Karen Sandler

Tag: scott westerfeld

  • RTW – Best Book Read in October

    This week, YA Highway’s Road Trip Wednesday asks, What’s the best book you’ve read in October?

    My answer, Scott Westerfeld’s Goliath, was not only the best book I read in October (and I read some good ones), but the most highly anticipated. I was so glad to finally get my hands on it.

    I’d known about the Leviathan series for quite a while, but I wasn’t sure I’d like steampunk. I’m usually pretty meh about alternate history stories, so I was reluctant to try Westerfeld’s series on that basis (despite being a big fan of his Uglies books).

    Then I saw the artwork on his website and realized I really wanted to give it a try. I own a Kindle, and had planned to get the e-book. But then I was in an independent bookstore about an hour away from my house (we don’t have too many IBS’s nearby) and saw Leviathan. I realized the price for the paper book (trade paperback sized) was the same as for the e-book. Wanting to support the IBS, I bought Leviathan in paper.

    I am so glad I did. I’ve learned in the nearly two years I’ve owned my very basic Kindle that it does have limitations. Reading an illustrated book just doesn’t work as well on the electronic device. Much better to see those detailed drawings on paper, at least for me. So reading that paper version of Leviathan was sheer pleasure, and prompted me to buy the second book, Behemoth, as trade paperback as well.

    I was pretty bummed that Goliath wasn’t immediately available when I finished Behemoth several months ago. Then when Goliath came out in August, I was further frustrated because I wanted to purchase it in a brick-and-mortar IBS instead of from Amazon. But the store that’s an hour away from me was near where my son and daughter-in-law used to live. That made it somewhat convenient to shop there when I’d go visit them. But now they’ve moved out of state, so I have no reason to drive all the way to that store.

    Then I was at a nearby news and gift shop and found out they can and will order in books. I requested Goliath from them (and while I was at it scheduled a book signing at their store for Tankborn). Once it came in, I went and picked it up, then proceeded to devour Westerfeld’s book (in the figurative sense).

    Goliath is full of adventure, alternate history, extremely cool gadgets and exotic genetically engineered beasties, and wonderful characters. I’m sure it’s great fun for the young adults who are ostensibly its audience, but I think any adult lover of science fiction would enjoy the book. If you’re intrigued by history, particularly the events surrounding World War I, then Goliath (the entire Leviathan series, really) is absolutely for you. Scott Westerfeld, you are a god of the written word!

    So what did you read this month? Something wonderful?

  • RTW – Best Book in June

    YA Highway‘s blog prompt for the last Road Trip Wednesday of the month is always about the best book you’ve read for the month, in this case, What was the best book you read in June? When I took a peek on my iPod and saw the prompt, I thought, Hah! An easy one! because my mind immediately went to a fabulous book I read in June, the only one I read in paper form.

    Then I took a peek at my Kindle list to see what else I’d read and realized, Dang! There’s a second one!

    So I’m afraid I’m going to have two favorites again this month. First is Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld, the second book in his steampunk Leviathan series. As I mentioned, I read this one as a trade paperback rather than e-book. I had dropped into a fabulous indie bookstore in Davis CA, The Avid Reader, to ask if they would order in my YA science fiction book, Tankborn. I made a point of buying a book that day (a Jasper Fforde novel), then when I returned later to autograph the copy of Tankborn that they’d ordered, I again wanted to support the store by buying a book. I spotted Leviathan, a book I’d been wanting to read, and realized the trade paperback cost the same as the Kindle version, so why not buy it in paper?

    It turned out to be a smart decision because the book is loaded with wonderful illustrations that I’m sure would not have been so beautiful on my Kindle screen. Once I finished Leviathan, I desperately wanted Behemoth, but I was determined to support the Avid Reader next time I was in Davis by buying the book there.

    Finally I made it back to Davis, bought Behemoth and devoured it in just a few days. Both Leviathan and Behemoth are great on-the-edge-of-your-seat adventures, with a mondo cool steampunk world that meshes beautifully with actual history. I’ve been a Scott Westerfeld fan for a while, but these two books just up the fan gush.

