Book Review-The Savages by Matt Whyman

Title: The Savages

 Author: Matt Whyman

Series:  N/A

Published:  6 June 2013 by Hot Key Books

Length: 288 pages

Warnings: bulimia, possible suicide attempt, cannibalism, comical gory violence

Source: publishers

Other info: Matt Whyman has written  quite a few other books such as Boy Kills  Man and Goldstrike.

Summary : They'd love to have you for dinner . . .
Sasha Savage is in love with Jack - a handsome, charming ... vegetarian. Which wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that Sasha's family are very much 'carnivorous'. Behind the family facade all is not as it seems. Sasha's father rules his clan with an iron fist and her mother's culinary skills are getting more adventurous by the day. When a too-curious private detective starts to dig for truths, the tight-knit family starts to unravel - as does their sinister taste in human beings . . .

Review: The Savages are a fairly happy family. There’s Titus and Angelica, a loving couple, grandfather Oleg, teenagers Sasha and Ivan and new baby Katya. They deal with normal troubles-money, schools, brother sister pranks, and the fact they’re cannibals. Yeah. Sasha then brings home a boyfriend, who happens to be vegetarian. While Sasha’s having a bit of an eating identity crisis, the Savages have another problem. An accidental death of an actress at their house leads to a body that can’t be disposed of in the normal way, a detective starts digging, and maybe they can’t go on like this...

The concept of this, I loved. Cannibals in a wholly modern setting, with relatability and school and things, I was really excited to get started on this.

It’s a LOT deeper than it sounds. It may be because I read it on a history trip where it’s all analyse things, but I saw half the events as metaphor. Jack’s devotion and the whole extreme veganism is funny, but could also be taken as a symbol for other  extremist groups. There’s other elements as well such as figuring out where you belong in this world, and rebelling against family values, adding a bit of seriousness.

Sasha was the most relatable for me, with the age and the working out who she is. It’s nice meeting a character like that.  My favourite character was probably Ivan, because his sense of humour is really in-line with mine jack was ok to start with, but then started getting really really irritating.

There’s lots of plots fitting together nicely. The detective one adds a bit of serious tension. The Amanda/Beyond Vegetarianism  one  furthers Sasha’s character development and conflict. It all comes to a climax as the Savages prepare a feast for Katya’s first time eating human flesh.

The ending (as in the climax) was really good. It all gets wrapped up really nicely and in the style befitting the rest of the book (amusing, ironic, gory). The ending (as in the epilogue) was really unsatisfactory. I think some people might like the ambiguity, but I would have preferred a more definitive end.

Overall:  Strength 4 tea to a family/identity book that is a beautiful example of dark comedy.

Links: Amazon | The Book Depository | Goodreads | Author website | 

Book Review-The Hit by Melvin Burgess

Title:  The Hit

 Author: Melvin Burgess

Series:  N/A

Published:  4 April 2013

Length: 303 pages

Warnings: rape, drugs, heavy violence

Source:Publisher

Other info: Melvin has written many other things, including Junk.

Summary : Take it. Live it. F*** it.
A new drug is out. Everyone is talking about it. The Hit. Take it, and you have one amazing week to live. It's the ultimate high. At the ultimate price.
Adam is tempted. Life is rubbish, his girlfriend's over him, his brother's gone. So what's he got to lose? Everything, as it turns out. It's up to his girlfriend, Lizzie, to show him...

Review: There’s a new drug going round. Death. Giving you a week to live, and an eternity to not. Adam’s life is going very badly when he is given the chance to take it. Drawn in to a dangerous gang world, protesters, extreme violence and high stakes, Adam will discover what he has to live for.

I was really excited about this one. I’ve not read Junk or anything by Melvin before, but I feel like I should. The premise of The Hit was instantly eyecatching and exciting, and one that I could see going in any number of directions. Melvin took it in a good way.

