Professor Birdbrain
Reviewed by my husband
Written by Brandon Sanderson
Fantasy, Science Fiction
Published September 24th 2013
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Book Rating ★★★★★
Audiobook Rating ★★★★★
Ten years ago, Calamity came. It was a burst in the sky that gave ordinary men and women extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling them Epics. But Epics are no friend of man. With incredible gifts came the desire to rule. And to rule man you must crush his wills.
Nobody fights the Epics... Nobody but the Reckoners. A shadowy group of ordinary humans, they spend their lives studying Epics, finding their weaknesses, and then assassinating them.
And David wants in. He wants Steelheart, the Epic who is said to be invincible. The Epic who killed David's father. For years, like the Reckoners, David's been studying, and planning, and he has something they need. Not an object, but an experience.
He's seen Steelheart bleed. And he wants revenge.
Our story begins with young boy David and his father. David has seen something that nobody before, or since has. David has seen an Epic bleed and not just any Epic, it was Steel Heart.
The event referred to as Calamity, brought about a change never seen on Earth before. Ordinary humans somehow gained extraordinary abilities, creating illusions, predicting the future or being able to fly. Those deemed Epics, live on the surface while ordinary humans are living in an area called the Under Streets with the rest of the non Epic population in New Cargo. David is a mysterious character. Readers will learn his motives within the first few chapters and although his character seems naive at times, his motivation and determination knows no bounds.
David has determined where a powerful Epic will be assassinated ahead of time and is there to witness the event, obsessed with the Epic population is not only dangerous but will put David's life at risk. The hit to be carried out by a band of underground rebels known as The Reckoners, a group David is desperate to join and prove his worth as an asset.
The Husband's Thoughts
Steelheart has a strong Science Fiction element, realism and a vivid dystopian future driven by a totalitarianism style of world building. As the reader is introduced to the band of colourful characters, all with secrets of their own, David's character begins to develop as his journey progresses.
David has always struggled to survive, working as a child and now orphaned. His mother having died years prior, then Steel Heart having killed his father when David was still a boy. Now at seventeen, David is armed and the self trained Epic hunter wants revenge. The Epic population are seen as superior, dominating ordinary humans while not held accountable for their actions. They're villainous, self serving and see humans as barely being tolerated. The Epic is a new breed of superhero, heinous villains who see the ordinary population as disposable mundanes.
David has always struggled to survive, working as a child and now orphaned. His mother having died years prior, then Steel Heart having killed his father when David was still a boy. Now at seventeen, David is armed and the self trained Epic hunter wants revenge. The Epic population are seen as superior, dominating ordinary humans while not held accountable for their actions. They're villainous, self serving and see humans as barely being tolerated. The Epic is a new breed of superhero, heinous villains who see the ordinary population as disposable mundanes.
The audiobook was well narrated, it lures readers into the world of New Cargo and it's tyrannical inhabitants. It's captivating and brilliantly written. Brandon Sanderson has reinvented the symbolic superhero, blurring the lines between heroes and villains while engrossing readers with an intense and unique storyline.
Golden Son
Red Rising Trilogy: Book Two
Written by Pierce Brown
Reviewed by the Hubby
Science Fiction, Dystopian
Published January 13th 3015
446 Pages
Thank you to Hachette Australia
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The astonishing, unforgettable sequel to Red Rising, which the Examiner called 'properly a-ma-zing, like an adrenalin shot for the imagination.' Ender's Game meets The Hunger Games in this, the second in an extraordinary trilogy from an incredible new voice.
'I'm still playing games. This is just the deadliest yet.'
Darrow is a rebel forged by tragedy. For years he and his fellow Reds worked the mines, toiling to make the surface of Mars inhabitable. They were, they believed, mankind's last hope. Until Darrow discovered that it was all a lie, and that the Red were nothing more than unwitting slaves to an elitist ruling class, the Golds, who had been living on Mars in luxury for generations.
In Red Rising, Darrow infiltrated Gold society, to fight in secret for a better future for his people. Now fully embedded amongst the Gold ruling class, Darrow continues his dangerous work to bring them down from within. It's a journey that will take him further than he's ever been before, but is Darrow truly willing to pay the price that rebellion demands?
Hic sunt leones.
