(revisited) Review - Old Man's War (OMW #1) by John Scalzi

I read Old Man's War [US] [UK] a number of years ago, back in 2008 or 9 and I just now jumped back into the world with The Ghost Brigades. Before that period of time, I'd considered myself a fantasy/science fiction fan and I thought I was actually relatively well-read in the genre. I'd read Tolkien, Feist, Eddings, Card, Herbert, and a bunch more.

In 2008, I had a bit of a rude awakening when I started to become active (okay that's putting it lightly, "obsessive" is the word we want) in the genre and in online forums. I scoured "best of," "top 10," and even "top 100" lists and started a list of books that I found consistently on just about every list. Sffworld.com had (and still does) a great thread where everyone on the forum posted their top 10 favorite books so I did the same - I wrote down the books that commonly popped (almost wrote pooped :)) up.

Suddenly I was terribly underread and I wanted to read everything immediately. As some of you may have already discovered, it's not only an uphill battle, but just about impossible to read EVERYTHING there is (check out this article, it will make you feel better).

So my solution was to read one book of just about every series I could get my hands on just to get a feel and to be able to better participate in online discussions. In a way this solution backfired on me, since I now have about a million books to read and I've started so many series that I now have to reread books to figure out what's going on. But it also let me find out about some great authors who I wouldn't have tried otherwise.

I'm sure I would have read Scalzi eventually, but Old Man's War was one of these. Four years later, I finally got to the sequel and I plan on reading The Last Colony soon in preparation for The Human Division.

Anyway, this was a long way to introduce the short review I put up for Old Man's War on Goodreads all those years ago:

This book was quite the page-turner. It was really enjoyable, great premise, loved the ideas. I wasn't a huge fan of the cussing and that's why I put this book on my "Liked, not loved" shelf. It just didn't make sense to me. These are 75-year-olds. I just thought it wasn't very believable, but that's probably just me. Other than that, this was a very entertaining, quick-paced and fun book.

Hopefully my reviews have improved a bit, but probably not. I obviously hadn't heard of Sh*t My Dad Says at the time either.

4 out of 5 Stars (highly recommended)

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Hope you've been meaning to catch up on your Arthur C. Clarke reading because that's the majority of the deals today. Also Vonnegut, which you should always have room on your shelf for.

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Review - The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

The press release proclaims The 5th Wave [US] [UK] to be the next Hunger Games and though it may yet be so (only $750,000 is going into marketing!), I wasn't fully convinced. My thoughts on this book run the gamut of ratings. Here's why: (and there's no coincidence there are 5 waves and 5 stars)

5 Stars

Wow, great start. I just picked it up for a second to get a feel and 100 pages later, I was hooked. Aliens come to earth only to begin to wipe humanity out? Great, this hasn't been done for a while at least not this way.

The aliens, or Others, start killing off humanity through waves as you may have already guessed from the title. The first, they cut off the power. Next, they wipe out all the coastal cities through tidal waves since most large cities are situated near large bodies of water. Then, pestilence and disease and lastly silencers or assassins. Very cool, I want more!

I was even up all night that first night because my mind wouldn't let go of the concept. I was afraid for the aliens in my room one moment, trying to survive on my own in the wilderness the next. There's no way this book could let me down right? ...erm...

4 Stars

It's a brutal reality, people have to survive by whatever means necessary and we're told over and over - trust no one! It's a great tagline, but it begins to break down because when you, as a reader, don't trust anyone, it gets much harder to be surprised. I will say, I never saw what actually does happen coming.

3 Stars

Things are still going well, but suddenly, some unnecessary discussions of current topics pulled me out of the story. Both times, they got me thinking about things that didn't matter at all in the context of the story and really didn't need to be there.

Also, this says this book is for 12 and up, but you better believe I won't be letting my 12-year-olds read it with the language it has. I'm not so oblivious that I don't think they don't hear it all the time, but I disagree with the marketing that says this is for 12-year-olds when it barely makes the PG-13 standards. This is more a personal pet peeve and doesn't take much away from the book.

2 Stars

Something that might have been the reason this book didn't completely work for me, but was definitely was something I couldn't get over. You see, there are only so many people who survived the plague. Individuals were lucky to have their immune system overcome the plague, but it's rare and whole families surviving is almost unheard of. We're getting into spoiler territory so I'll warn you here:

spoiler: Our main protagonist, Cassie, and her father and brother all survive. All but their mother who succumbs to the plague. Almost a complete family and they almost all survive. Everyone else has to figure things out on their own, but they get to rely on each other and especially their father to help them survive.

Skipping over a couple parts, the father agrees to let the younger brother, Sam, who's five-years-old go with some military guys and stay behind because the guys have said they don't have enough room. The father has a hard time with it of course, be he eventually trusts them.

This just wouldn't happen. There's no way. It's rare enough that an almost-complete family could still be together, but for the military to require them to separate would be a huge enough sign that something fishy's going on.
/spoiler

And thus begins where I started to question if I am not the right market for this book. I have three kids and thinking of this situation from this perspective, makes this such an impossible choice it's not even funny. This is something I actually haven't had to think in any previous YA book I've read, especially The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, and I think that's a testament to why they did so well.

1 Star

The love story. Plain and simple, this fast-paced and entertaining novel gets bogged down for love. There are two rather lengthy sections (of 13) devoted to this and each time, all I wanted to do was read something else.



In addition, there's one big "show up" moment toward the end where everyone happens to be at the same place at the same time, but for which an explanation is sorely lacking. 

Conclusion

It's sad because The 5th Wave started out so well. Aliens take over and start wiping humanity out by waves. First the power, then tidal waves, then pestilence and disease, and then assassins. Now it's the fifth wave and what is it? A boring romance? That will definitely wipe this reader out.

3 out of 5 Stars (cutting it down the middle)

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher.

Ender's Game Trailer

I don't show many trailers, but I've been waiting for this one for quite a while. I'm attempting to keep expectations reasonable, but I don't think that's reasonably possible.