Adam is a character that you get very close to, probably because of the intimacy and intensity of the things we go through with him, you know, thinking he’ll die being the major one.  He is immature at times, but also real. Lizzie is the saner girl, even though she is forced into the world of danger that Adam gets involved in. Christian is horrible, and scary in the way that real properly evil horrible people are. The mob network and the opposing group, the Zealots, were well fleshed out.

Plotwise, it works. It’s kept moving at a good pace. Things come round in funny ways. The ending-the outline was predictable, the exact workings of it, not so. The writing-really good.

I was surprised that after the emphasis on Death in the press thing and on the internet and thing, it was plot driven by the gang and action like that. It worked as a story, but with the concept, it wasn’t what I was expecting and I think I would have liked to see a  bit more questions being posed as a larger component of the story.

That said, it did  raise  quite a few. Would you take it? How would you spend your last week? Would you think it was worth it?

Overall:  Strength 4 tea to a gritty and real book with a thoughtprovoking look at death and life.

Links: Amazon | Goodreads | Author website | 

Who would Joy cast as Amber? The Sweet Dead Life Blog Tour

Today, we have a quickie from Joy Preble, on who to cast as Amber Velasco. I'm currently a third of the way through The Sweet Dead Life, and I think Amber's really cool. It's nice seeing author's picks of a cast, how they envisage their characters often disagrees with my first thought-case in point, here. But still.

Amber

Amber Velasco is Casey’s angel boss. She also makes a living at her ‘cover jobs’ of EMT/bartender. She is a sexy tough Texas woman who was in her early twenties when she bit the dust and came back as an angel. She’s loved and lost and has some dark secrets and a wild side that mostly don’t get revealed until book 2, THE A WORD. Casey Samuels is her first newbie angel to shepherd. And he is quite the handful for her.

I am torn about who I think could play this role. My first choice was actually Jennifer Lawrence and I still think she’d kick butt as Amber. But if she was still busy with the Hunger Games franchise, I would pick Allison Williams from GIRLS. She is the right physical type and I think she could definitely play that mixture of surface tight ass mixed with tough girl who wants what she wants and who would be totally unexpected once she broke loose of following the rules.

The Sweet Dead Life “I found out two things today. One, I think I’m dying. And two, my brother is a perv.”

So begins the diary of 14-year-old Jenna Samuels, who is having a very bad eighth-grade year. Her single mother spends all day in bed. Dad vanished when she was eight. Her 16-year-old brother, Casey, tries to hold together what’s left of the family by working two after-school jobs— difficult, as he’s stoned all the time. To make matters worse, Jenna is sick. When she collapses one day, Casey tries to race her to the hospital in their beat-up Prius and crashes instead.

Jenna wakes up in the ER to find Casey beside her. Beatified. Literally. The flab and zits? Gone. Before long, Jenna figures out that Casey didn’t survive the accident at all. He’s an “A-word.” (She can’t bring herself to utter the truth.) Soon they discover that Jenna isn’t just dying: she’s being poisoned. And Casey has been sent back to help solve the mystery that not only holds the key to her survival, but also to their mother’s mysterious depression and father’s disappearance.

The Sweet Dead Life releases on 14 May from Soho Teen. You can buy it from Amazon and the Book Depository, find it on Goodreads and find Joy Preble here.

Book Review- Gearteeth by Timothy Black

Title: Gearteeth

 Author: Timothy Black

Series:  Gearteeth Trilogy #1

Published:  9 August 2012 by Red Rose Publishing

Length: 607 pages

Warnings: violence, racism

Source: Author

Other info: Timothy wrote us a guest post on squick. Gearteeth is the start of a trilogy.

