The Girl in Green

This is a story of two men in search of a girl. In 1999, US forces were in the Middle East during Desert Storm and were in the process of pulling out just as a civil war was breaking out. There were many civilian casualties. Arwood, a pee-on in the US military is supposed to be on the look out for Iraqi forces at Checkpoint Zulu, lets a war reporter named Thomas Benton walk go into the nearby city to go reporting. Non-U.S. military forces bomb the city Benton is in and he tries to run back to the demilitarized zone. On his way back, he tries to help this teenage girl in a green hijab come with him as a refugee to the save US compound. Arwood tries to help and on their way back the girl gets shot in the back. This moment changes their lives. Arwood becomes more reckless and "dishonors"  himself in the military, Benton has a hard time getting over how this girl died. They never even knew her name or really heard her speak. Now, 22 years later, they see television footage of the war-torn Middle East and see this same girl who's been imprinted into their minds for over two decades as a bomb goes off right behind her. How is she alive? Is it really her? And how are they going to save this girl? 

When it comes to Desert Storm and many of there African and Middle Eastern wars, I know very little. I know that there are U.S. Troops there, and that "War is Hell" but as for many other parts of it, I know very little. I was hoping for a little view into the Desert Storm world that I was only a kid living through and didn't understand the news. This book gives a great feeling toward what I was looking for. It sets you right there giving fairly fleshed out characters in this real world time and location. It was written well for the most part which I appreciated. 

Arwood is a fascinating character and Benton is alright. The real situations were eye opening as well. 

I was prepared for the war moments, the sad and scary times, but the vulgarity (which I gave a few more passes to because "soldiers be soldiers) got to be more than what I care for as well as the more than prevalent "boinking" going on. The "curtains closed" on many sex scenes, but I stopped when Arwood was discussing things. I hit final straws and there was enough hopping on my drawn line that I just set it down. 

I didn't finish it. Some might want to, but I'm setting it down and will probably have to do my own research into what happened instead of hoping for "entertainment" to do it for me. 

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a very large book. Sometimes they can be intimidating, but I've found that often the large books are some of the best. (Brandon Sanderson is a great example of this.)

Harry is distraught. After witnessing the murder of a friend and fighting Lord Voldemort himself and having the whole wizarding world calling him a liar, he has every right to be. His summer is silent and no one is telling him anything. He joins his friends at Sirius Black's house and finds out there is an Order of the Phoenix that he's been left out of as well. Then when he gets to school their new D.A.D.A teacher is psycho. No answers. No Dumbledore. No help. No hope. This year really sucks. 

The characters are amazing here. I don't know of any fan base who simply hates a character as much as they hate Umbridge. Professor Umbridge is hated beyond any fictional character I know (except for maybe"F-Moash" from Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive.) She is one that we obviously just detest and some consider more of a villain that Voldemort. 

I think Rowling did a great job at showing that Harry was angry. #Angst or what have you. I remember hearing about how this was a bad book because Harry was constantly complaining and angry. They blamed it on Rowling being pregnant and therefore hormones coming out in her writing. I don't believe it's credible--if she was pregnant during that time, I don't think her hormones made Harry hormonal, he had his own problems (and teenage hormones) to worry about. Yes, he was angry. Yes, he felt like he had no one to confide in or that was willing to confide in him. He felt alone. He'd just seen death and been called a liar by everyone and everything that had lips aside from his friends and members of the Order who aren't telling him anything. Harry is going through a depression and instead of closing up, which he sometimes does, he lashes out. He's getting beat down from every side and feels like he can't get up, though he keeps trying. Rowling did it well. Depression, anger, misunderstanding, hate, fear, they are all things that are prominent here but realistic. It's sad Harry lashes out at his friends who are only trying to help him, but "they don't understand" and it makes it hard on everyone. 

Just as the books are, the plot is thickening here. More and more things are happening and lots are going on behind the scenes. 

I think it's very well written and the characters help pull this one through. 

Take the Key and Lock Her Up

The last book in the Embassy Row series by Ally Carter. This is one that I needed to pick up quickly to figure out what happened. Though the ending of the last one (See How They Run) ended rather abruptly but it just kept coming to mind and it was in at the library so I quickly snatched it up and put it on a higher que than the other books on my nightstand.

Grace, Jamie, Alexie, and Dominic are all running. Someone tried to kill Jamie. They don't know who and they aren't for sure why. They are constantly on the run until another secret about her mother is unfolded and Grace runs away from the boys to keep them safe, have the bad guys chase her instead of Jamie who is still injured and Alexie who is still wanted for a murder he didn't commit. She goes to the Society but finds no friends there, same with the palace. With the help of her Embassy Row friend and a little bit of espionage she breaks an insane woman out of a penitentiary and yet still finds herself in her mother's country trapped in a corner and no way out. Also, she supposedly the Lost Princess which she doesn't want to be. She just wants to be left alone to live her own life. How is she going to get that?

