Best and Worst of 2014

This is it, folks.  The very BEST and the very WORST that Vitality Reviews has come across in the year 2014.

To advertise more broadly, the best of these 'Gems' will be displayed prominently.  The 'Black List' will be posted at the bottom.  To hopefully stave off some of its infamy.


BOOK GEMS:

1.  Clean Sweep by Ilona Andrews

2.  The Devil in Music by Kate Moss

3.  The House at Riverton by Kate Morton

4.  The Fever Series by Karen Marie Moning


MOVIE GEMS:

1.  Maleficent 

2.  How To Train Your Dragon

3.  How To Train Your Dragon 2

4.  God's Not Dead

5.  Lockout


GAME GEMS:

1.  The Last Of Us

2.  FarCry 3

3.  Tomb Raider

4.  FarCry 4

5.  Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag



Now, onto…



THE BLACK LIST


BOOK BLACK LIST:

1.  The Bionics by Alicia Michaels

2.  The Eye of Tanub by M. E. Cunningham

3.  City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

4.  Allegiant by Veronica Roth


MOVIE BLACK LIST:

1.  Noah

2.  The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

3.  Hercules


GAME BLACK LIST:

1.  Final Fantasy VIII

Book Review: Linked by Imogen Howson

Linked by Imogen Howson

Simon & Schuster © 2013

Hardcover

Science Fiction

Reviewed by Leah

Linked on Amazon

I wasn't actually in the mood to read this yet.  When I started, Elissa's voice was more irritating than endearing and relatable.  Then the action happened and kept hitting at me one intense moment after another, so that two days later I've finished the book.

Summary:

Elissa Ivory has been living a psychotic hell for the past three years.  Vomiting, dizziness, extreme pain and inexplicable bruises are amongst the symptoms she's been experience two or three times a week shortly after reaching puberty.  But that's not all of it.  More often than she cares to admit, she has experiences of being another girl, in another place, where scientists in sterile rooms are torturing her.

Offered a special surgery that would burn out this overactive part of her brain, Elissa needs to only wait four more days.  Then she might be able to scrape together something resembling a normal life.

She never stood a chance.

When the pictures become more clear than ever before--following on the heels of a facility fire that looked alarmingly like one of the earlier visions--Elissa has the strange sensation that this thing happening in her head could be a link to a real person, instead of just the product of an overactive brain.  She was right.

Unbeknownst to her, Elissa's twin sister escaped the facility where they experimented on the Spare children--once known as twins on Old Earth many years ago--with the sole purpose of seeing Elissa.  Just once.  Unwilling to mess up Elissa's 'perfect' life, Lin wanted only to see her sister one time and then vanish into thin air.

Something that Elissa could not allow to happen.  Determined to protect her newfound twin, Elissa risks everything to get them to safety.  Even that may not be enough.

Initial Thoughts:

As explained, I probably should have held off on reading this until I was in a more willing state of mind.  However, shit happens and here we are.  For the most part, this book kept me reading and was filled with all sorts of action, which doesn't really hurt.  Though I wasn't emotionally invested in the characters, I was interested in what would happen next.  There were no surprises here--at least, not for me.  Which is actually just what I needed.  A book without complexity, but with its own taste of originality.  As a sci-fi YA novel, it wasn't bad.

Characters:

Elissa was bland.  I never connected with her and I didn't care at all about her own troubles with this supposed illness.  The fact that she was someone to be laughed at during school never bothered me and I was glad that that part of her life was touched on very briefly.

When her twin entered the scene, there were a lot of moments meant to show Elissa's compassion for humans.  This was mostly done by pointing out that Lin didn't look at humans the same way, and Elissa was always afraid that Lin would actually hurt someone or--heaven forbid--kill someone.  It was at about this point that Elissa actually began to disgust me.

By the end she had redeemed herself, however.  Somewhat.  I never did connect with her, but she stayed consistent as a character.  And while that's not preferable to most people in comparison with a full character arc, in a book that is more action-oriented I found that I was at least happy with this fact.  She was consistently emotional, compassionate, and even innocent.  Always.  Which was a relief since a lot of authors try to make too dramatic of changes to an MC and then a lot of things happen that seem unrealistic for the character the reader has come to know.

All in all, didn't like or really hate Elissa.  Not as much as I could have, anyway.

Lin is a character I've seen most reviewers call bland and someone most people couldn't connect with.  Well I did.  I understood immediately why she would latch onto Elissa.  When everyone else told her that she wasn't human but Elissa was, using that link to connect was to find out just some taste of what it meant to be human.

