OH MY GOD MY BLOG IS BACK!!! Part II

The Last Colony

By John Scalzi

"You're humanity's only hope." Those words sound so cheesy and yet, somehow Scalzi manages take the cheesiness out of them. Part of how he does that is through his sense of humor. Always good for breaking the ice in tense situations and Scalzi does so numerous times throughout this book.

Also at play is his fantastic character development. The thing that impressed me the most about his first two books were moments when characters did something I hadn't been expecting, but still made sense. Although that never happened here, what did happen was that Scalzi gave me great understanding of characters and their relationships through simple interactions. No inner monologue rambling on for pages and pages. Just simple, straight-forward dialogue and body language which managed to speak volumes, not only about his characters, but about their relationships with each other without the narrator needing to spell it out for me. It was awe-inspiring.

I enjoyed this book as much as I enjoyed the last book of the series and I can't wait to read more Scalzi!

The Lightning Thief

by Rick Riordan

This is one of those books that I picked up on a whim. While I have nothing against reading YA as an adult, I was a little put-off when I realized that the main character here is twelve. So the target audience is slightly younger than YA. At which point I thought "Oh, whatever. I'll breeze through it in a few days. What there's a sequel? Yeah, well, I don't have to read that."

OMG you guys, I totally want to read the sequel! This book was so much fun! It was fast-paced, action-packed, and, well, Greek gods. Who doesn't love to see Greek Gods in the middle of New York city every now and then? I particularly loved the portrayal of Ares. It seemed pretty much exactly like how I think he would dress and act if he existed in the modern day.

I must admit to being a little rusty on my Greek mythology so I can't say how accurate the book was in that department. I can say that I did not entirely buy the explanation for Percy's dyslexia. The ADD explanation, I can sort of get on board with, but the dyslexia not so much.

I also loved Percy and his friends, and, given that the book ended on an excellent cliff-hanger, I definitely want to read the sequel to find out what happens next!

Beautiful Darkness

by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Not much to say about this book. I did enjoy it and, like the first book of this series, it sucked me in. Once I started reading it was all I wanted to do until I reached the end.

I give this book major props for making me question the relationship between the two main characters. I'm so used to knowing that so-and-so is clearly meant to be with so-and-so and, as a result, no matter what happens, I am never really in fear for their relationship. This book had me wondering though ... Not only if their relationship would survive this, but if it should survive. Or maybe that's just the cynic in me, who knows? In any case, I definitely recommend this book and I cannot wait until I have a chance to get to the sequel.

I just hope it gets made into a movie. I really enjoyed the first movie and was super sad that it crashed in the box office because I really want to see the rest of the series get made into movies. Pleeeeeeeeeeeease!