I do like how Grace has developed of these three books. She still has the mentality of "get out of my way or don't and get run over" while also still trying to deal with her PTSD. Any fire, any smoke triggers her and she's starting to learn to cope. She's starting to learn whom she can really lean on while finding out the hard way whom she can't. Some people might not like her, but I'm glad Ally Condie took this step in giving us a main character who really needs help and might not have been likable (on the verge of annoying) at the start. What Grace does is true growth, not just getting over a boy/crush. She gave us an unreliable narrator who knows she's unreliable and more than a bit crazy.

I really enjoyed the ending of this. It was complete. It also came full circle where Grace is able to face fears and is able to take steps forward. She wouldn't have been able to accomplish the things she did at the beginning of the story without turning into a pile of ash or rocking back and forth in a corner or running away from everything. She's willing to go down dark tunnels and tell secret societies to stuff it, which is pretty awesome.

While Alexie is pretty cool and Jamie has been an awesome brother since he clocked his friends, but I really like Thomas. I get that Grace is not princess material. She is not one to do benefits or worry matching handbags or knowing how far to bow to a countess and that's cool I so wouldn't be able to do that. But Thomas... he took things in stride. He was willing to follow her down those tunnels and willing to let her run after another boy. He was such a real person that it makes me want to have more of him. I'm glad him and Rosy are friends, but more screen time would have been cool. I don't know how Ally Carter would have done it, but it's what I want.

The title was also rather ingenious. Very fitting. :)

I don't know how Ally Carter would be able to extend this to another story (one that included my happy Prince, of course), but I would happily read another Embassy Row series. It was very good with intriguing characters and a very interesting world that I want to dive more into.

See How They Run

The second book in the Embassy Row series by Ally Carter starts up exactly where the first one left off.

Grace, who has just learned something even more tragic about her dead mother, still suffers from PTSD from the incident. But now more is on her and she's gotten to the point that she wishes she didn't know the truth. At times she tries to run away from it all, force it behind her and in the past but the past keeps catching up with her. Now her brother Jamie is back on Embassy Row and brought an army buddy along with him. Not even a few nights on Embassy Row and Jamie's friend is found dead on the beach. Who would want to kill Spence? And now Alexie is somehow to blame merely because he is "the Russian." Politics and conspiracy and secret societies are everywhere. Grace cannot catch a break.

There will be some who are still very upset that Grace sticks to this PTSD thing and the death of her mother weighs very heavily on her character. If you are upset by that, I hope you don't meet a vet or go through anything traumatic because you won't cope well. Her PTSD, which it's never actually called that in the story, is part of who she is. So much of it, because it is so fresh, still claws at her mind and it's nails haven't been dulled yet. In the book, because her brother also has to deal with some things, she's able to start to cope and begins to mend. I think that seeing her brother going through the same thing lets her drop her walls more than anything else has it seems. Knowing the truth has also helped as well, I think. It appears she begins to mend and isn't as angry and willing to jump off a cliff as she was before. Steps forward. Good job Grace. It hasn't stopped completely, obviously, and there are still flashes especially around fire, but she seems less dark and hidden than in the first book. Grace is true to her character. She doesn't flip flop on being the pretty princess then suddenly go tom-boy. She's freaked out and while there are moments of pause, she's still broken and it's not an easy fix. Ally Carter gives us that; she lets us see that this is hard. None of us want to be in her shoes and we feel sorry for her and reading on in hopes that she gets better and finds her own peace. Well done, Ally. Well done.

I really like Embassy Row and the idea of so many countries sharing fences. Being able to hide in a dilapidated Iran Embassy while walking past Israel, Russia, Brazil, and other countries on your way back to the U.S. of A. is a fun little concept. Ally Carter worked this one well and had fun with it.

This one is more focused on Grace's relationships with her brother and Alexie. There is a skuffle when the new Alpha-Boy comes into town, which is kind of fun to have your brother defend you, willing to knock the guys out. I do wish there was more of Rosie and Noah and the rest, but there just wasn't. While the first book had a taste of the Heist Society where the kids were the masterminds behind gathering information and being all sneaky and spy-like, that wasn't here, which was good because then it didn't feel like a copy of the first book.

I think that this series could have worked will as a combination of them all. Obviously I haven't read the last book yet, but it feels like they could have been presented in the same novel. Grace didn't make a whole lot of internal progress in the first book and made major steps forward in this one and I predict that there will be even more leaps in the next book. The first book had a good climax and this one felt lacking that intense feel. I felt the build up to it but then it didn't quiet come or more like the climax hasn't had the opportunity to resolve itself. They get away and are getting help, but not much more than that. The resolve will probably be in the beginning of the third book, but I want it at the end here. It's missing.

