Requiem, by Lauren Oliver (2013)

Goodreads

My rating:  6 out of 10 stars
*language, sexual inference

To check this read out at NOLS, click HERE!

Compound, by S. A. Bodeen (2008)

Goodreads

My rating:  7 out of 10 stars
*creepy parts about "Supplements"

To check this read out from NOLS, click HERE!

The Host, by Stephenie Meyer (2008)

Goodreads

My rating:  6 out of 10 stars
*long, long, long

To check this book out at NOLS, click HERE!

Dust Lands Book 2: Rebel Heart, by Moira Young (2012)

It's late afternoon.  Since morning, the trail's been following a line of light towers.  That is, the iron remains of what used to be light towers, way back in Wrecker days, time out of mind.  

Picking up the story where Blood Red Road left off, Jack is on his way to tell Ike's girl the bad news.  He's headed to a tavern in the storm belt called The Lost Cause.  All he wants to do is tell Molly, and then get back to Saba in Big Water.

The Tonton used to be dirty, rough, violent thugs, but now they are clean cut, organized.  This makes Jack feel uneasy.

It means that the enemy have changed their game.

The Tonton follow the Pathfinder and work to make his vision for New Eden come true.  Young, healthy adults are branded on their forehead to populate and New Eden.  These landgrabbers are called Stewards of the Earth, miracles to heal the earth.  Everyone else is eliminated or enslaved.   Homesteads are forcibly taken, family members are murdered.  

Saba wants to meet Jack in Big Water, but things don't go as planned as they start their journey.  First a disturbing message from Maeve from Jack.  Then Saba learns that the Pathfinder put a price on her head.  She is haunted by the ghost of Epona.  And she has an unusual attraction to the Pathfinder, Seth.

Read Rebel Heart to find out what happens to Jack and Saba.  Even though there are parts of the book that aren't ever answered, like when Ariel tried to help Saba with her demons, it's still a good read.

Rating:  6 out of 10 stars
* inferences of rape, prostitution, sexual references, language

To check this read out at NOLS, click HERE!

Reached, by Ally Condie (2012)

Every morning, the sun comes up and turns the earth red, and I think:  This could be the day when everything changes.  Maybe today the Society will fall.  Then night comes again and we're all still waiting.  But I know the Pilot's real.

The third book in the Matched series, Reached concludes the story of Cassia, Ky and Xander.  Xander is an official, a physic.  Cassia is a sorter.  And Ky is a pilot for the Rising.  They wait for the Pilot's voice to start the Rising.

 

This is it.

 

The Rising said it would look like this.

Reached was a solid conclusion to the love triangle of Cassia, Xander, and Ky.  I loved the poetry, art, and descriptive language throughout the book, and even though the first half was a bit slow, I really enjoyed the second half.  I liked seeing how questions were answered and what happened to each character.

Rating:  8 out of 10 stars

To check this book out at NOLS, click HERE!

Unwholly, by Neal Shusterman (2012)

He's fighting a nightmare when they come for him.

Five years later Neal Shusterman offers the sequel to Unwind.  Three characters from Unwind continue their fight in Unwholly, while a few new characters join in the plight.  

Starkey is a stork and his parents want him to be unwound.

"Mason Michael Starkey, by the signing of this order, your parents and/0r legal guardians have retroactively terminated your tenure, backdated to six days postconception, leaving you in violation of Existential Code 390.  In light of this, you are hereby remanded to the California Juvenile Authority for summary division, also known as unwinding...Any rights previously granted to you by the county, state, or federal government as a citizen thereof are now officially and permanently revoked."

One out of 2,000 teens between the ages of 13 and 17 will be unwound each year.

Unwholly follows the stories of Connor, Lev, Risa, Starkey, and Cam Comprix was they fight for their survival.  

Rating:  6 out of 10 stars
*language, sexual inference, abortion, religion, abandonment

To check this book out at NOLS, click HERE!

The Kill Order, by James Dashner (2012)

Teresa looked at her best friend and wondered what it would be like to forget him.

Thirteen years before Thomas and Teresa entered the Maze, Mark lives in a world that has been ravaged by heat and radiation.  Living in an encampment in the Appalachian Mountains in western North Carolina, Mark and his friends have had to fight to survive the year of death and terror.  Life is not easy for the survivors.

