Review: Morning Star (Red Rising #3) by Pierce Brown

Morning Star by Pierce Brown

Genre: Sci-Fi / Young Adult / Dystopian

Publisher: Hodder

My Rating: 

Synopsis: Darrow is the Reaper of Mars. Born to toil, carved to fight, destined to lead. But he is a broken man. Exposed as a Red in world ruled by Golds, he has been captured and tormented until he is something less than human. And yet, he is humanity’s last chance.

In facing a godlike, ruthless enemy, he must call on every last ounce of strength to prove that loyalty, friendship and love are more powerful than any cold-hearted machine of war.

He has been first Red, then Gold. Now, he must transcend them all. He must become the hero his people believe he is.

My Review

Find my reviews of the first two books, Red Rising and Golden Son, here and here.

After a few very hectic weeks, I have finally managed to finish Morning Star, the final book in the Red Rising trilogy, and I’m pretty much lost for words. Be prepared for a long and rambly review of starstruck nonsense, because this is one of the best YA series out there.

This series has been pretty much faultless throughout. I like to think of this as Game of Thrones in space. It’s packed full of plot twists you will not see coming, like that one at the end of Golden Son, as well as an intricate cast of characters and a heart-stopping plot.

So, after that Golden Son ending, you’d be forgiven in thinking that it’s pretty much all over for Darrow and the Rising. But think again. Darrow has continued to grow throughout this series and he reaches his peak here in Morning Star. He’s still very much the Darrow we know and love, but he’s matured and gained even more knowledge and understanding of the world around him. If you want a good example of a character arc, look no further than Darrow. He is entirely fleshed-out and totally believable as a real person. He’s complex, nuanced, troubled and makes a ton of mistakes, not to mention he can be arrogant and hot-headed, but he grows and learns, humbled by the ending of Golden Son. In Morning Star, he has grown into a man worthy of the position that has been forced upon him.

Morning Star throws you right back into the story. I had so many questions I desperately needed answering, but this is a series that will leave you guessing and waiting in agony. It’s also a series that isn’t afraid to shock you and kill off your favourite characters (much like Game of Thrones), so I was constantly on edge reading this novel, but in a good way. If you know the characters are somehow going to get themselves out of every horrible situation, then the story loses its momentum and you cease to care. Brown, on the other hand, knows exactly how to keep the reader on their toes, and the plot-twists, whilst shocking, are always logical.

(Also, as a bit of an aside, I don’t usually like it when the second and/or third book in a series changes setting from the first. I grow attached to the setting in the first book, and a change of scenery in the sequels normally throws me and lessens my enjoyment. However, leaving the Institute in Red Rising and venturing out into the society proper was the next clear step. It wasn’t just a change for the sake of it, it worked, and it allowed the plot and characters to really grow. By Morning Star, the Institute seems like a nostalgic memory, rather than a time I really wished we would return to).

The reader has watched the setting and characters flourish, and finishing Morning Star made me feel like I’d been on a journey with these characters. The plot never falls stagnant but instead reaches new heights. Everything Darrow and the Sons of Ares have been working towards are now in sight, but we worry that things might not turn out right. This is probably one of the first series where I’ve genuinely feared for the protagonist’s life and wasn’t sure he’d survive the finale. The same goes for the other main characters. Mustang, Sevro, Ragnar, and the others are truly in danger of losing their lives for a vast majority of the book, and maybe some of them even do…

But there are no spoilers here. I don’t want to ruin the excitement and worry.

In terms of structure, I thought Morning Star had the best pacing of the three books. Whilst they’ve all been pretty full speed ahead, Morning Star was definitely the one that just kept pushing and pushing. There wasn’t much respite, and it was a little exhausting, but it never made the plot feel dull because there was just so much going on.

Honestly, I don’t really know what to say. I haven’t even written anything in my reading diary for Morning Star because all I could think of to write was ‘FLAWLESS’. This series is just too good. If you want to know how to write an epic Sci-Fi, then pick this up. Even if you’re not a Sci-Fi fan, I highly recommend it. I love Sci-Fi, but usually the sub-genres like post-apocalyptic etc. I like space sagas as long as they’re not too OTT, and whilst there can be jargon in this series, it never makes you feel out of your depth.