Summary : "In 1890 a disease that turned sane men into ravenous werewolves erupted in the United States and soon spread to the rest of the world. On the brink of humanity's extinction, Nikola Tesla and a secret order of scientists known as the Tellurians revealed a bold plan: the uninfected would abandon the Earth's surface by rising up in floating salvation cities, iron and steel metropolises that carried tens of thousands of refugees above the savage apocalypse. The remnants of mankind huddled fearfully in the clouds, waiting for the werewolves to devour each other. Yet twenty years later only one salvation city remains aloft, while the beasts still rule the world below. Time has taken its toll on the miraculous machinery of the city, and soon the last of the survivors will plummet to their doom. But when Elijah Kelly, a brakeman aboard the largest of the city's Thunder Trains, is infected by the werewolf virus he discovers a secret world of lies and horrific experiments that hide the disturbing truth about the Tellurians. When the beast in his blood surges forth Elijah must choose between the lives of those he loves and the city that is humanity's last hope of survival."

Review: In a world where people have fled to the sky to escape the werewolves down below, Elijah Kelly is a teenager working on a thunder train when an attack claims friend Henry, and infects Elijah. Choosing to leave his home for the safety of his fellow citizens, Elijah soon comes across secrets concerning the Tellurians, the scientists that got them up there, and the safety of society.

This is an amazingly imaginative steampunk setting. The trains and goggles and gear are typical steampunk fare, the derelict cities and the savageness of the werewolves aren’t. Everything has a spin on it, and my favourite part was seeing the flips side of prosperity and the technology reflecting that.

The characters are cool. My favourite one by far is Maude, Elijah’s grandmother, who is clever and completely off the scale badass.  Elijah is clever, with  a good heart, and a character you keep rooting for after getting attached. Also, this got me realising how little diversity there is in steampunk in terms of mixed-race/asian/non white main characters, and therefore points to Gearteeth. Maggie, the girl who  we meet halfway through, stuck up for herself a lot. The Tellurians and werewolves are very interesting. All the characters are interesting, and you always want to know more about them.

There’s a lot of action. Really, a lot.  It’s all well written and gripping and easily imaginable. The world is drawn very vividly, and you can easily imagine the point of canon divergence and how that affected this world, and you can see the roots and realistic issues such as the extreme poverty and horrible conditions, and the backstory fuelled by racism in rural areas.

This is very much in the horror genre as well as the steampunk one. There’s the werewolves, the Tellurians and the reason for their masks, and then a particularly memorable scene involving wolves and a young girl with a metal attachment in her brain. Yeah.  

Overall:  Strength 4 tea to a novel bringing more awesomeness to multiple genres.

Links: Amazon | Goodreads | Author website | 

Hi guys! Bank Holiday Edition

How's your bank holiday going? Mine's  been violin, ukulele and typing... I think my fingers must hate me.

I've been getting on well with a lot of books and things. Lots of reviews to type up now!

Books I have received recently:

 -- The Oathbreaker's Shadow by Amy McColluch

-- The Drowning by Rachel Ward

-- Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctrow and Charlie Stross

--Lockwood and Co by Jonathan Stroud

--Call of the Jersey Devil by Aurelio Voltaire

Thank you to all publicity people and also to Kayleigh (K Books) for these!

I should be able to have a bit more bloggy things come up now! Things are scheduled and I have a lot to type.

I had a ridiculously fun time on Thursday.  I went to see Voltaire and Joe Black do a show in Windsor and afterwards everyone was able to stay and get things signed and have chats and hugs. I won't bore you with gory details of songs, but I did get some stuff signed and hugs from both of them!

Me and Voltaire

Signed book!

News!

There's an auction for Chelsea Pitcher's book The S Word happening, and the proceeds go to funds for Boston Bombing victims.

I have figured out a little more for the LGBTetc event. I missed Faye's LGBTReadathon but there were lots of people and interesting discussions and I have a bit better idea as to what to cover in the event in August. Sign up sheet and info will come one day, hopefully before June.

Cait has an international giveaway going for Code Name Verity or Out of the Easy. Go take a look.


It's Headline's LoveYA May! For starters, there's a Pinterest board of YA books and why we love them, and there should be more coming later.

Can't think of anything else. So here, now, have some words of wisdom.