The sun flares struck with little warning.

Mark and his best friend, Trina, try their best to be happy and make each day count, but the memories always keep coming back.

The memories.   They never let him go, not even for a half hour.  They always had to rush back in, bringing all the horror.

The Kill Order tells what happened with the sun flares struck the planet.  The intense heat and radiation.  How lucky Mark and Trina were to be underground on the subtrans.  How lucky they were to meet Alec and Lana.

At the camp, everything changed in an instant.

But their laughter was cut off by a strange sound.  Something Mark hadn't heard in over a year, and he hadn't expected to hear it ever again.

The sounds of engines in the sky.

This is the first sign of advanced technology since the sun flares.  The Post-Flares Coalition (PFC) delivers supplies to Asheville, but this berg is unmarked.  Five people wearing bulky rubber suits emerge from the berg, each holding a black tube like a gun.  They spray the survivors with darts.  Some are killed immediately.  Others die a much more painful death.

Alec and Mark make their way to the berg to learn more about this attack.  Sealed boxes with warning symbols.

Virus VC321xb47

Highly Contagious

24 Darts, Extreme Caution

Mark and Alec meet Deedee, a young child who has been abandoned by her village after they were attacked by a similar berg.  She had been shot in the arm, but everyone left her there, alone.  She is immune to the virus.

The Killing Order is an exciting read to learn about the devastation after the sun flares and about the virus, later called the Flare.  Filled with suspense, this was one of my favorites in this series.  

Rating:  10 out of 10 stars

To check this book out at NOLS, click HERE!

The other books in this series:

Prized, by Caragh M. O'Brien (2011)

*Plot spoiler if you haven't read Birthmarked! *

She grabbed the hilt of her knife and scrambled backward into the darkness, holding the baby close in her other arm.

Gaia Stone escaped from the Enclave and Wharfton with her infant sister, Maya.  She has walked for days, miles in the wastelands, and now she is out of formula for Maya.  The baby is dying.  They are rescued and taken her to Sylum.  

Life in Sylum is difficult for Gaia to get used to.  There are laws that she must obey, such as men and women are not allowed to kiss or touch.  Mlady Olivia is the Matrarch, the leader of Sylum.  

"You'll listen to me, Mlass Gaia," the Matrarch said, and her voice had dropped to a honey-smooth alto.  "There is only one leader here.  One.  And I speak for everyone.  You will learn to obey our rules, or you will be sent back to the wasteland to die."

She also learns that she has a decision to make.

"Staying in Sylum is like coming through a one-way gate.  You can enter, but anyone who tries to leave Sylum dies.  We don't understand fully why this happens, but we find their bodies."

Even though she and her sister have been rescued, Gaia learns that she's committed a crime according to the laws of Sylum.  The punishment is overwhelming.

"Then from now on, we will consider your sister to be a gift to Sylum.  A small and precious gift.  What's more, in light of your gift, and depending on your compliance during your probation, we may pardon your crime." 

"My crime?"

"You knowingly, deliberately put your sister in deadly harm."

Gaia decides to stay in Sylum to be as close to Maya as possible.  As she becomes more familiar with the town, she discovers an unsettling truth: there aren't many women.  Only one in ten babies born in Sylum is a girl; the last girl born here was two years ago.

Two thousand people live in Sylum; 1,800 are men.  Out of the male population, only 400 -500 are in the pool: those who are eligible to marry. 

Gaia's skills as a midwife become invaluable, and she learns more about Sylum.  If life wasn't complicated enough, two brothers attempt to capture Gaia's affection.  And then she finds someone from her past.

Prized is an exciting read as you find out the secrets about Sylum, and how Gaia overcomes all of the obstacles she must face.

Rating:  10 out of 10 stars

*pregnancy issues, deliberate miscarriage

To check this book out at NOLS, click HERE!

Next:

Birthmarked, by Caragh M. O'Brien (2009)

In the dim hovel, the mother clenched her body into one final, straining push, and the baby slithered out into Gaia's ready hands.