And neither does the world-building. It’s very intricate and complex, and whilst there are a few moments of info-dumping, it’s not widespread and boring like can often be the case in fantasy and sci-fi series. You really get a sense of what the setting and society is like without feeling like the author is boring you with unnecessary details.

I perhaps do have a couple of small criticisms for the series and this final installment, but they’re pretty minor. After all, no book is perfect. One thing was that the humour could be a bit hit and miss for me. Sometimes it would make me laugh out loud, other times I wouldn’t crack a smile. But humour is very subjective, so what would make me laugh might not make someone else laugh. The other thing was that whilst the climax was brilliant and everything I wanted, I felt the events after the climax, when the loose ends are tied up, was a bit rushed. I didn’t find out what had happened to a few characters and would have liked to see what they were up to following the climactic events, but then I suppose this will probably be addressed in the new sequel series.

Overall, this series and its final installment were pretty much faultless. It has an amazing cast of characters I’ve really grown to love and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed their changes and growth. Even when they’ve really pissed me off, I’ve still loved them because they’re flawed, including the characters that can’t quite decide if they’re friend or enemy (I’m looking at you, Cassius. So well-written!). The world-building is complex and interesting and wholly unique. And the plot, whilst it’s a rebellion plot that’s quite familiar in YA, it’s totally its own beast and doesn’t follow the same structures as other rebellion novels.

I am super excited for Iron Gold and the film adaptations, and I swear to god if they screw this series up on the big screen I am going to go wild. But yes, I am so sad this original trilogy is over, but so excited for the sequel trilogy to begin. This was a brilliant ending to a whirlwind series. If you love complex and flawed characters, rebellion and huge plot-twists you’ll never see coming, then this is the series for you. 

 Have you read this series? Did you enjoy it? Are you excited for the films and sequel trilogy? Let me know in the comments below!

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Review: Gemina (Illuminae Files #2) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Gemina (Illuminae Files #2) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Genre: Sci-Fi / Young Adult

Publisher: Rock the Boat

My Rating: 

Synopsis: Moving to a space station at the edge of the galaxy was always going to be the death of Hanna’s social life. Nobody said it might actually get her killed.

Hanna is the station captain’s pampered daughter; Nik the reluctant member of a notorious crime family. But while the pair are struggling with the realities of life aboard the galaxy’s most boring space station, little do they know that Kady Grant and the Hypatia are headed right toward Heimdall, carrying news of the Kerenza invasion.

When an elite BeiTech strike team invades the station, Hanna and Nik are thrown together to defend their home. But alien predators are picking off the station residents one by one, and a malfunction in the station’s wormhole means the space-time continuum might be ripped in two before dinner. Soon Hanna and Nik aren’t just fighting for their own survival; the fate of everyone on the Hypatia—and possibly the known universe—is in their hands.

But relax. They’ve totally got this. They hope.

My Review

If you’re new to the Illuminae Files, then please give yourself a late Christmas present and get started on this series ASAP because wooooow is it good. You can check out my review of Illuminae here.

So how did Gemina compare to Illuminae? Well, just like Illuminae, I’ve given Gemina five stars. Once again the epistolary form really benefits the novel’s storytelling and character development. The plot jumps between the different formats and characters seamlessly, weaving a web of intrigue and questions. I was worried that a new cast might put me off a little, but actually I really enjoyed them, and Kaufman and Kristoff drop enough hints about the impending arrival of the Hypatia to keep you interested, as well as throwing a fair few spanners into the works.

This novel focuses on the main characters of Hanna Donnelly and Niklas Malikov fighting for their lives. I have to say that, whilst I really liked both of them, I think I prefer Kady and Ezra as protagonists, but only just. This is mainly because I struggled to put my finger on who Hanna exactly was – she felt a little like a watered-down version of Kady. Nik I preferred to Hanna; he was funny and crude, but once again he did share a lot of similarities with Ezra (and Ezra’s complexity was something I really loved and felt to be truly unique and captivating when it came to his character development).