The fact that she didn't think of herself as human lent a lot to the fact that she was okay with hurting others.  If it meant that they could escape, Lin was all for doing whatever it takes.  And I respect that.  I always will appreciate a character willing to go to any and every length to do what they must.  Even if it means sacrificing others or herself for her goals.  Which is why Elissa's judgements of her irked me to no end, because Elissa does not have that quality (lying/cheating someone does not count, though it could be construed as a baby step).

Lin is the real badass in this story and I instantly wanted to learn more about her.  Which is why it sucked so much that this story was all about Elissa.  There was so much potential built into Lin's character, and none of it was expounded upon.  What a waste.

Cadan is the poster boy for the Space Flight Institute.  A really cute poster boy that thirteen year old Elissa thought was the coolest person in the entire universe.  That is, until he became too 'grown-up' and made it clear to her that she was nothing more than his best friend's spoiled little sister.

Throughout the first few scenes with Cadan, Elissa makes it clear that he is extremely gifted and has a full scholarship to SFI; he is arrogant and patronizing; and he clearly thought that she should just get over her problems and work harder.

The Cadan I met in this book was nothing like that.  Since I didn't connect with Elissa, I guess it was easier to latch onto Cadan's intent than it was for the girl who once hero-worshipped him.  Most of their interactions where Cadan's "arrogance" or "pat--okay, he was a patronizing pain in the ass some of the time, but if she wasn't such a bleeding-heart teenager…  Anyway, all of the scenes showcasing his supposed arrogance were normally in response to some comment she'd made or a misunderstanding between them.  I understood Cadan far more clearly than I did Elissa some of the time, and boy did these two misunderstand each other a lot.

Plot & Setting:

As far as the plot goes, I got no surprises out of it.  Even with its big twist, I was well prepared for it long in advance.  Which was fine.  This is a book that requires more mental visualization than actual brain-power.  It's the type of book where you just follow along with the characters and see how many ways they can get themselves out of trouble.

That's honestly what the plot consists of.  Girls running from the government, getting squeezed into tight corners, and slipping out again.  The entire book.  All of it.  Nothing else happens that can't be summed up in that summary.

The setting was far more enjoyable.  Sekoia is a terraformed planet that is relatively newly stabilized.  Mostly because they have the greatest space program in the system.  Nothing can beat their hyperdrives and they've dug themselves out of debt with this program as well as provided for a thriving colonization of people.

The world building done here was tremendously good.  Enough details to get the basic history of the planet, the layout of where Elissa lived, and the small details only as they related to her.  I wasn't bogged down with too many details and I was given no piece of technology that I couldn't understand after a brief explanation.  Best of all, it was done in such a way that it didn't feel unnatural for the character to be thinking of it at the time.

Writing Style:

Okay, let's put it this way: I wasn't in the mood for this … I finished it in less than 48 full hours.  Typically, when I'm not all that interested in a book, it could take 5 days to several weeks before I finish it.  (I'm looking at you, the other volume and 1/3 of Sherlock Bloody Holmes Collection.)

So I was actually surprised when I reached the 40% mark yesterday.  I hadn't realized it'd gone by so fast that I was nearly half-way done with it.  Which I guess means that, despite having a lackluster cast of characters, the writing was at least compelling.

Overall Opinion/Spoiler Section:

I guess to sum it all up, I liked this book.  I enjoyed reading it and didn't feel that it was a waste of my time.  Will it ever be a favorite of mine?  No.  Would I still recommend it to a few friends?  Sure.

And there was a lot to like about it, once you got past Elissa's issues.  Especially the fact that the romance between her and Cadan didn't appear until literally the moment before they thought they were going to die.  But it wasn't this massive case of instalove.  In the moments prior to that--even though it was only two days for them--you got to see how misunderstood they both were and as you got to know Cadan better, it was easy to see why she would love him.  Why he'd like her still … well …  He did say she grew up a lot since last he saw her … and being on the brink of death could have had something to do with that ridiculous admission.  OKAY, so there might have been a bit of an instalove thing going on there, but it was easy to follow that it was the climax of two crushes that had been years in the making.  The best part of it was that it didn't overshadow anything else, though.  It was there, it was acknowledged, but it didn't detract from Elissa's priorities or what she was determined to do.

The premise of the book and what it did with it was well done, though it didn't live up to its full potential.  That's really all I have left to say about it.