These Broken Stars

Definitely a different story than I anticipated.

These Broken Stars is the story of the heiress of a massive, galaxy wide industry that has its fingers in everything and a war hero who hates the spotlight. On a spaceship with 50,000 other people on board it was by chance at a ritzy party where Tarver sees a beautiful girl bored across the room. Lilac forgets herself and flirts with this man who doesn't know who she is. Refreshing. But then is forced by society to make him hate her. It would have been easy, as soon as they landed, he would go his way and she would go hers. But when the massive ship is tossed out of hyperspace they find themselves in the only escape pod that actually survives the descent into a planet's atmosphere. Being the only two people within a hundred miles and a need to survive they are forced to rely on each other. However, they may not be the only beings on the planet. Invisible whispers are everywhere and they aren't only from the dead.

I first started read this a long time ago, but wasn't in the mood for a prissy heiress and soldier boy story. But as I listened to the audiobook (read by Cynthia Holloway, Jonathan McClain, and Sarge Anton) I found I started to like it. I was expecting the story to stay on the ship, but when it suddenly went down my interest was peaked even more. It wasn't what I expected. A fight for survive with a plethora of snarky comments between the two had me invested. The plot became engaging and I really wanted to know what happened next.

Lilac was a made good progress through the story. She is a very proud girl to where she wouldn't even take off her stilettos while hiking. As the story progressed she gained confidence, not just pride. She was going to survive and stand up for herself. Tarver could have used more of a character arch, I think. I don't feel like he grew too much throughout the story. I wish there had been more of that. Over all there weren't many other prominent characters throughout the story. It was just them, which is okay, though I would have liked a village of hostile colonists or something. Outer hostile colonists were mentioned a lot by Tarver, so I assumed that was were we were heading. In the end though, there was a lot of blank space and internal dialog.

"There were trees." "There was grass." "We climbed mountains." "More trees." That was most of the setting. I can't complain too much, though. When they reached structures I knew where they stood and what was around them.

I think it was an interesting story, one that I didn't anticipate. I'd be interested to read more of the series, though it's not the highest on my priority list. It still gets a 4.5/5 for me because I couldn't find anything really wrong or that I disliked about it. Not a favorite, but good.

Carve the Mark

I was in desperate need of a new audio book to run too. I looked on the back of this one at the library and found that Austin Butler read for Akos. I recalled the name, and thought it was the same guy who voiced for Cassandra Clare's Infernal Devices Series. I was mistaken and when looking it up, the narrator is actually the main male character in the Shannara Chronicles. Pleasant surprise.

Even with my mistake I listened to and and wasn't too thrilled by it.

The story happens in a universe where a group of planets are in connection with each other. Space travel is a thing and there is a strange occurrence that happens across their universe that changes people as a type of puberty where they get different powers depending on the type of person and personality they have.

While most of the planets are aligned as one people, there is one that is split by two peoples that have a volatile vendetta against each other. Akos is kidnapped with his brother, an Oracle and taken to the other side of the Divide. He is physically abused to "thicken his skin" and later given to Cyra, a girl who constantly is in pain and can give that pain to others often killing them, as a steward to help her with her pain. However Cyra isn't the "knife" that most people see her as. Only he can actually stop her pain and open her eyes the how things really are.

This story if full of plot and intrigue. The characters are very well developed and do grow as people. I really like how Cyra was developing and continued to do so throughout the novel. The plot was very good.

Much like her Divergent series though, it felt like she lacked in setting. Not nearly as bad as her first series, but there was still some. I don't know what the main city looked like besides old mixed with new. I don't know what their ships or guns look like. There was many things missing that it felt like there were holes in the world. This is very important, I think, to not miss especially when making a new universe, not only world. I feel like she did miss this.

In other books I have this feeling of "I need to know what happens next!" but for this one I didn't mind waiting until Monday when I was a the gym again. I didn't care for Akos. It might have had something to do with Austin Butler's reading of the Akos parts. Butler's reading wasn't the best. It actually seemed rather monotone and dull comparative to Emily Rankin who read for Cyra. His voice didn't change for the characters unless the girls were whining or screaming. It was very dull to listen to.

I do understand that reading it yourself is different than listening and you can come away with different experiences, so I would give it a good review for mid-teen readers. They would enjoy it. An older audience who doesn't care for setting would enjoy it too.

A Certain Scientific Railgun

A Certain Scientific Railgun is a manga based in "Academy City," what once was Tokyo but has become the base for all espers--or those who have psychic abilities. The story follows Misaka, a middle school girl who is already one of the top seven espers in the city and is super powerful. She has friends who are in Judgement, an esper focused police force, but somehow she ends up being in the middle of everything.

Over the course of the first ten volumes (70 chapters) *there are actually twelve volumes but two of them aren't in english yet, and I can't read Japanese :/  ), there are three story arcs that for a while seem like they don't correlate, but then somehow kind of do. The first (in volumes 1-3) we get to know the characters and find out that there is something called a "Level Upper" which can make the abilities the espers have go up a "level" and become more powerful. However what the public doesn't know is that after a few days you fall into a coma that is really hard to come out of. When they find the culprit, a major battle ensues, and Misaka finds that there is more to Academy City than she thought.

Arc two (4-the first half of 7) turns dark. Like rather gory dark. So much so that if it didn't lighten up I was going to put it down. Volume 4 is probably the darkest and most gory, but then once the reader understands what is going on, they step back from the gory and  become more investigative and they find that scientists in Academy City are making clones of Misaka. The plan is for 20,000 of them. However, already about 10,000 of them have been killed already. What is going on!? Stay tuned to find out.

Arc three (7.5-10) corresponds with a citywide festival, every good anime/manga needs at least one right? But now that Misaka has the clone thing under control, they are disappearing and people are after her. So many people with unknown agendas and suddenly none of her friends remembers her. It's as if the whole city is out to get her.

It's because they pretty much are. Of course.

Overall, it was okay. There were moments of "yuri" and moments were girls had no clothes on (though nothing drawn that would be porographic, but might make some uncomfortable) and the battle scenes seemed to last novels. Volume 5 consisted of mostly two fights. They happened in different stages, but it was long. She fought. "Yay!" Can we move on now? Some of the fights were pretty cool, but others seemed to drag on. Easy in a manga to skip, I guess.

At the beginning it teased a romance between the only boy mentioned in the series and Misaka, but almost nothing happened. It almost seemed out of character for her to even be talking with the guy at all. But he is needed at the end so I guess he has to stay around because of what he does.

At the last climax, which I was really into and was really cool, we jumped between characters because Misaka is incapacitated... kind of... and the only reason they were able to get out of the mess was odd. While I got how things started to collapse for the bad guy, I felt like it was too easy. I mean the girl who finally took out the bad guy had a heck of a time doing it, but I saw how it was going to be done a volume before it actually happened. But then the bad guy died (is he actually dead?) and things calmed down real quick and it was weird. Maybe the next two volumes, that I can't read, work things out, but this just felt weird. It summed up, but it felt unfulfilling.

This one I probably wouldn't read again, but for those people who really like blowy-uppy books, you'd probably like it. I have a feeling this series was meant for boys. Fight/action scenes, obnoxiously big boobs, sometimes naked girls, a little girl loving girl thing... Yeah. Misaka was a very powerful main character who could take on the world... But there were a bunch of questions I feel were left unanswered or were given a quick <insert answer to major problem here> moment. Eh, yeah. Probably won't read it again or the remaining volumes.