Post-Apocalyptic |

Title: The Maze Runner

Rating:

Author: James Dashner

Published by: Delacorte Press

Publication Date: October 6th 2009

Pages: 378

Genres: Teen/YA Fiction/Dystopian/Adventure/Sci-fi/Post-Apocalyptic

Book Blurb: When the doors of the lift crank open, the only thing Thomas remembers is his first name. But he’s not alone. He’s surrounded by boys who welcome him to the Glade – a walled encampment at the centre of a bizarre and terrible stone maze. Like Thomas, the Gladers don’t know why or how they came to be there \- or what’s happened to the world outside. All they know is that every morning when the walls slide back, they will risk everything \- even the Grievers, half-machine, half-animal horror that patrol its corridors, to try and find out.

Waterstones ¦ Amazon

Review:

As some of you may know already, I had seen the movie before reading the book. One of the few times I have ever done it or ever will do. I hadn’t been sure about the whole story before I watched the film. After the film, it was a different story. It was amazing and absolutely thrilling. I read the book as soon as I got home. It was honestly a really, surprisingly good book. Not saying I thought it would be bad, but based on the sort of books I read, I didn’t expect to like it. I loved every second of it. I managed to read this book in around four days, two during, two after school had finished for half-term. The girl, Teresa was an amazing character who was hilarious at times and managed to bring the story to life even more than it already had. This book, though having a female in the plot, was luckily, not consumed by a romance or something. This meant that, although it is nice to have some once in a while, we actually got to see plot and more story line.

Minho is another character, aside from Tomas, the main protagonist, that I loved. He is quirky, witty and just has that sort of personality that makes you instantly think he is an awesome character.

The only criticism is that the book was a little slow during the middle,though it swiftly picked up.

For any of you who think this plot or genre isn’t for you, I seriously suggest you reconsider that opinion. I for one loved it and will most definitely be reading the nest book, Scorch Trials, hopefully soon.

Title: The 100

Rating:

Author: Kass Morgan

Published by: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Publication Date: September 3rd 2013

Pages: 323

Genres: Teen/ YA Fiction/ Sci-fi/ Adventure/ Dystopian/ Post-Apocalyptic

Book Blurb: Ever since a devastating nuclear war, humanity has lived on spaceships far above Earth’s radioactive surface. Now, one hundred juvenile delinquents – considered expendable by society – are being sent on a dangerous mission: to re-colonize the planet. It could be their second chance at life…or it could be a suicide mission. CLARKE was arrested for treason, though she’s haunted by the memory of what she really did. WELLS, the chancellor’s son, came to Earth for the girl he loves – but will she ever forgive him? Reckless BELLAMY fought his way onto the transport pod to protect his sister, the other half of the only siblings in the universe. And GLASS managed to escape back onto the ship, only to find that life there is just as dangerous as she feared it would be on Earth. Confronted with a savage land and haunted by secrets from their pasts, the hundred must fight to survive. They were never meant to be heroes, but they may be mankind’s last hope.

Waterstones ¦ Amazon

Review:

O.K, so most of you will have probably seen this show advertised and aired on E4 when it came over to the UK. Turns out, it got itself a book to TV adaptation in America. If any of you watched the show already then by the first episode, things are already different which is why they changed part of the description from ‘based on the novel by Kass Morgan’ to ‘Loosely based on the novel by Kass Morgan’. This made me laugh quite a lot because I had heard some fans saying that it was ‘false advertising’ and other stuff like that. After the shows was advertised, I searched it up and realised it was a book which sounded really cool. A few days later I went and bought it. This book was amazing and really, quite intelligent. Though it does move a little slowly due to having to write about four different Points of Views (POV) it still manages to keep me hooked, which,by the way, is extraordinarily rare for a multiple POV book with more than two POVs.

So this novel is based on a post-apocalyptic world after nuclear devastation and the only survivors are those who were already in space due to working on the space stations: scientists. Anyway, so fast track around three millennia and you get to a time when they want to send 100 criminals down to earth as a way of checking if Earth is now safe for us and there is no more radiation to poison us.

This book was beautifully written and included flash backs marked out by a change in font, the flash backs helped to give plenty of insight into our main protagonists lives without having to read them rambling on about it forever.

My favourite character was Clarke Griffin, the main character. She is the daughter of some scientists who were convicted of a heinous crime they didn’t do and so were sentenced to the air lock, do I need to explain that gruesome fate any more? Anyway, I love the fact that even though she had a boyfriend (Wells), boys aren’t her life and she actually thinks about other stuff, plus she is an intelligent character.

As I said before, this book does move at a rather slow pace, it must only gone on for around three days to a week, no-more. Some books work well like this, for instance the mortal instruments book one, but this book could have moved a little faster. I didn’t notice it at the time but when I now think about it, not much really happened. Big stuff happened, just nearer to the end and in small doses if you like.

Overall, I will give this four cups of tea as my only real criticism is the pace and cliff-hanging events excluding the ending.)

Book 2, Day 21 has recently come out and Kass Morgan has also officially announced there will be a book 3 t=sometime next year.