For years 16-year old Gaia Stone knew she would be a midwife.  Gaia learned all of her skills from her mother, the only midwife in Western Sector Three of Wharfton.  Everyone serves the Enclave, and midwives are required to advance the first three babies born each month.  Advancing means that the babies are taken from their birth families immediately after they're born and taken to live inside the Enclave, a life of privilege and security.

"You can't," she whispered.  "You can't take my baby.  She's mine."

"I have to," Gaia said, backing away.  I'm sorry.

"But you can't," the woman gasped.

"You'll have others.  You'll get to keep some.  I promise."

"Your baby will be well cared for," she said, using the phrases she'd learned.  "You've provided a great service to the Enclave, and you will be compensated."

Suddenly Gaia's parents are taken to the Enclave for questioning, and Gaia is ordered to take up her mother's duties as midwife and serve the Enclave in Western Sector Three.


Gaia has never questioned the Enclave, never worried about the monthly quota of babies.

No deformed babies were ever advanced, for any reason.  For Gaia, one accident had guaranteed a life of poverty outside the wall, with no education, no chance for good food or leisure or easy friendships, while the girls her age who's been advanced were now in the Enclave, with boundless electricity, food and education...She would make sure that the babies in her care had the opportunities she'd never had, those lucky three every month.

Gaia learns that her parents are in the Enclave prison, accused of being traitors.  Gaia is determined to do whatever she needs to do to help her parents escape from the Enclave.


Birthmarked is filled with twists and turns, a code that needs to be cracked, promises that need to be kept, and romance.


To check this book out at NOLS, click HERE!

Rating:  7 out of 10 stars
* mild language, sexual inferences


Next:

The Drowned Cities, by Paolo Bacigalupi (2012)

Chains clanked in the darkness of the holding cells.


Companion to Ship Breaker, The Drowned Cities begins from Tool's point of view.  Tool is a half-man, a fabrication of human, dog, hyena and tiger.  The perfect war machine; a creature created to kill.


After the peacekeepers from China fled the Drowned Cities, the war lords took over.  The various armies are made up of children, war maggots.  Drowned Cities is filled with fighting sanctions: Army of God, Tulane Company, Freedom Militia, United Patriot Army.


Mahlia's father was a member of the peacekeepers from China.  Her father was Chinese, her mother was pure Drowned Cities.  Now she is a castoff.  Orphaned.  Unwanted.  Unlucky.  Unloved.

Orphans like Mahlia, who had shown up in Banyan Town with a chopped-off right hand, bleeding, dying for help.  No one wanted a war maggot in their midst.  It meant they had to decide one way or another about a peacekeeper's castoff, lying in the dirt in the middle of their town.

Dr. Mahfouz took Mahlia in, cared for her, and taught her how to doctor the sick and injured. He also took in Mouse, a farm boy whose family was killed in the war.  A boy who bravely stood up for Mahlia when the Army of God was severing her hand, threatening to kill her.

"The thing I keep wondering about is what was wrong with you, girl?  How come the peacekeepers didn't want you?  If the peacekeepers didn't care enough to take you when they went back to China, why in the name of the Fates would we want you, either?"

The situation in Banyan Town changes suddenly and Mahlia and Mouse are faced with a difficult decision.  Their choice carries serious consequences; one is taken prison by merciless soldier boys, the other has an impossible task.  And Tool, the bioengineered war beast is forced to confront his own fears and find a place where he can belong.   


The Drowned Cities is a fast-paced, well-written novel.  It will you keep you on the edge of your seat wondering what will happen next in an impossible situation.


Rating:  9 out of 10 stars
*language, violence


To check this book out at NOLS, click HERE!


Companion novel:

Insurgent, by Veronica Roth (2012)

** PLOT SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN'T READ DIVERGENT!  **

I wake up with his name in my mouth.

Starting exactly where Divergent left off, Tris is filled with guilt about Will's death.  Tris, Tobias and other members of Dauntless are staying at the Amity headquarters.  Amity is offering safe houses for members of all factions, even for some Erudite who attacked Abnegation.

Tobias' father, Marcus, knows secret information that will change everything.

Tris will do anything to find the truth.

I know this information will change everything.  Everything we have done, and everything we are about to do.

Insurgent is a thrill sequel to Veronica Roth's first novel, Divergent.  It's exciting, breath-taking, and well written.