That being said, I still really liked them. Maybe I was just trying to compare them to Kady and Ezra because I loved reading about them so much, but I at least thought Nik had a really interesting backstory. However, there was definitely one standout character for me in the form of Nik’s cousin Ella Malikova. She actually annoyed me ever-so-slightly at the beginning, but Nik makes a comment about Ella being full on and how it’s just her and, after that, I accepted her personality a lot more and came to enjoy any scenes involving her. She was witty, intelligent, crude like Nik, but also a realist and I liked that about her. And in addition to this (VERY MINOR SPOILER ALERT) she’s great disability rep. She doesn’t let anything stand in her way.

The rest of the cast consisted mainly of adults, same as Illuminae, which is why I think this is such an accessible series and definitely a crossover between YA and adult. There weren’t as many ‘big players’ in the adult cast as in Illuminae and I didn’t really become attached to any of them like I did with James McNulty, Winifred McCall and Byron Zhang, but it was still a large and interesting cast. Saying this, I probably didn’t become attached to any of the secondary characters as much simply because the majority of them here were the villains. But they were definitely compelling villains.

As for the plot, it was the strong point of the novel. Another complicated story with a myriad of sub-plots, I never got bored of it and couldn’t wait till everything collided for the big finale. Nevertheless, I do have a few critiques.

As you’ve already seen, I critiqued Hanna and Nik, feeling they weren’t quite as well-rounded as Kady and Ezra and how they felt too similar. Yet still I’ve given this book five stars. That’s because these critiques didn’t really effect my overall enjoyment of the novel. I still think it’s a pretty much flawless and incredibly unique series, and is 100% one of my favourites of all time. However, this is an honest review, and if I feel some things didn’t quite hit the mark, then I’m obviously going to point them out.

Anyway, after that ramble, my critique for the plotting is this: I felt that Kaufman and Kristoff tried to pull the same shock tactics as they did in Illuminae. Because of the similarities, these ‘shocks’ didn’t affect me. Something huge would happen and instead of my heart pounding or me actually sobbing for a good portion of the book (as happened with Illuminae) I actually just thought “nah, it’s fine, he/she will get out of this/hasn’t actually done that/won’t die”. And lo and behold, I was right. These big shocks that worked so well in Illuminae fell a little flat in Gemina because they were recycled. If you’ve read Gemina, you’ll probably know what I’m referring to.

And this leads to the fact that Gemina didn’t hit me quite as hard as Illuminae did. However, I think that’s down to the fact that Illuminae was just so new and different and daring. Once that’s been done, it’s hard to compete or improve upon it. Gemina did have lots of fresh ideas to contribute, I just wish there had been even more. Yet maybe if they had tried to push the boundaries even further than in Illuminae, the book might have become too unrealistic, which would have been even worse.

Overall, the new ideas that Gemina contributed (there were some big ‘uns) definitely outweighed the slight con of some recycled ideas. I wish this series won’t end and I’m going to be devastated when I’ve finished the final book. The entire thing is a whirlwind of action, humour, and emotion and, like I said in my Illuminae review, I don’t really know how Kaufman and Kristoff have pulled it all off.

I hope that my critiques haven’t deterred anyone because this is seriously one amazing series and I cannot recommend it enough; there were just a few very minor things I picked up on that I thought could have been tweaked. But all in all, Gemina was an excellent sequel; I think the wait for book 3 might just kill me.

Have you read Gemina? What did you think of it? Do you agree with my review? Are you planning on reading it? Let me know in the comments below!

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Favourite Sci-Fi Films

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

This week’s theme is all to do with films. I thought about making it bookish related but then I realised hey, I’ve already done a post like that! So if you’re interested, here are some of my favourite book-to-screen adaptations.

