship with Elder and Amy in outer space with no way out. It's terrifying in the way of causing you to think about what people are capable of doing in the name of something they feel is right. It's thought-provoking in it's subtle ways of examining and commenting on power and leadership and hope and survival. There is a definite theme running through on why people do the things they do and what they will do to keep things the way they want them.

There is discovery to be found as the reader journeys with Amy and Elder to discover the lies and secrets on this ship, and what that means for the world they're now living in. There is a mystery to follow along with, but the story is much more than that. The world Revis has created is engaging and scientifically advanced with it's gravity tubes and embedded wireless communication devices. The descriptions are vivid and make you feel as if you're there on the spaceship with the characters, seeing what they're seeing and feeling what they're feeling. The book ends with hope - and as the book tells us - we need hope to survive and have a reason for being. I know I'll be anxiously waiting for the next book in this planned trilogy to spend more time with Amy and Elder and see what they do next now that their whole world has been turned around!

*I do need to warn you that there are a couple of mature scenes in this novel during the "Season" that caught me a little off guard from what I was expecting.


4 1/2 STARS for ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
Don't forget to look at the other side of the dual-sided cover for a map of the ship.

Book 3 of 12 for DAC 2011

I AM NUMBER FOUR by Pittacus Lore

Title: I AM NUMBER FOUR (Lorien Legacies #1)

Author: Pittacus Lore
Publisher: HarperCollins
Release Date: August 3, 2010
Number of Pages: 440
How I Got It: Bought it at the local indie at another author event
Movie Releasing: February 18, 2011

Goodreads Summary:
In the beginning they were a group of nine. Nine aliens who left their home planet of Lorien when it fell under attack by the evil Mogadorians. Nine aliens who scattered on Earth. Nine aliens who look like ordinary teenagers living ordinary lives, but who have extraordinary, paranormal skills. Nine aliens who might be sitting next to you now.

The Nine had to separate and go into hiding. The Mogadorians caught Number One in Malaysia, Number Two in England, and Number Three in Kenya. All of them were killed. John Smith, of Paradise, Ohio, is Number Four. He knows that he is next.

I AM NUMBER FOUR is the thrilling launch of a series about an exceptional group of teens as they struggle to outrun their past, discover their future—and live a normal life on Earth.

I AM NUMBER FOUR.
I AM NEXT.
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I loved this book - it made me hope, it made me think, it made me cheer, it made me worry, it made me love, it made me cry(!), it made me want to analyze my own life and be a better person, it made me want to keep reading and not stop. The writing is constructed in an interesting way because it really highlights the tension and builds the urgency of the plot with short and to-the-point sentences in the beginning. The book sets up the background premise clearly and engagingly, and then allows the reader to get settled in with John as he makes friends, all the while building the suspense in knowing that something bad will have to happen, he will have to be found, but he's not yet trained and ready. Yet, the background is revealed little bits at a time so the reader discovers it as John does, allowing us to grow along with him as we learn what happened between the Loric and the Morgadorians back on Lorien. This book is packed with action, and if you've read my reviews you know I don't like creepy or scary, and although this deals with aliens and this battle for taking over Earth, I didn't think it crossed the line into too scary or creepy for me at all. It keeps the story moving forward with the tension that is brought from not knowing what is going to happen.

The characters were well-written, although at first a few seemed stereotypical high school roles, as they developed through the story and the events they were pulled in to, I learned about them and liked them all. I cared about them and what was going to happen to them, and loved how the relationships developed and deepened through the events in the story. They seem like honest, real teenager feelings and interactions with the primary and secondary characters. Ultimately, the end is exciting, tense, heart-breaking, and hopeful all in one, and sets up the story nicely for the sequel to come. One of my favorite things about the book was some of the deep thoughts about life; and hope; and love; and will; and goodness; and courage; and trust; and being and standing up for oneself that came clear throughout. It's a smart book and a good book and an exciting book that I thoroughly enjoyed reading (it gains a few bonus points for setting a pivotal part of the story in Athens, Ohio where I went to college at Ohio University and even referencing Court Street, so there was a bit of a nostalgia quotient for me during that part of the story). I can't wait to revisit these characters in the sequel and see how they progress in their battle.
 
4 1/2 STARS for I AM NUMBER FOUR
Sequel is THE POWER OF SIX releasing in August, 2011, and I'll definitely be reading it!

If you like Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson books, I think you'll like the Lorien Legacies as well.