Rating:  10 out of 10 stars
This book is not at NOLS...yet!

The Zombie Autopsies: Secret Notebooks from the Apocalypse, by Steven C. Schlozman, MD (2011)

The enclosed documents are highly classified.  They are exact replicas of the recently recovered handwritten notes of Dr. Stanley Blum, the last scientist sent to the United Nations Sanctuary for the study of ANSD and "zombie" biology.  After careful examination, World Health Organization and United Nations officials have reason to believe that these writings may contain ground-breaking data regarding the nature of the ANSD pathogen.  Furthermore, it is possible that this information represents both a key to a viable cure, as well the most definitive evidence to date that the ANSD virus was artificially manufactured - human-made - and therefore did not occur naturally.  The importance of these potential conclusions cannot be overstated.

One-third of humanity has perished from the plague.  Imagine 2.3 billion people have died.  All attempts at a vaccine or cure have failed.  Experts estimate that civilization can only last another ten years before total destruction.

ANDS, Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome, is present on every major land mass.  Most of the world is under martial law.  The disease is indestructible, untreatable. 

In July 2012 the United Nations set up a study site to study ANSD.  Those who live in the bunkers call it the Crypt.  Three months later the UN received it's last message from the Crypt from Dr. Blanca Gutierrez, resident microbiologist.

Status...gent.  Hype........new.  Diff...virus.

Vaccine...ble

Dr. Blum's orders were to record the findings of the team.  Members of the team left on separate transports, but only Dr. Blum arrived to the Crypts safely.  Only Dr. Blum's notes survived.

I'm writing this because I need to believe that there is hope.

Food has not been delivered for five days.  Water is scarce. 

Dr. Gutierrez still suspects an additional pathogen.

Something makes them live when they ought to die.  Something makes them eat when they ought to stop.  Something makes them able to tolerate some of the worst infections on Earth and keep going.  If this something is one thing, one pathogen, one protein, one change in the way we understand the zombie sickness, then maybe we could take that one thing away.  Maybe we could treat it, vaccinate against it, get rid of it.  Maybe we could cure it.  Cure us.

The Zombie Autopsies is for the extreme zombie enthusiast.  There are a lot of medical descriptions and illustrations to logically explain zombies.  This book is not for the light-hearted...

Rating:  6 out of 10 stars
* Language

To check this book out at NOLS, click HERE!

Pandemonium, by Lauren Oliver (March 2012)

** PLOT SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN'T READ DELIRIUM!

Alex and I are lying together on a blanket in the backyard of 37 Brooks.  The trees look larger and darker than usual.  The leaves are almost black, knitted so tightly together they blot out the sky.

With Alex's help, Lena escaped Portland, Maine; Alex did not.  Lena found herself 60 miles southwest of Portland, near Rochester, New Hampshire.  She's half-dead, fevered, bruised and broken.  

Lena is saved by a group living in a free zone.  Raven, now 21 years old, came to live in the Wilds when she was 15.  

"Everything you were, the life you had, the people you knew...dust...There is no before.  There is only now, and what comes next." 

Lena finds herself lost without Alex.

Love, the deadliest of all deadly things.

Love, it kills you.

Alex.

Both when you have it...

Alex.

And when you don't.

Alex.

Overcome with grief, she struggles to figure out how to live in this new life without Alex. 

Alex was the one who understood things here.  He could have built up this collapsed street for me, turned it into a place of sense and order.  He was going to lead me through the wilderness.  With him, I would have been okay.

Lena soon finds herself in Brooklyn, New York.  She is now Lena Morgan Jones.  Her mission:  watch and blend in with the Deliria-Free America (DFA).  She is told to keep a close eye on Julian Fineman, son of DFA founder Thomas Fineman.  At the March 23 rally, Lena receives strict orders to watch Julian.

"Don't take your eyes off him, no matter what...

No matter what, okay?"

Lena is captured by Scavengers, people who don't stand for anything, people who want to destroy everything.  They also capture Julian.  Lena and Julian are forced to work together to survive.  Secrets are revealed.

You.  Must.  Escape.

Pandemonium is even more exciting than Delirium!  In the end, Lena is faced with a shocking revelation.  Unfortunately, readers will have to wait until Lauren Oliver finishes the third book. 