For this post, I’m going with my favourite Sci-Fi films. As you’ll know, I love Sci-Fi, and it’s a much bigger and more encompassing genre than some people think. They hear ‘science fiction’ and they think ‘oh god that’s so geeky. Isn’t it just spaceships?’. But Sci-Fi has so many subgenres, like dystopian and apocalyptic a la The Hunger Games and Mad Max. Or Superhero films, those are Sci-Fi! Time travel, alternate history, cyberpunk. Sci-Fi is everywhere.

I’m not going to include superhero films in my list because pretty much the whole thing would just be Marvel movies, so, without further ado, here are some of my favourite Sci-Fi films:

1. Star Trek (2009)

I had never been interested in Star Trek. I’d watched all the Star Wars films but Star Trek just didn’t seem as cool. Which is ironic, because I now think Star Wars is the geekier of the two franchises. But anyway, Star Trek just didn’t float my boat, until they rebooted it and oh my god. This film blew me away.

I watched it at home one day on Sky Movies because it was free and I was bored and I’d heard it was good, so why not? After watching it, I immediately bought the DVD and then waited impatiently for the DVD release of Star Trek: Into Darkness because I’d just missed it in cinemas.

Now I’m just waiting for Star Trek: Beyond as I didn’t have time to go watch it at Vue, but I am a little sad about seeing it as it was one of Anton Yelchin’s last films and he was such a great actor. Hopefully the film is good though.

2. The Martian

This film was so tense it gave me a migraine. The climactic end just made me unbelievably stressed. However, I still want to read the book (and risk another possible migraine) because the film was so enjoyable and moving. Plus, Sebastian Stan.

3. Mad Max: Fury Road

Now, for all my talk about loving post-apocalyptic fiction, I was hesitant about Mad Max: Fury Road. From all the trailers it just looked like a real man’s film like yeah lads cars guns yeah lads. Don’t get me wrong, I like action, but I hate those films that are just all about blowing things up and have zero plot. However, because it was post-apocalyptic, I decided to give Mad Max: Fury Road a go.

And just like Star Trek, it totally exceeded my expectations. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen for one moment in case I missed something. In all honesty, it is just one big car chase, but it has so many crucial underlying themes revolving around feminism and humanity and the environment. It’s so much fun too, and the world-building is fantastic. Honestly, this one is a total gem, and Charlize Theron steals the show from Tom Hardy, which is a difficult thing to do because normally it’s Tom Hardy who steals the show in pretty much everything he’s in, main character or not. I highly recommend this one.

4. Sunshine

Now this is a real hidden gem. Danny Boyle is one of my favourite directors and pretty much masters whatever genre he takes on. Whilst most of his films have made it quite big, Sunshine has stayed in the shadows as a cult film loved by the critics but not really known by the general public. I’ve never really understood this because it’s such a brilliant film. It has well known actors like Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Rose Byrne, Hiroyuki Sanada and Mark Strong. Yet somehow it never really took off.

If you’re a fan of Gravity with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, then you’ll love this, it’s along the same kind of vein and just as tense.

5. District 9

There’s a line from this film my Dad quite often likes to repeat in his rather good South African accent because it makes him laugh. It’s when the main character, a man in charge of evicting the malnourished aliens from their South African slum, approaches a small alien – labelled a “prawn” – and says, “Hello, little guy! It’s the sweetie man coming!”. It’s funny and unsettling all at once. Because the irony is, whilst these aliens came to Earth seeking help, they are vastly more intelligent. I mean, they were able to leave their planet and travel millions of miles through space for a start, something we’re nowhere near close to doing. Yet we haven’t assisted them at all. The novelty of extra-terrestrial life has worn off and we’ve confined them to an impoverished slum and oppressed them.

This film, whilst humorous, is a social commentary on man’s treatment of the ‘other’ and is really hard-hitting. Definitely a modern Sci-Fi masterpiece.

6. Children of Men

I’ve featured this film before in my best book-to-screen adaptations, which I linked to at the top of this post, because both book and film are brilliant pieces of dystopian fiction and film-making. With no baby born for almost two decades, humanity is faced with its own extinction. What lengths would we go to?

