Rogue: The Clone Rebellion 2

Titan Books 2013

Hello there! So, I’ve had to take a few weeks off from blogging. If you have a blog, you’ve probably suffered at some point from a severe lack of motivation. That’s what I’ve been dealing with the past few weeks. It’s certainly not from a lack of books to write about. I’m still reading like crazy and now I’ve got a stack of books to write posts about. I’m not really sure what has prompted this reluctance to write posts, but the way I figure it, if it isn’t fun what’s the point? I went from being like “Oooh, I’ve finished a book so now I can do a blog post!” to “Ugh, I’ve finished a book and now I have to do a blog post.”.

I’m going to do this post and see how I feel about getting back into the swing of things.

I’d like to start off by saying that I love the covers for these books. I know that it’s a pretty superficial thing, but there you go. I love looking at them in the bookshop when they’re all displayed together. Here’s what the first 4 look like together, so that you can get a feel for my book cover love:

I love bright colours!!

Nutshell blurb: We follow Lt Wayson Harris as he travels the universe and decides which side to fight on while he simultaneously struggles to overcome his conditioning.

This is the 2nd book in this series. If you would like to read my post on the first book, you can find it here.

As I suspected in that post, the first book was all about setting the scene for what was to come in subsequent books. That’s kind of a risky tactic as I found that the first book lacked focus.

This book was much better. I actually knew what was going on and never felt confused. I love the universe that Mr. Kent has created with the exception of one thing…

Where my girls at?????

Again, this story suffers from an extreme lack of estrogen. I guess that with so many clones, there isn’t as much of a need for procreation which has perhaps lowered the birthrate in the galaxy? I don’t know. I’m speculating. There is a real, living, breathing, talking female in the last 1/3 of the book but I found her to be unsatisfactory as a character.

And this might be spoilerific, just so ya know.

My problem with her is that she’s a love interest who belongs to a society of religious people who don’t take advice when someone trustworthy says “Oh hey, I think that the military are coming to exterminate you.” and they’re like “It’s ok because God will protect us.”. So, unless Mr. Kent decides to surprise me (and I kind of have the feeling that he won’t with this part) I think that she’ll end up being killed with her kin which will spur the main character on to great feats of heroics as he’ll have lost everything that he loved etc etc…

I think that my biggest problem with not having any interesting females in this story is how it makes me feel when I read it. I love the story and the main character but as I read I know that I am not the demographic for which this series was written.

It makes me really sad and I feel left out. Sort of like being the last person picked for dodgeball in gym class back in school. WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME, STEVEN L KENT????

I’m really hooked on the stories though, so I’ll probably carry on reading them. I want to read what happens with this woman and find out if I’m right or if I’ll be surprised.

Oh, and if you’ve read the next book, please refrain from spoiling it for me. Thanks! 🙂

 

The Clone Republic

Titan Books 2013

Nutshell blurb: The story takes place in 2508 when humans have colonised the six arms of the Milky Way. Humans have begun creating clones and raising them in ‘orphanages’ to be ultimate soldiers. Our hero is raised amongst them and this is the story of his military career.

This book is pretty fun and I enjoyed it. For the most part. Last week, I mentioned that I’m having an issue with books that begin a series and the slowness of their take off. The same goes for this book. A lot happened. There were a lot of missions and a lot of introspection about why the world is the way it is but I found that the story lacked focus. I couldn’t quite work out what it was leading up to and then it ended very abruptly. It was quite obvious that it was setting the scene for the next book.

Another thing that this book lacked was the inclusion of any interesting females. It’s entirely possible for me to read and enjoy books that don’t feature women in them, but I felt the exclusion very keenly. Apparently, women have no place in the future as far as this story is concerned. I don’t mean for that to sound like a harsh criticism of the story, but I feel that it would have been more interesting to see females portrayed as more than just a bit of fun for marines who are off-duty and vacationing in Hawaii.

One of the things that I really liked about it were the clones. They were bred to not know that they’re clones. They all look the same, but the way their brains are engineered makes them see each other differently. They even see themselves differently when they look in the mirror. This was done on purpose in order to keep the clones from one day rebelling against humans. They are also programmed to go into cardiac arrest if they ever realise that they are clones. Again to prevent an uprising.

Overall, I found the story to be pretty fast-paced (even if it was a bit unfocused) and the main character was interesting. I definitely want to read the second book to see if I’m correct in my assumption that this book was setting the scene for subsequent books.

Mouse Guard: The Black Axe

Titan Books 2013

This book was another Christmas gift from my beloved hubby. I bought the other two Mouse Guard books years ago and fell in love with them.

This is another case where a graphic novel has swept me away with its beauty and charm. I want more. I don’t want to live in a world where there are ONLY three Mouse Guard books.

Ok, that’s a little bit dramatic but these books are gorgeous. They feature mice, ferrets and other woodland creatures in their own little medieval setting. These mice are fierce. And honorable. And they carry swords.

As the title of this book suggests, this is the story of the Black Axe who features as a legend in the first two books. This is the story of how he came to be.

I found this story far deeper and more heart-rending than the first two and I felt a bit sad when I finished it. (Not just because I didn’t want it to end, although I did feel a bit sad because of that.) There was so much pain, sacrifice and loss in this story and the accompanying illustrations made it even more poignant.

I would say that if you’re going to read this, skip the introduction as there’s a spoiler in there. It kind of ticked me off to read that before starting the story. I hate spoilers with so much passion. Darn you, Terry Jones!

This book is amazing and one that I’ll read over and over again.

