Attention Mister Rick Yancey,

I have kidnapped your review.  Your review is not harmed and shall be released as soon as you meet my demands.

In exchange for giving you back your review, which I am prepared to do, you will first need to provide for me:

1 copy of The 5th Wave #2 – undamaged, complete, unmarked (except for your signature or a stylized message to me).

This copy of The 5th Wave #2 must also contain certain characters unharmed and ready for me to snuggle them in my imagination.

Characters include:

Cassie – Because she’s badass

Zombie – Because he’s adorable.

Nugget – Don’t ever even think about hurting him.

Ringer – She is my hero.

The Silencer (I won’t mention its real name here so as not to spoil) – This character is essential.  Failure to provide this character will result in immediate disposal of your review.  I’m not even kidding.

You know a book is powerful when it begins with a strong image of how things are, and is then unafraid to in one quick motion, ruthlessly and thoroughly turn everything you as a reader have begun to accept as fact, on its head.

I unabashedly consider myself a prime plot-twist detector. I will see whats ahead when I’m reading, or I will call it out during movies with my friends, much to their annoyance. So when I heard that there was an obvious twist in this book I was kind of dreading it. Perhaps my internal detector was jammed, because I honestly did not see this one coming, which is really painful to admit because the signs were *there*. Not only there in fact, but everywhere. I’m glad it panned out that way for me though, because when it happened I got to feel the complete shock of reorientation. Regardless, I promise to revoke my self-placed title.

Dystopian novels disappoint me the most out of any other sub-genre. Arclight has to be one of my most anticipated books of 2013 and I was not disappointed. Despite the fairly predictable plot twist, Arclight does offer strong writing and imaginative creatures: The Fade. Which basically means this review will be a lovefest of all things Fade.

The strongest point in Arclight is without a doubt Josin’s writing style and her beautiful descriptions. Every scene was so visual in my head and this was so important because by only reading the blurb, it’s hard to understand what the book is really about. The world is so different and it’s covered in darkness. Josin slowly reveals to the reader how things came about while still maintaining some sort of ambiguity. I really think that is where a lot of dystopian novels fail to grab me. Some don’t seem to let the reader know anything about their world.

I’m not sure how to proceed with this review WITHOUT resorting to a shit ton of gifs. I just really feel like some kind of crazy wild action would better represent how I feel than words ever could.

I mean, I could say that The Eternity Cure is one badass tale that left me desperate for more because this story was fucking awesome.  Or I could just do this:

Which is, no joke, my exact facial expression upon finishing this book.  I think it actually stayed like that for a full two minutes.

I could tell you that Allison Sekemoto was such an unmitigated badass that I am prepared to lay my sword down at her badass feet and swear my fealty to her as the god of badass forever.  Or I could just do this:

See how much easier that is?  I can’t write this bloody review because I’m too busy stalking Julie Kagawa and thinking of ways to beg her to hurry up and give me the next book.

Requiem.  When all good things must come to an end.  A horrible, horrible end that didn’t do any justice to the series.  But an end nonetheless.  Requiem is like sitting down to a well-deserved, hot pie and relishing every bite until you get to the last one and die of poisoning without ever knowing why or how.  There was literally a moment when I got to the last few pages, realized there wasn’t any more and freaked out.  From enjoyment for insurmountable anger.

I am a solid believer that Lauren Oliver is a capable, talented author.  I also think she’s brave.  Not all authors risk venturing into unfamiliar territory.  Think how common it is for an author to be writing their fourth or fifth book in a series and starting spinoffs in the same world when even that gets old.  It’s clear from Delirium that Oliver was trying on something new. 

Steph, baby, honey-munchkin. You are going to love this one. I usually don’t do Dystopians much anymore. Steph still loves them though, so I’m kind of excited to see how she’ll feel about it. I didn’t know what to expect because I hadn’t loved Bracken’s previous work, Brightly Woven. Yet this book was getting rave reviews. All I can say is, my god that writer’s done her work. This was a massive improvement on both a technical level and story-telling level.

Ruby lives in a world where an entire generation of children spontaneously sprout super-human powers. This results in her being towed off to a concentration camp where she is raised under constant threat of death and inhumane conditions. But when Ruby breaks out of Thurmond, the Dystopian equivalent of an Auschwitz, she finds that life on the outside isn’t much better. She meets up with a group of kids and the adventure goes from there with a lovable cast of characters.

Prose is a very subjective thing.  What one reader finds to be beautifully written, another finds trite and overdone.  Is it excess, or great writing?  It all depends on your personal reading tastes and preferences.

I bring this up because Tahereh Mafi’s Shatter Me is a debut novel that is pushing those who read it to extreme opinions.  You apparently either think that it’s a great start for a promising new author, or you think that it’s a poorly written lump of ridiculous metaphors and horrid imagery.  It’s been interesting to see such conflicting reactions, and that’s the primary thing that drove me to pick this one up.

The other reason is that I’ve been wanting something similar in style to Daughter of Smoke and Bone.  Taylor won me over with her gorgeous prose, and I demand more!

Anyway, Shatter Me is a difficult book to review, because I can’t definitively choose a side. 

Sometimes reading dystopian YA can feel like diving into water with too strong a current. One minute you have a sense of what’s going on and the next you’re submerged headfirst in an authors attempt to make you understand all the shiny new rules of their universe, while simultaneously introducing you to characters at a pace too fast for you to even to begin to care.

The Darkest Minds avoids this problem entirely, with expert world-building and introductions. The dystopian world was fresh with new and interesting concepts, powers and diseases, societies, armies and leaders, vocabulary and technology and a rich history. There was so much going on that it treaded dangerously on the cusp of becoming overwhelming, but Bracken still managed to avoid this by dispensing information only when necessary, and keeping it well paced by surrounding it with delicious action. While I still dove into this book as I would a poorly written one, I found myself in clear water, wanting to swim deeper.

Taken is a really hard book for me to review because, first of all, it wasn’t really a bad book – it just wasn’t a book that I, personally, got. Also, Erin Bowman is simply delightful on twitter and a lot of fun to follow, so if you’re not already, then I highly suggest you do!

So I really wanted to like this one, but I just didn’t and the more I think about it, the less I like it. For me, the biggest problem was Gray, whose head we experience the world in. If you don’t like a protagonist in a novel that is narrated in the first person then that’s an immediate problem – one that is probably highly dependent on the individual reading. Gray just didn’t feel like a real character to me. It was hard to explain exactly what it was I didn’t like about his personality, but when I made a list of Gray’s characteristics: Angry, impulsive, curious – and realized that was all I could say about him, I figured that was a pretty good indication.

Marissa Meyer really shot me through the heart repeatedly with this one, but I don’t blame her, because I was bleeding love. Were those song references too cheesy for you? Perhaps you shouldn’t read this review. It’s going to get a very special brand of crazy (fangirl brand), very fast. You were warned.

Also, be warned that this review may contain spoilers for Cinder.

I adore this series. So very much. I was kind of concerned when I found out that the next installment of the Lunar Chronicles was going to begin from a new viewpoint, one that would take the narration so far away from the current action of Cinder’s own story.

My worries were entirely unwarranted however, because Meyer managed to pull off this change and still hold my interest for the entire story. I found that the story never dragged, even when I was being informed about small details, everything was told in such a way that the entire reading process was completely unburdened, even if there was a lull in the action.