All Fall Down

Ally Carter has done it again in making a world of intrigue and deception. Unlike The Heist Society, though, All Fall Down is set at the international embassy in Adria. Here all of the world's embassy's live on the same street. Russia, Iran, Israel, and the USA bumping elbows and sharing the same paperboy can become rather hostile when someone sneezes in the wrong direction. One wrong move and it all falls down into WWIII.

But Grace has her own problems. Still trying to cope with her mother's death, she tries to be normal. She returns to the embassy where her grandfather resides as ambassador and where she spent many of the summers of her childhood. But she's not "normal," she's not "fine." Grace sees monsters everywhere still and conspiracy runs in every gutter. She feels like she can't trust anyone and for good reason.

The thing I like most about this book is how our narrator is unreliable. There have been few books where we are given an unreliable narrator and where you question, more than once, if she is actually sane. Grace has PTSD after seeing her mother murdered by a Scarred Man, but that is all she has to go on. Doctors and family say it was "an accident" "an accident" "an accident," but Grace knows that it's more than that. And more importantly she knows she's not crazy. But I came to times when trying to take the foreshadowed events and question if she really was crazy. Grace reminded me of Kat, from Heist Society, as the go-get-em kind of girl. The girl that would skulk into a secret tunnel after whom she thinks is the bad guy. (Do not try this at home.) She was different than most; the PTSD hangs over her heavily and I'm interested to see how much more she changes in the rest of the series.

I did like the world that Ally Carter set up. Making a new country, one neutral ground so then no one's toes were being stepped on was smart. I liked that Adria is a traditionalist place where balls can happen. It gave it that fantasy feel, at least for a bit, that I like. Making Grace feel like a princess in froofy dresses even though she actually feels like a penguin on stilts. I like that the kids on Embassy Row are really just that, kids. Letting crushes grow while others simply want to find a friend--all the while trying to not start an international crisis.

The writing itself is well done, though set for a mid-YA audience. For an easy, action book, this is what you'd want to read. If I had been dedicated and not sick for the last month and surrounded by crazy life, I could have finished it within two or three days.

I do want to see more of Grace and the other kids. Rosie was pretty cute and Megan's computer skills were pretty awesome, but I want more from them. I don't want the kind of romance Ally had in other books. I want more than just another Simon or Bagshaw brothers; they are great, but they had their book. I hope Grace and Alexei, Rosie and Noah have their own moments of awesomeness and that it's not just a reprise of Heist Society, good though it was. I want more, new awesomeness and I think I'm going to get it.

Ceremony

The novel Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko is actually an assigned reading that I had to do for my Native American Literature class in college. It is defiantly a different type of book and one that raised a lot of questions for me about the type American Indian.

The novel is a third person presentation of the mind of Tayo, a World War II vet who was able to finally return home from the Pacific Theater after the war was over. However, do to the loss of his cousin and uncle in the war suffers from "battle fatigue" or more commonly known today as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He has a hard time dealing with his PTSD and the family matters that accrued from before and after the war.

In trying to cope with what is happening, Tayo is instructed by his grandmother to go see a medicine man to see if he could be healed that way--the white Army doctors were able to help him stop feeling like "white smoke" and invisible, but they haven't been able to help out much more than that. He goes to two medicine men and they end up helping him through the ceremonies and stories they provide.

Tayo's presentation of the world is extremely skewed. This novel is the definition of a non-reliable narrator. The narration of the novel constantly jumps back and forth in time, so much so that it is disorienting and rather confusing.  His flashbacks can last anywhere from a small paragraph of five sentences to pages. There are also no chapters, just paragraph and page breaks to separate what is happening to our narrator. 

This book, in my opinion, is good for anyone who is looking for insight into the life of any vet who suffered from PTSD as well as a look into the traditions of the American Indian. Some people may think that Silko is simply portraying a stereotype of drunk Indians who have nothing better to do with their time, but she says in her preface that she saw many of the vets that returned from the war act the way that many of Tayo's friends do. They go to bars to get drunk and to "remember the good old days" when the white women would throw themselves at them because of the uniform they wore. 

Over all, it was an interesting read. One that opened my eyes to the culture that I had never known before. One of my classmates, who is Navajo, said that it was a fairly accurate depiction. He had been to a few of the places mentioned in the book (Gallup in particular) and said that the world portrayed in the novel was very accurate--which is really scary sometimes. I particularly found the story of how whites came to be as eye opening. 

I would recommend this book to someone who was looking for more information about the Indian people, or who were looking for information about PTSD and how it effects the people who have it.