Rating:  10 out of 10 stars
* Language

Not available at NOLS...yet!!

Delirium, by Lauren Oliver (2011)

It's been sixty-four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since the scientists perfected a cure.  Everyone else in my family has had the procedure already.  My older sister, Rache, has been disease free for nine years now.  She's been safe from love for so long, she says she can't even remember its symptoms.  I'm scheduled to have my procedure in exactly ninety-five days, on September 3.  My birthday.

Seventeen-year old Magdalena Ella Haloway lives with her aunt.  She shares a room with her cousin's children, Grace and Jenny.  All of the girls have lost their parents.

Lena is nervous about her upcoming evaluations.  Her senior year is almost over, and the evaluation is the final test.  The academic assessors analyze her strength and weaknesses, assigning her to a major and a school.  The evaluation determines her list of 4 - 5 approved matches.

It's critical that I get paired with someone good.  Jenny and Grace are years away from their procedures.  If I marry well, in a few years it will mean extra money for the family.  It might also make the whispers go away, singsong snatches that four years after the scandal still seem to follow us wherever we go, like the sound of rustling leaves carried on the wind: 

Sympathizer.  Sympathizer.  Sympathizer.

Lena's best friend Hana begins to ask some serious questions.  Questions that could get her into trouble.  She's stopped caring about school, started talking back to her teachers.

"You know you can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes, right?" she whispers, and her voice is hoarse, as though she's just been crying.

Lena disagrees.  She's glad the choice will be made for her. 

As Lena goes through her evaluation, she can't help but think of her mother.  Despite three separate procedures, her mother remained uncured.  When she was six-yeras old, Lena was told her mother committed suicide. 

I remember only the hot pressure of her fingers on my face in the nighttime and her last whispered words to me.  I love you. Remember.  They cannot take it.

Suddenly, things begin to change for Lena.  Her evaluation is disrupted by Invalids, people who live in the Wilds - the unregulated land that exists between recognized cities and towns.  They don't see love as a disease.  And they aren't supposed to exist.

This doesn't make any sense, but as long as no one mentions the Invalids, everyone's happy.  We're not supposed to know about them.  They're not even supposed to exist; supposedly, all the people who live in the Wilds were destroyed over fifty years ago, during the blitz.

Delirium is an exciting read that reminded me of many other books, like Uglies, Matched, The Giver, Divergent, Forest of Hands and Teeth.  The imagery is gorgeous and it's an entertaining read!

Rating:  8 out of 10 stars
*Mild language

To check this book out at NOLS, click HERE!

The second book is:

The Lost Code: Book One of the Atlanteans, by Kevin Emerson (June 2012)

The morning after I arrived at Camp Eden, I drowned for the first time.

Owen Parker has always felt out of place, odd man left out.  He is from Yellowstone Hub, and he took the MagTrain to what used to be Minnesota because his dad entered him into a drawing to win a spot at Camp Eden, a summer camp in the EdenWest Biodome.

He kept saying how a month at Camp Eden was a month I didn't have to spend scraping by out at Hub, a month when I didn't have to help him with his breathing issues, the nebulizer packs and the beige phlegm that never seemed to get all the way down the drain, a month when I could have fun like people used to.

The camp used to be called Camp Aasgard.  Lake Eden was once part of Lake Superior, and this site has been a summer camp for 200 years.  Viking ruins were rumored to have been found here. 

There used to be 10 billion people on Earth, but 60% of the population was lost during the Great Rise, when global warming and the climate spun out of control.  Wars, plague and chaos have followed in its wake.  Now the population lives in soaring temperatures and the ozone is depleted.  The only safe havens are the thin rim of land in the Habitable Zone and the five Eden domes.

Life in the Eden West biodome looks idyllic.  The temperature remains at 22-degrees Celsius, the ideal summer temperature before the Great Rise.  After 15 years of construction, the dome was completed in 2056.  It is 6-kilometers in diameter, home to 200,000 people.  But there are rumors that the Eden domes are failing. 

Owen, awkward and prone to injuries, drowns on his first full day at Camp Eden.  Instead of dying, he sees a siren in the water.