7. Edge of Tomorrow

I’m not a massive Tom Cruise fan, and it annoys me that he seems to play the same role in every film. However, Edge of Tomorrow breaks this mould. Cruise is a bumbling, haughty Major who has never seen combat, until he’s suddenly thrown into a suicide mission battling the war against superior alien forces. Yet the real hero of this film is Emily Blunt as hardened veteran Rita Vrataski. She shows Cruise how it’s done and he never quite gets up to her level.

Overall, this film is a solid effort with some great moments of comic relief (at Cruise’s expense). It’s also based on the manga All You Need Is Kill. I was a bit disappointed to find out about this afterwards and see that they had changed the central character from Japanese to American. Whilst it may have been refreshing to see Cruise play someone other than the macho hero who can do everything, the studio obviously wanted a big name to try and attract an audience. The usual Hollywood white-washing.

8. 28 Days Later

I told you I liked Danny Boyle. And Cillian Murphy, for that matter, and it seems Danny Boyle agrees. There’s no need to explain this film because if you haven’t heard of it then you’ve been living under a rock; it’s a zombie sci-fi horror classic. But instead of the dead coming back to life, it’s actually a virus known as Rage, and these ‘zombies’ are some of the scariest you’ll ever see on screen.

9. Inception

This film was a total mind-bender but oh so good, and definitely one of a kind. Great acting, amazing plot, and a brilliant soundtrack from Hans Zimmer, this is one that will always stay with me.

10. Star Wars

Just all the Star Wars. The old, the new, and the even newer. Whilst the script for the originals and the prequel franchise were extremely corny, they’re still total classics and made Sci-Fi mainstream. Plus I’m so excited for Rogue One this December.

What are some of your favourite Sci-Fi films? Do you agree with my picks? Disagree? Let me know in the comments below!

Stacking the Shelves | I’m On a Book Winning Streak!

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly meme from Tynga’s Reviews where you showcase the books you’ve received or purchased.

I’m sorry that I haven’t updated much again this week. I warned that I was going to be busy, but I’ve been much busier than expected. Mainly because my hamster fell seriously ill on Wednesday night. He was even worse the next morning, with blood covering his nose, so we rushed him to the vets and they saw him immediately. Turns out he’s somehow developed pneumonia, which is actually fatal for a lot of hamsters.

Naturally, I’ve been so stressed and all my time has been devoted to caring for him. He’s been quite up and down, but so far today he seems to be stable. I’m praying he pulls through. It also meant I had to cancel visiting my boyfriend again. It sucks but obviously keeping little Cookie alive is top priority right now and I would be totally devastated if he passed away.

So that’s why I’ve been pretty absent. However, seeing as he’s doing okay so far today, just sleeping off the infection, I have the time to do a little stacking of the shelves.

This week, or rather just this morning, I received another package in the post and turns out I’ve won another competition with Maximum Pop Books! A few weeks ago, I won a copy of Morning Star by Pierce Brown, which I was so excited about as I’ve been desperate to finish the series but wanted to wait until Christmas to buy it. This time around, I won a copy of The Diabolic by S.J. Kincaid! I recently featured it in a post of My Most Anticipated November Book Releases, so to find out I had won was a great surprise. However, I didn’t actually know I’d won until it turned up in this post this morning! Something must have gone wrong with communications, but never mind, thanks Maximum Pop Books!

Sci-Fi is my favourite and this sounds like a really great addition to the genre. I’ve heard good things about it so far and it’s been receiving a lot of hype, which makes me even more excited to read it. Hopefully it lives up to all the fanfare around it!

Have you read The Diabolic? Want to read it? Have you bought or received any books this week? Let me know in the comments below!

 

Waiting On Wednesday: A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers 2) by Becky Chambers

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted at Breaking the Spine where you showcase which books you’re looking forward to being released.

This week I’m waiting on the second instalment of the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers, A Closed and Common Orbit.

UK Release Date: 20th October 2016

I reviewed the first Wayfarers novel a little while ago, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, which you can find here. I loved the cover to that novel and I think the cover for A Closed and Common Orbit might be even prettier. But, covers aside, the first novel was a fun read, the characters likeable, although the book read like a series of short stories or episodes rather than having one main plot.

