Going to the beach is kind of my thing. We sit, toast, and read. And occasionally get up to jump in the waves.
Over the course of my one-week vacation in December, I read quite a few amazing sci-fi novels which I had wanted to catch up on. So I thought I’d give you the breakdown, in case you’re interested.
#1: On the plane, I began by reading a recent find titled The Warded Man, written by Peter V. Brett. The novel follows three young children in a world where demons called “corelings” rise from the earth every night from dusk until dawn to eat, maim, and kill people. The only thing that stops these demons are the wards, powerful symbols that the humans put around their homes and cities. So each of the three main heros faces off against these demons with different skills. Arlen is gifted at warding, so when SPOILER ALERT his mother is killed by the demons, he travels with a Messenger to the nearest city to learn the craft of warding. Eventually, he discovers awesome attack wards and tattoos himself to fight the demons at night. Badass. Then there’s Leesha, a girl tortured by her step-mother who is apprenticed to the town’s Herb-Gatherer. Herb-Gatherers know how to heal, and also use their knowledge to do good and sometimes fight the demons head on. Leesha’s pretty awesome too. Then there’s Rojer, a child orphaned by the demons, he grows up to learn a trade as a jester. He has a hard life, until he discovers that he can affect the demons’ behavior with the music from his fiddle.
Eventually, after many trials, they meet and decide to take the fight to the demons in an epic battle.
The book is engaging and well-written. The characters are developed believably in a magnificent world that sucks you in. Obviously, I was very impressed by this book.
#2: Max Brooks’s famous zombie novel: World War Z. (Soon to be a major motion picture with Brad Pitt). This book has less of a central storyline. The narrator travels all over the world to interview people who witnessed the events of the Zombie War and survived. So you get a multitude of horrifying perspectives. At the beginning, there’s a sense of impending doom just shuffling towards you and moaning for flesh. Despite it’s lack of central character, this book was just as compelling a story. You get to see all the great battle sites, all the horror right along with the people who were there. I cannot wait to see how they translated it into a movie. Cause who doesn’t love zombies? Especially as told by Max Brooks, author of The Zombie Survival Guide. It’s so official. Good read.
#3: After zombies, I shifted to another apocalypse novel. This one, though…eesh. Told from the perspective of five or six shifting characters (some of them die, some of them wake up halfway through…) Robopocalypse by Daniel H Wilson tells the story of the impending robot uprising, spanning the globe from the US to Japan to Afghanistan. And all parties have to work together to stop the artificial intelligence mastermind buried deep underground in Alaska. This story kept me on the edge of my beach chair the whole way. I never knew who might live and who might die on the next page. It did a good job of integrating believable technology with our society. I mean, obviously we don’t have robots as sophisticated as these (YET). But we have smart cars. We have auto landing systems on airplanes. Simply put, this book scared the shit out of me.
#4: On the plane back, I decided to read Garth Nix’s postapocalypse novel Shade’s Children. Now Garth Nix, for me, has a special place in my heart because of his VERY STEAMPUNK series Keys to the Kingdom. This novel was a lot darker than that series however. In this postapocalypse, something occured known only as The Change. In the Change, all humans over the age of fourteen simply disappeared, leaving the children at the mercy of otherworldly Overlords who put them in Dorms. In the Dorms they are raised like cattle to be harvested, because on their fourteenth birthday, they are taken to the Meat Factory and killed for their brains and muscles to be put into biomechanical androids which serve the Overlords.
Dark, huh? Well the Change also bestowed some supernatural gifts on some children. And a small percentage of them escape. That is what happens to Gold-eye (so named for his golden eyes — which incidentally allow him to see the future). He finds rescue with a squad of kids who take him to an old submarine where an entity known as Shade resides. Now you see the reason for the title.
It turns out that Shade is a man’s consciousness stored in a computer, which is why he survived The Change. He appears only as a hologram to the kids.
Shade harbors escaped children in exchange for work. Since he cannot leave the sub, the kids have to go on missions for him across the city for technology. Dangerous missions, from which not all the kids return.
While the Overlords play sick games, Gold-eye and his friends try to figure out how to reverse the Change and save everyone’s lives. I won’t spoil the ending for you.
So, this beach break reading was pretty apocalypse-themed. It was a lot of fun. All of these are very good reads. Definitely check ’em out.
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