Spoilers, Sweetie -Embracing My Inner Geek

The week off has been so useful! I have written a few reviews and read and come up with some story ideas. I have also been using Memrise, a website that is stupidly useful for learning vocabulary and things, to a point of addiction, mainly because there's a leaderboard feature and I plan to beat Katy at all of it. And she plans to beat me. It's excellent motivation!

I'll do a post or two a week while my heavy revision happens. Email replies will be slow but
will happen in time.  I'm planning the Rainbow Reads (LGBTQIAetc) event, and have some ideas-if you have any or would like to be included when I email things out, please share them in comments/emails. 


Anyway, it's Lucy the Reader/Queen of Contemporary's blogoversary week, and she asked us all to make an Embracing My Inner Geek post. I am totally in favour of this being a full on meme, by the way. It might actually make me write a discussion post. So, for the first feature, I'm talking about...well, you can tell. This was totally not an excuse for having a picture of River Song on my blog. Ok, maybe. Onwards.

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Stories are great. They should grip you from the beginning and hold you until the end. And often they do. And so your friend wants to share their love of this thing, and you're listening and thinking "this is rather good" and getting into it and.... ARGH. They've given away an important plot twist! SPOILERS!!!

So, what's the problem with spoilers? There's a difference between knowing and ending to a story because you've read it and loved it, and knowing the the ending to a story because someone told you. Going into a story knowing what happens, who survives, who doesn't, takes away a little of the thrill of the ride, the suspense, the terror, the anticipation. 

I try and avoid sharing spoilers as much as possible. I think it's a simple courteousy to anyone who hasn't enjoyed the story and  wants to. If I enjoyed it for it's twists and turns, and then told someone all these twists and turns, then they can't enjoy the story for its twists and turns because they won't be a surprise.


I know some people like knowing endings to books. There's a feature,  Happily Ever Endings by Down the Rabbit Hole, devoted to them-more for the purpose of  refreshing before book 2, but if you stumble across it by accident, you may ruin a book (I'm NOT saying there's anything wrong with this feature. It's extremely useful. Go check it out. But be careful). And  some things are just so well known that it's not a spoiler, more common knowledge.


Sometimes, spoilers are really really hard to keep. Or hard to determine whether or not they're a spoiler. Or are from older sources so more people may have heard of them. Marking a spoiler is tricky in certain cases, and I for one feel bad if I accidentally spill  a plot twist.

What if it's the catalyst for the main events? For example, something in Will Grayson Will Grayson regarding Will's boyfriend that he has been chatting to online. Does it count if it gets the rest of the plot going?  I'd say yes, particularly in this example as it was kind of important to Will's self esteem/mental health/happiness and marked a kind of turn for him.

Plot twists- if it happens early enough, I'd say that it isn't a spoiler.  For example, I found an angry person complaining about being told about someone's death in Supernatural. Said death happened in the first few minutes of the first ever episode. It was not a spoiler in any way, and was really amusing seeing that person getting worked up about it. My general feeling is if it happens within the first 10% of the novel/story, it's fair game, if it's an addition to the plot such as a character or subplot opening, say it, if it's something that made you go "whoa. What. That was unexpected", it's a spoiler.

Age of source comes into it aswell. Aiden Turner was being interviewed about his role in the Hobbit as Kili, and someone asked him "have you got any spoilers for film two, that you're filming now?" His response went along the lines of "It was written in 1937. There'
s not much to spoil." And I get where he's coming from. Things that have been around for such a long time may have seeped into common knowledge, and if they havent, have existed long enough for you to get your hands on it. Sarah and I have a rule- no spoilers on anything that's older than 50 years.

The only rule that I think everyone should keep is TAG YOUR SPOILERS. That way, you can say what you want, and those who want to know things can, and those who don't want to know can walk away. That way everyone's happy.  

So, yeah.  That's a basic sum up of my spoiler rules. If it's old, early, or not that surprising, then it's not a spoiler. If it's something surprising to you,  it is  a spoiler, so either keep it quiet or tag it.  I hope that helped, Sweetie.

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