I’m hoping the second book will feel a little more cohesive, but not skimp out on the humour and world-building that made the first book so enjoyable.

A word of warning, the synopsis I’m about to post does contain spoilers, so don’t read on if you haven’t read the first novel. If you want to know what the first book was like, check out the link to my spoiler-free review above!

However, this blurb does sound a bit like we might not be seeing much of the original cast, which is a real shame! I became somewhat attached to those characters, so I’ll be annoyed if they aren’t the protagonists anymore. It’s described on Amazon as a ‘stand-alone sequel’ which really does sound like it’s moved away from the original characters. Fingers crossed it actually includes them, but I’m a little doubtful.

Synopsis for A Closed and Common Orbit: 

Lovelace was once merely a ship’s artificial intelligence. When she wakes up in an new body, following a total system shut-down and reboot, she has to start over in a synthetic body, in a world where her kind are illegal. She’s never felt so alone.

But she’s not alone, not really. Pepper, one of the engineers who risked life and limb to reinstall Lovelace, is determined to help her adjust to her new world. Because Pepper knows a thing or two about starting over.

Together, Pepper and Lovey will discover that, huge as the galaxy may be, it’s anything but empty.

Did you read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet? Did you enjoy it? What do you think of the synopsis for the sequel? Happy or sad that it sounds like it won’t be including all of the cast from the first novel? Let me know in the comments below!

 

 

 

Review: Half Way Home by Hugh Howey

Half Way Home by Hugh Howey

Genre: Sci-Fi, somewhat YA due to teenage protagonists

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

My Rating: 3.5/5

Synopsis: Five hundred of us were sent to colonize this planet. Only fifty or so survived. We woke up fifteen years too early, we had only half our training, and they expected us to not only survive … they expected us to conquer this place. The problem is: it isn’t safe here. We aren’t even safe from each other.

 

 

My Review

I was a huge fan of Howey’s Silo Saga. Fast-paced, gripping, unique, I loved everything about it. His characters were flawed yet likeable and his writing style was undeniably polished.

Half Way Home, in comparison, was certainly fast-paced and unique. Howey’s prose was once again smooth and I enjoyed the ride he took me on. So I bet you’re wondering, why the 3.5/5 rating? Because, whilst it was a somewhat gripping read, it wasn’t a memorable one.

I read Half Way Home in a day. Undeniably, I did struggle to put it down. To me, it read like a novella; a quicker pace than your average novel. But this left the characters a little lacking. I did like the protagonist of Porter; he was intelligent and caring, and his struggle to understand his sexual identity was heartfelt. Yet it seemed to me as though I was handed these ready-made characters on a plate; they didn’t undergo a lot of growth in the story. Which is ironic, because the premise is that a ship full of developing humans in vats, growing to adulthood in isolation and learning specific skills so as to cultivate a new planet, encounters a disaster that results in the humans on board only reaching the age of 15 before being rudely thrust into the world, their educations half complete. This made for a very interesting concept, but I would have liked more development. The characters seem to understand themselves a little too well after getting over the shock of their premature births. This is why the novel felt like a novella to me – I wanted more characterisation.

But like I said, the story-line was highly enjoyable, and Howey’s writing was once again effortless. I wanted to know the fate of the characters and just why the ship encountered disaster before the humans on board were ready, and the reveal of the latter wasn’t obvious which was a plus. In addition to this, the novel definitely held an interesting moral viewpoint in regards to the treatment of humans as though they’re slaves. This notion of humans going ‘like lamb to the slaughter’ was something that Howey also explored in further detail in the Silo Saga.

Overall, if you’re looking for a fast-paced Sci-Fi read to pass the time, I would recommend Half Way Home. However, if you want to see what Howey can really do, check out his brilliant Silo Saga. You won’t be disappointed.

Sorry for the slightly late review of this novel, but it’s my last week of uni so I’ve been a little busy!

Have you read Half Way Home? Did you enjoy it? Have you read anymore of Howey’s novels, such as I, Zombie? Need some more zombies in my life so I might check it out myself. Let me know in the comments below!