    You might think these are the two books I mentioned earlier. But no. I read Leviathan a couple months ago. The second fave book that I read in June is The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson. I follow Maureen on Twitter (is she a hoot, or what?), so I’ve known about the book for quite some time. But I avoided it because I’m pretty squeamish when it comes to gore and I feared this book would be full of it (the Jack the Ripper angle clued me in).

    But although there are some pretty ick scenes that made me cringe, they don’t dominate the book. There’s such a great story here, I couldn’t stop turning pages. Plus, I loved the characters, the setting, and Maureen’s trademark humor (yes, many funny bits even in a book centered around Jack the Ripper).

    So if you haven’t checked out the Leviathan series and The Name of the Star (also slated to be a series), I suggest you do, forthwith.

  • Dystopias & Apocalyptic Dreams

    Two or three times a year, I have a post-apocalyptic dream. Not recurring; it’s different every time. Some disaster has occurred on earth. I’m living with my family under a freeway underpass or in a cave. My life as I knew it has been thoroughly altered.

    Just by itself, Freud would probably have had a field day with a dream like that, but to add to the weirdness, I really like those dreams. I always wake up with a sense of Wow, that was cool! In the dreams, I have it together, I’m powerful and doing a great job taking care of my family and battling whatever the forces are that created the apocalypse. The dreams give me a sense of well-being. Yes, very peculiar.

    I’m guessing that one thing I like about the dreams is the story aspect of them. While I’m in the dream, I’m living that post-apocalyptic life. I’m a part of the landscape, living it first-hand. When I wake, the storyline doesn’t necessarily hold up, but while I’m in it, it’s like experiencing my very own post-apocalyptic movie.

    No surprise that I love reading post-apocalyptic and dystopian books. My first YA, Tankborn, is a dystopian novel. Emptied, a work in progress, is post-apocalyptic. They’ve both been a blast to write.

    So what’s the difference between post-apocalyptic and dystopian stories? Are they essentially the same thing? Definitely not. An apocalypse is a sudden event. Life goes from complete normalcy to utter chaos within a very short time. An asteroid hits earth and the resultant dust cloud & radiation wipes out millions. A disease escapes from a secret lab and kills three-quarters of the population on the planet.

    The story would then proceed from that event, the characters struggling to survive in the midst of disaster. Alliances would be formed, enemies would sprout up to to try to defeat our main characters. By the end, our heroes would have vanquished not only the villains but the desolate landscape itself.

    The creation of a dystopia is a much more gradual process. In a dystopian novel, the evolution of the society it portrays is all backstory, and the main story reveals only hints of how that society came to be as events proceed. If the author were to detail the entire history of how the society developed before she got to the action, her readers’ eyes would glaze over and they’d toss aside the book or delete the sample from their Kindle/Nook/iPad.

    So we jump right into Hunger Games‘ staging of gladiator-style games in which youths fight to the death without knowing exactly the path society took to get there (although it’s a believable extrapolation). The Adoration of Jenna Fox doesn’t detail the decades of scientific development it took to get from today’s medicine to the mystery of how Jenna came to be. Ditto for the Uglies series, where Scott Westerfeld uses another masterful extrapolation to create an entire society that revolves around beauty and fame, in which becoming beautiful is an everyday rite of passage for teens. But none of these worlds/societies happened overnight or due to any sudden, cataclysmic event.

    An apocalypse could lead to a dystopian society, could be the trigger for it. The Forest of Hands and Teeth would qualify, in which a virus of some sort leads to a plague of unconsecrated (i.e., zombies), which then leads to a quasi-religious dystopia. But in Forest, that society took a couple hundred years to develop to the present day depicted in the book.

    If there are examples out there that prove me wrong re: the definition of dystopians vs. post-apocalyptics, I’d be interested in hearing about them. I’d also be interested in more dystopians triggered by apocalyptic events. Leave the titles in a comment.