-You are not at the end, it said.
-I'm dead, I thought back.
-No.  This is just the beginning...Find me.  In the temple beneath the Aquinara.

-What is oldest will be new.  What was lost shall be found.
-What?
-Find me, Owen.

The life guard, Lilly Ishani, saves Owen from the water.  She tells him not to trust anyone.

Her gaze was still so odd...Then she quickly leaned in.  "No matter what happens in the next couple days, don't tell them anything.  And especially don't tell them how long you were down there.

Later Owen wakes to bandages around his throat, but he can't remember getting cut or scratched while he drowned. 

I ran my fingers over the bandages.  Hotter.  And I was starting to have this weird urge.  I didn't get what it was, I just knew that I couldn't lie there anymore.  I had to get up.  Had to do something.  It was almost like I wasn't in control of myself.

Owen suddenly finds himself rapidly changing, emotionally and physically.  Are there others who are like him?  What has caused the changes?  Who is the siren?  And what is EdenWest hiding?  Owen follows his instincts and learns the truth about who he really is. 

The Lost Code is a SUPER-exciting read!  I hope Kevin Emerson is busy writing the second book, because once this book hits the shelves, readers are going to demand book two immediately!

Rating:  10 out of 10 stars
*mild language, mild romance

Legend, by Marie Lu (2011)

My mother thinks I'm dead.

Daniel Alton Wing, better known as Day, is one of the Republic of America's most-wanted criminals.  JumboTrons publisize his details, but the Republic has no idea what he looks like. 

They don't seem to know much of anything about me, except that I'm young and that when they run my fingerprints they don't find a match in their databases.  That's why they hate me, why I'm not the most dangerous criminal in the country, but the most wanted.  I make them look bad.

The plague has hit the Lake sector.  Day's family lives in the Lake sector.  Only his older brother, John, knows Day is alive.  His younger brother will be 10 years old in a couple of months.  Then he'll have to take the Trial, the test that Day failed.

It's almost always the slum-sector kids who fail.  If you're in this unlucky category, the Republic sends officials to your family's home.  They make your parents sign a contract giving the government full custody over you.  They say that you've been sent away to the Republic's labor camps and that your family will not see you again.

Day knows that this is a lie.

After the soldiers inspect Day's home, they paint a big red X on the door.  Someone in Day's family has the plague.

Fifteen-year old June Iparis is one of the Republic's top soldiers.  June is the only person in the entire Republic with a perfect 1500 score on the Trial.  She was 12-years old, she started her studies at Drake University.  She lives with her older brother, Captain Metias Iparis. 

Suddenly Metias is killed.  The suspect:  Day.  June vows to avenge her brother's death.

I will hunt you down.  I will scour the streets of Los Angeles for you.  Search every street in the Republic if I have to.  I will trick you and deceive you, lie, cheat and steal to find you, tempt you out of your hiding place, and chase you until you have nowhere else to run.  I make you this promise:  your life is mine.

Legend is a fast-paced exciting read!  If you enjoyed books like Hunger Games, Dark Life, Divergent, you'll enjoy this read!

Rating:  7 out of 10 stars
To check this book out at NOLS, click HERE!

Blood Red Road (Dust Lands #1), by Moira Young (2011)

Lugh got born first.  On midwinter Day when the sun hangs low in the sky.
Then me.  Two hours later.
That pretty much says it all.
Lugh goes first, always first, an I follow on behind.

Eighteen year old Lugh and Saba are twins.  With their pa and 9-year old sister, Emmi, the twins have spent their whole life in Silverlake, a dried-up wasteland ravaged by constant dustorms.  There hasn't been any rain for six months.

We bin watchin the land die, bit by bit.

The family is starving and Lugh wants to leave.

You aint really leavin, I says.

Ain't I?  There ain't no reason to stay.  I cain't jest sit around waitin to die.

Suddenly four armed men capture Lugh and take him away.  Saba's world is shattered and she embarks on a quest to get him back.  Not only does she learn that she's strong, she learns to trust others. 

Blood Red Road is an exciting start to the Dust Lands series.  If you like books like Hunger Games, Divergent, or Maze Runner, you'll love this read.

To check this book out at NOLS, click HERE!

Rating:  8 out of 10 stars
*mild language

Next in the series: