jaymi elford

While camping last month, a friend and I got into a conversation about books that we read over and over and over again. Mine was Watership Down, affectionately known as “the bunny book”. It's one of those rare stories that never grow old for me. Last week, she loaned me Tailchaser's Song. This book, is the cat's version of Watership Down. It's the tale of Fritti Tailchaser, who's lost his friend from kittenhood; disturbed by this loss, he sets out to find her. The book describes his tour of the countryside as he learns the importance of freedom, friendship and what it means to be a independant cat. The ending, while very fitting, has left my eyes filling with some tears of happy-sadness and I know that after the pages ran out, Fritti discovered where he really wanted his life to roam. This book, helps add another fiction novel to my growing list of books for the summer. Yay!

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for review from netgalley.com.

I grabbed this book to read based off the cover and title alone. I love dystopian books and this one gave me the impression that it was about a girl and her dog traveling a world after some sort of virus had destroyed the population. I was wrong, happily. Well, there is a girl, and a dog, and there was a virus but there are no zombies (yet) and a bit of mystery and some time travel tossed in. Viral Nation is about Clover, an autistic teenager who is tossed into the action of her society. Clover, her brother, and some other teens gang up to take on the company that has been hailed as the saviors of humanity.

I liked Viral Nation as a setting. The world seems believable and when we're introduced to it everything flows rather well. Everyone has a job and everyone has bought the stories and kool-aid of those who control them. Clover, as the protagonist, works. She questions things but also has her melt-downs and is vulnerable but smart.

The plot, was fast paced and felt a bit too tight for my liking. I could guess a few things: like when Clover first looks at the wall surrounding her city, I knew that we were going to head out. I also felt that some of the time-travelling was just tossed in and I hope that further portions of the series does a more convincing job of its importance than to just “future scope out murderers.”

Over all this series has promise and I look forward to reading more and seeing where it and the altered timelines take our characters.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this for review from netgalley.com.

This is a hard book to categorize. It's not really a “zombie” book, but there's elements of it there. It's not really a coming of age book, but there's bits of it there too. Contaminated tells the story of Velvet and her sister Opal, as they struggle to remain together after the Contamination, an event that left their parents sick with a disease. Velvet is sure she'll find here mother and ends up doing so.

The first part of the book is about Velvet's struggles as she tries to keep the 3 of them together. As her mother is contaminated, no one wants them around. Her neighbors kick them out of their house, Opal's school creates rumors to get her out, and Velvet is unable to handle the burden of working a job and taking care of three people. They are forced to leave the town and head towards their old house.

This story of struggle, of doing what matters despite the odds and what's expected, is a great story to write. Velvet is doing her best... and succeeding. I'm not sure that Garner knew this when writing this story, but it's an important tale to write. Of what struggles we go through just to survive.

The second part of the book is where things devolve again. Another outbreak happens and the Contaminated are rounded up. Only people who can speak are spared. With the help of her new friend Dillon, they learn that Velvet's mom can talk by removing the collar. Things end with a glimpse of hope but not much.

There is a lot of good and bad in this book but it's Velvet's strength to keep going... despite how everyone feels about her mother that makes this book so strong and what kept me reading. As always when there's a cliffhanger ending, I can only hope that the next book gets written and this isn't any different.

This is the first Stephen King book I've managed to finish in a long time. Of course, my all time favorite is The Dark Tower series. Intrigued by the idea of cell phones turing people into zombies, I had to get this one. However, what I thought this was going to be about and what it ended up being are two different things. Yes, this book is about how a single call changed the way people look at communications over a cell phone. But in my head I wanted to see how the world coped in this new zombified world. And King didn't deliver that story. Instead, he turned it into one man's journey to find his son and understand what may or may not have taken hold of him. Even at the end, I found the book a bit open ended for my tastes and didn't leave me with answers to the questions I wanted. I even read this one in a few hours, so it's a quick read too. This book helps boost my goal of reading more fiction than non-fiction.