A life or death tale of vengeance with an unforgettable hero at its heart, Golden Son guarantees Pierce Brown's continuing status as one of fiction's most exciting new voices.
Red Rising
Red Rising Trilogy Book One
Written by Pierce Brown
Reviewed by the Hubby
Reviewed by the Hubby
Science Fiction, Dystopian
Published January 28th 2014
400 Pages
The Earth is dying. Darrow is a Red, a miner in the interior of Mars. His mission is to extract enough precious elements to one day tame the surface of the planet and allow humans to live on it. The Reds are humanity's last hope.Or so it appears, until the day Darrow discovers it's all a lie. That Mars has been habitable, and inhabited, for generations, by a class of people calling themselves the Golds. A class of people who look down on Darrow and his fellows as slave labour, to be exploited and worked to death without a second thought.Until the day that Darrow, with the help of a mysterious group of rebels, disguises himself as a Gold and infiltrates their command school, intent on taking down his oppressors from the inside. But the command school is a battlefield, and Darrow isn't the only student with an agenda.
Professor Birdbrain is making another appearance, this time to review the final installment in the Across The Universe trilogy, Shades of Earth.
Contains spoilers for books one and two
Written by Beth Revis
Published January 2013
369 Pages
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Amy and Elder have finally left the oppressive walls of the spaceship Godspeed behind. They're ready to start life afresh, to build a home on Centauri Earth, the planet that Amy has traveled twenty five trillion miles across the universe to experience.
But this new Earth isn't the paradise Amy had been hoping for. There are giant Pterodactyl like birds, purple flowers with mind numbing toxins, and mysterious, unexplained ruins that hold more secrets than their stone walls first let on. The biggest secret of all? Godspeed's former passengers aren't alone on this planet. And if they're going to stay, they'll have to fight.
Amy and Elder must race to discover who, or what else is out there if they are to have any hope of saving their struggling colony and building a future together. They will have to look inward to the very core of what makes them human on this, their most harrowing journey yet. Because if the colony collapses? Then everything they have sacrificed, friends, family, life on Earth, will have been for nothing.
Professor Birdbrain is back, and after a short hiatus after finishing Across The Universe, he's moved onto A Million Suns. Professor Birdbrain is what I call my husband, he's a cross between Phil Dunphy, the One Man Wolfpack and a walking Big Bang Theory episode, hence the name. So with a little help, he's ditched the Xbox and composed his second review.
May contain spoilers for Across The Universe.
A Million Suns (Across The Universe: Book Two)
Written by Beth Revis
Published January 2012
386 Pages
Godspeed was once fueled by lies. Now it is ruled by chaos.It’s been three months since Amy was unplugged. The life she always knew is over. Everywhere she looks, she sees the walls of the spaceship Godspeed. But there may be hope: Elder has assumed leadership of the ship. He's finally free to act on his vision, no more Phydus, no more lies. But when Elder learns shocking news about the ship, he and Amy race to discover the truth behind life on Godspeed. They must work together to unlock a mystery that was set in motion hundreds of years earlier. Their success, or failure, will determine the fate of the 2,298 passengers aboard Godspeed. But with each step, the journey becomes more perilous, the ship more chaotic, and the love between them more impossible to fight.
Beth Revis catapulted readers into the far reaches of space with her New York Times bestselling debut, Across the Universe. In A Million Suns, Beth deepens the mystery with action, suspense, romance, and deep philosophical questions. And this time it all builds to one mind bending conclusion: They have to get off this ship.
After years of telling my husband how wonderful young adult novels are, I finally convinced him to read one. He's a gamer, not a reader, but I managed to lure him in with the promise of science fiction and a storyline I was certain he couldn't resist. Please welcome the man I lovingly call Professor Birdbrain, and his first ever book review.
Across the Universe (Across The Universe: Book One)
Written by Beth Revis
Published January 2011
398 Pages
Seventeen year old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, three hundred years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end fifty years too soon and that she would be thrust into the brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules.
Amy quickly realizes that her awakening was no mere computer malfunction. Someone - one of the few thousand inhabitants of the spaceship , tried to kill her. And if Amy doesn't do something soon, her parents will be next.
Now Amy must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets. But out of her list of murder suspects, there's only one who matters: Elder, the future leader of the ship and the love she could never have seen coming.
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