BLACK HOLE SUN by David Macinnis Gill

Title: BLACK HOLE SUN

Author: David Macinnis Gill
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

INCARCERON by Catherine Fisher

INCARCERON is one of those books that I think boys will really like because it deals with prisons, fights, escapes, mysteries, secret plans, backstabbing, assassination plots, and science-fiction stuff that has action scenes and is intriguing. That being said, I struggled with it because I was really confused for most of the first hundred pages or so, and it wasn't until page 200 that I had that jaw-dropping moment where I started to figure things out and wanted to know what would happen next. At that point I started to care more about what would happen to Finn and his crew that were trying to find a way out of the prison, while I was eager to see if Claudia, the Warden's daughter on the Outside, would figure out what was really going on and be able to rescue Finn from Incarceron. 


They live in a society that has halted progress. The world's technology got so advanced that they created a prison that was a closed system. They would take all of the criminals and put them in there, lock the doors, and never allow anyone else in or out. Then on the outside, they follow Protocol to live as if it is two hundred years ago without the technology that they are so scared of. One thing I really liked was how the story was told - we get to see part of the story from Finn's perspective and the other part from Claudia's perspective. I'm finding I really like the books that give multiple points-of-view to tell the same story; it's especially necessary in this book where the story actually happens simultaneously in two different places. The book deals with a lot of issues of progress in society, the benefit or detriment of technology advances, and if solutions are really good or just another way of putting someone in a prison.


My feelings about INCARCERON reminded me of when I read The Maze Runner by James Dashner. I struggled through not knowing what was going on in the beginning, got further in and started to care and want to know what would happen to the characters, got close to the end when it through me for a loop with a really weird sci-fi/supernatural element, felt like I had finally started to get to the part where I was figuring things out, and then it ended - but left a huge cliff-hanging ending making me reluctantly eager to read the next book.  I know that's not a glowing endorsement, but again, I think it's just not right up my alley as far as genre goes.  I'm not sure if I'll read the next one, as this one's 443 pages took me quite a while to read, mostly because I wasn't dying to read the next pages enough to put aside other things. I will definitely recommend it to my boy students to give it a try.


3.5 STARS for INCARCERON
The sequel, SAPPHIQUE, comes out December 28th.

MOCKINGJAY by Suzanne Collins

* This review will not discuss any major spoiler plot points*


Have you had the experience with a book where...you get to the end and realize that you read the book so fast because you couldn't wait to find out what happens that you actually want to reread it so you can savor the story the second time? That is what reading MOCKINGJAY was like for me - it's just one of those books.  If you haven't yet read the first two books: The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, you must!  Now that I've seen where Katniss' journey was ultimately headed by the end, I'm so glad I went along with her!


From "The Ashes" to "The Assault" to "The Assasin" the plot of this story kept me on the edge of my seat flipping pages as fast as I could to find out what would happen to Katniss, Peeta, Gale, Haymitch, Finnick, and Prim next.  It was action-packed with twists and turns I wasn't expecting, although with one major one that I saw coming but was hoping for, that kept me guessing as to where the story would end up, but always hoping Katniss would find her way through. It was like uncovering the windows to see a view into the hidden worlds of Panem that I couldn't image in District 13 and the Capitol. It was honest, hopeful, gruesome, empowering, soul-searching, and heartbreaking all at the same time.  


It was truly Katniss' journey to hurt, heal, discover herself, and ultimately find hope in the world she lives in and the role she's been forced into. I really enjoyed the development and growth of the stories of the secondary characters in this final installment.  However, this story is all about Katniss and how she must move past the horrors she's seen in two Hunger Games and to discover who she is meant to be and what kind of person she wants to be and how to become that person, do what's right for her, and help the ones she loves. All of this while dealing with carrying the weight of the entire citizenry of this country at war (which in reality has been at war for 75 years) on her shoulders. Many people talk about Team Peeta or Team Gale, and there is a satisfying conclusion to that piece of the storyline, but really, this series is not about a love triangle at all. It's about growth for these characters, these children, who have to mature and work out a world they've been thrust into, growing up faster than they should ever have to, and the mistakes they make and the way they find their way through.


Suzanne Collins crafted a page-turning story throughout all three of the books in the series that constantly surprise the reader and leave a sense of hope and rooting for for those that survived. This third one was an emotional journey, but I would say this trilogy is one of the best YA series out there!
5 Stars for MOCKINGJAY