The Martian War

Titan Books 2012

Hello, my friends. Guess what! I’ve got a book to talk about. Wooooooooooooooo! It’s about time. It took me 10 days to read it, which is unheard of for me. I can usually read two books in that time. I say this because I’ve noticed that it’s a much different experience when a book is spread out over time rather than reading it all within a few days. This book features a lot of action, so spreading out over almost two weeks meant that my experience was a bit choppy.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed it immensely. I picked this up at the library because of the cover. (Yes, I’m one of those people.) I brought it home without realising that I already own a book by Kevin J Anderson called Captain Nemo: The Adventures of a Dark Genius. Once I figured this out, I became even more excited about this book. He’s a fantastic author!

He certainly didn’t disappoint.

Nutshell blurb: The year is 1884 and a martian crash lands in the Sahara desert and is intercepted by Dr. Moreau and Professor Lowell. H.G. Wells, his girlfriend and his professor must try to stop a martian invasion. 

This takes place before The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. What I loved about this book was that it felt like old-school pulp science fiction. I also loved that it paid almost no attention to the science part of sci-fi. People could walk on the moon and Mars without wearing space gear and there were magic crystals owned by the Martians which allowed the holder to see the red planet whilst they were on Earth and allowed the Martians to spy on Earth from Mars to gauge our defences. The moon is inhabited by a race of Selenites who have been kidnapped by the Martians and pressed into service on Mars as slaves.

The characters were fantastic. Wells’ girlfriend, Jane, was a pretty awesome 19th century chick. She jumped into the action with gusto and often took the lead when combating the Martians. Dr. Moreau was creepy as hell, as is to be expected, but his actions were prompted by a need to further scientific study, which made him pretty interesting.

I loved this book. It was so much fun. If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time, you’ll know that I’m a woman of action. I love to read about how people get through conflict and I especially love it when mild-mannered, bookish types end up kicking butt and saving the world. Perhaps it’s a bit of insight into my own personality and the type of person I would want to be in such a situation.

Also, the book has dialogue like this:

“Don’t lose our advantage, Mr. Wells,” Huxley said. “Move forward with the proper balance of caution and panicked haste.”

I have so much love for this book. And yes, I realise how many times I’ve said ‘love’ in this post. I regret nothing.

On a personal note, many of you know that I’ve been studying for an exam for work all month. Well, I took it yesterday morning and tanked it big time. It was really disappointing as I studied really hard for it (and gave up so much reading to do so!). But I have a newfound sense of freedom and am back to reading two books at a time and will hopefully be back on track soon.

Also, we’ve found a new flat and are moving into it on Tuesday so there might be a slight gap in my posts, but I’ll do my best to catch up soon. Thank you so much for reading!

Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles

Titan Books 2011

“I own I might have twirled my moustache. I know it’s a tiresome old look-at-me-I’m-a-roué stage gesture, but -dash it- I’ve got a moustache (a big one too), and it’s there for the twirling…If you don’t twirl the ‘tache then, you might as well not have whiskers at all.”

I must admit that I’ve only read two other books by Kim Newman so far (the other one being Anno Dracula) but I am totally on the verge of going into fangirl mode. I love this guy. Mr. Newman’s books are witty and just plain fun.

In Professor Moriarty, we follow the exploits of Sebastian “Basher” Moran as told by himself in journal format. Recruited by Moriarty, he is, essentially, a paid assassin.

The thing I love the most about this book is that it’s told from the point of view of the villain. Or rather, his henchman. Moran is a terrible person. He kills for sport (both animals and humans), he gambles and he chases women with no actual feelings for them beyond the physical. He’s repulsive. Yet, I couldn’t help but root for him and when he got into his inevitable scrapes, I didn’t actually want him to die. The fact that the entire book is narrated by him gives us insight into his personality and makes him somewhat human. Partially, at least.

His first assignment from Moriarty was to assassinate a man whom we might consider a “good guy”. A good ‘ol do-gooder cowboy from the wild west with a woman and child to protect. This was where things got awkward. I cringed, knowing it was going to be a case of only one or the other surviving. Since it was the beginning of the book and we were effectively in Moran’s journal, I was reasonably sure that he wouldn’t be killed off. I steeled myself for the inevitable and was surprised by the outcome. I won’t spoil it for you, but I will say that Mr. Newman kept me guessing until the end.

I was quite pleased to find out that Sherlock Holmes wasn’t mentioned until the last 30 pages of the book or so. I must confess that I’m not actually a Sherlock fan. I’ve only read one Sherlock book many years ago and it just didn’t interest me.

It’s quite possible that this book could be riddled with references to various Sherlock Holmes books/cases, but I would have no idea. I was able to enjoy this book thoroughly even though I possess little to no knowledge of Sherlock lore.

The one thing (and it’s a very small thing) that I didn’t like about this book were the end notes. Perhaps these contained references to the Sherlock lore which eludes me. I don’t know. I didn’t read them. When I’m doing research, I’m happy to read end notes and footnotes but I find it to be very jarring in a novel. When I’m reading, I don’t want to know that the author exists. For me, a story should be captivating and all-consuming. I’m all about escapism. I don’t want anything to interrupt the flow. In fact, I’ve been told (by a highly reliable source) that when I’m nearing the end of a book, I tend to shoot eye darts at people who try to talk to me. It’s probably true…

My point is that I don’t like distractions when I’m reading and certainly not from the author.

Overall, I can say that I have nothing but love for this book. Fun, action-y with no silly love triangles. I’m pretty easy to please.