https://blog.vollink.com/tags/book-review+young-adult/ Recent content in book-review+young-adult on On My Mind... Hugo -- gohugo.io Wed, 22 Jan 2020 12:00:00 -0500 https://blog.vollink.com/post/2020/01/of-curses-and-kisses/ Wed, 22 Jan 2020 12:00:00 -0500 https://blog.vollink.com/post/2020/01/of-curses-and-kisses/ Book cover I usually don't do the comparative thing, but this one stuck me pretty directly.  Imagine the movie Crazy Rich Asians, but teenagers at a boarding school in the mountains outside of Aspen, with a broadly international cast.  Main point: pretty much everybody is insanely rich. The main character, Jaya Rao, is a princess from an old kingdom of India who is literally there to break someone's heart. https://blog.vollink.com/post/2019/09/the-graveyard-book/ Wed, 18 Sep 2019 12:00:00 -0400 https://blog.vollink.com/post/2019/09/the-graveyard-book/ Book cover The Graveyard Book isn't a horror novel, but it is absolutely goth and macabre. The story follows a boy from 18 months old when his whole family is murdered and he wanders off into the night through his childhood as he is raised in a graveyard by two ghosts and a vampire as guardian (who supplies physical things, like food and clothes).  At one point, we meet a werewolf and ghouls as well. https://blog.vollink.com/post/2019/08/the-adventures-of-tom-sawyer/ Wed, 21 Aug 2019 12:00:00 -0400 https://blog.vollink.com/post/2019/08/the-adventures-of-tom-sawyer/ Book cover This is a book that I've known about for most of my life, and Tom Sawyer is a character that I've heard referenced through my entire life.  A fairly large area of Disney's Magic Kingdom is dedicated to this book; one of my favorite places to hang out for an hour.  Yet, nothing of the story was spoiled for me. First and foremost, the " https://blog.vollink.com/post/2019/07/treasure-island/ Wed, 17 Jul 2019 12:00:00 -0400 https://blog.vollink.com/post/2019/07/treasure-island/ Book Cover Every once in a while, I try to get in a review of a classic.  Something that some of my readers are likely to have read themselves.  I do this, mostly, to help readers calibrate my taste...  That is, it seems likely enough that some readers are likely to disagree with everything I like, and might find it compelling to read a book that I really didn't like. https://blog.vollink.com/post/2019/07/binti-trilogy/ Wed, 10 Jul 2019 12:00:00 -0400 https://blog.vollink.com/post/2019/07/binti-trilogy/ Book cover This short book (novella) is the first in the trilogy.  Binti is the name of the main character.  This book starts on a distant future (unspecified timeline) Earth where humans are now space-faring, and alien races are known. There is a lot to unpack in the world-building and the world is built along with the story.  Each chapter is unusually episodic, in that some small part of the last scene of a previous chapter will be often be repeated at the beginning of the next. https://blog.vollink.com/post/2019/06/defy-the-worlds/ Wed, 26 Jun 2019 12:00:00 -0400 https://blog.vollink.com/post/2019/06/defy-the-worlds/ Book cover This is book 2 of the Defy the Stars trilogy.  I recommend first reading my review of Defy the Stars before diving headlong into this review.  Also, there may be mild spoilers of the first book in this review.  I'm not sure that can be helped. I recommend not reading Defy The Worlds until Defy The Stars has already been read.  Like most sequels, this book could stand-alone, but there is not as much exposition and recap as I'm used to reading in sequels. https://blog.vollink.com/post/2019/05/defy-the-stars/ Wed, 29 May 2019 12:00:00 -0400 https://blog.vollink.com/post/2019/05/defy-the-stars/ This is book one of a three book series (the third book came out earlier this month), and since I've already had good reviews of two other books by this author, I decided to pick up this series as well to see what she had done outside of the Star Wars universe. Book cover Through a ring of stabilized wormholes, large enough for whole ships to pass through, Earth expanded to five other planets. https://blog.vollink.com/post/2019/04/predators-gold/ Wed, 17 Apr 2019 16:26:00 -0400 https://blog.vollink.com/post/2019/04/predators-gold/ Book cover This is book 2 of the Mortal Engines Quartet.  For convenience, here is a link to my review of book 1, Mortal Engines, which I posted a month ago. I'm going to start this review with a note about a changed name.  The books were originally released in the UK with a character named Shrike.  For the initial US release of the books, that character was renamed to Grike. https://blog.vollink.com/post/2019/03/mortal-engines/ Wed, 20 Mar 2019 12:00:00 -0400 https://blog.vollink.com/post/2019/03/mortal-engines/ Book cover Over a thousand years before the book's present, there was a war that effectively destroyed all of society.  Picking up the pieces of the technology that was left behind, London was put onto treads, run by steam, so that it find and consume other towns for resources and, ultimately, more fuel to keep moving. Over time, other towns and cities did the same, while another group, called the Anti-Traction League, created a defensive wall across the only pass in a mountain range to keep these traction cities at bay on the other side.