Once it gets going, though, this is one of those books that pulls you to stay up half the night, reading straight through to the end. The story is about a group of teenage boys, memories wiped, locked in a deadly, ever-changing maze. It would have been easy for this to read just like a cheezy teen scifi/horror flick, but this book is way better than that. I’ll admit that every now and then there were turns that just weren’t believable for me — but the pace of the story was so quick that I was soon focused on the next leap.

Specific things I loved about this book?

* The society these boys have created for themselves seems real, and they’ve made it work for them — not the faux utopia seen in some books, nor is it always disintegrating into fights and one-upmanship.

* What’s going on in the maze is truly worth deep, bone-chilling fear — and not only is it described in a way that makes the fear seem well justified, but the boys’ different ways of dealing with their fear has a real impact on their lives.

* Some books in this genre are all too predictable, and this one really isn’t — it keeps going in places you don’t expect, keeps pulling in threads you didn’t see coming.

My only real irritation is that this is the sort of book that leaves you wanting to pick the sequel up immediately — and I have no idea when it will actually be published.

While it’s great watching Annie (the main character) learn more about her world and her family, and about her own strengths, as the book develops, one of the things that made this book so amazingly real is that even the minor characters have a lot of depth to them. No one feels like a cardboard prop in this book!

And while it’s a dark fantasy in many ways, there’s nothing here that feels dark just for the sake of the drama. And compared to a lot of other books I’ve read recently, I think the author does a wonderful job of balancing the dark side of this world with the strong and loving connections between the characters.

On top of that, the author does an awesome job of creating a world in which all of the intense twists and turns in the story make sense — and so the twists take you by surprise, but they still fit well within the story’s world. As a result, it’s an amazing book that just pulled me straight through to the end. I plan on handing this book off to some friends who have disappointed with the fantasy they’ve read lately — I think this book will get them excited again.

The stories are not only quirky, thought-provoking, and creative, but they also touch a deep emotional note — everyone I’ve shown this book came across at least one story in it that really touched them to the core. The great thing from my perspective is that it’s not like it’s just one amazing story that is blowing everyone away — each person seems to find something different in the book to latch onto. The illustrations are equally awesome; after my first read through the book, I spent awhile just really “reading” the illustrations in depth — there’s just so much there to see and think about.

And as a book geek, I also have to say that the design of the book itself is awesome, and really helps it pull together as a complete experience, from cover to cover.

In “Claim to Fame”, Lindsey is an ex-child star, living in obscurity — and able to hear everything that anyone says about her, from anywhere in the world. Not surprisingly, having such a talent sprout up just as you are hitting puberty as “the cute baby” of a TV family means hearing things that anyone would want to run away from. But when the book opens, Lindsey is 16, and being hit with circumstances and revelations that are pushing and prodding her out from her hiding place.

The only downfall for me in this book were there were so many “twists” that I could see coming well before Lindsey could. Especially when she is presented as incredibly intelligent and analytical, it was sometimes hard to buy over and over again that she just hadn’t seen it coming because she was feeling so overwhelmed by everything that was going on.

That said, it’s an incredibly minor flaw for me in an otherwise awesome book. Definitely well worth the read!

The book is about Lyn, the daughter of a gladiator in a near future world where gladiators not only fight to the death for glory and TV contracts, but also live by a strict social code that governs not only their lives, but also those of their wives and children.

Here are some of the many things I loved about this book:

* The author took some interesting ideas — Neo-gladiators fight to the death! The lives of gladiators and their families are part WWF, part reality TV, part The O.C.! — and developed them so well that everything seems real and believable.

* The characters and their relationships are well-developed — they seem like real people doing real things, rather than just following along because the plot tells them to. In a book about neo-gladiators and their families, it would be so easy to have flat stereotypes running around, but not here! And while it may be no surprise that Lyn comes across as a strong young woman who will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid being backed into someone else’s corner, the amazing thing for me is how many other characters I truly cared about.

* There are no cheap tricks in this plot, no empty chapters, nowhere did I feel cheated as a reader — and no way would I have guessed the ending.

* The characters, even the minor ones, feel like real people. No flat placeholders here.

* Gaia is not only real, but she has serious depth and strength to her. There is a lot of unfortunate YA out there where the plot is carried on in large part by the heroine’s stupidity, but this is definitely *not* one of those books. While Gaia does start out the book with an amazing amount of innocence given the world she lives in and her place in it, watching her lose that innocence is heart-wrenching. And as her world-view adjusts, she steps up to the plate to fight for not only those she loves, but her community as well — and continues to do so, despite dire consequences and betrayals.

* The story has a real ending, not just a set-up for a future book. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to know what happens next to Gaia and the others in this story, but I finished the book with that deep sense of satisfaction that only a completed story can bring.

* The pacing is superb, and there’s a great balance between action, description, and introspection. As a result, I was pulled straight through to the end, staying up until 3am to finish it, ignoring phone calls and text messages along the way.

The title alone made me so happy that I expected the book itself to seriously let me down, but that was definitely not the case. Fun prose, awesome illustration, and a cute, quick read out loud.

It’s hard to believe that it came out in May and I’m just now coming across it, but Jane Lindskold’s Child of a Rainless Year is the best new book I’ve read in a long time. I’d read some of her short stories here and there, but none of her novels had jumped out at me from the bookshelf until now.

I’m struggling to put into words exactly what it is that makes the book such a great read. A good part of it is the pacing, I think, as well as just the right balance (for me, at least) between between description and action, and between language and story. This may just be me, but with most fiction out there, I usually feel that either the language overwhelms the story or the story overpowers the language. This is one of the rare books where they are equally strong, complementing each other rather than fighting for my attention. Most of all, though, it’s simply a damn good story.

I guess a brief summary would be that Mira grew up in a house that was very mysterious in many ways (and not in the cliched ways which are no longer mysterious at all), in New Mexico. When she’s nine, her mother disappears and she is sent to live with foster parents who are required to move to a new state and change their names as a requirement of the mysterious trustees of her mother’s estate. All sorts of things happen, eventually building up to a middle-aged Mira returning to the house she grew up in, which she’d now inherited. She starts trying to understand all of the mysteries that surround her childhood, her mother, the house, her foster parents, and her connection with art and color.

The book pulls together an amazing mix of art, local history and culture, psychology, hidden family secrets, and the paranormal — and more importantly, all in a way that builds the story, rather than just dumping information here and there because the author had it.

Putting Up Roots is a really interesting book about a group of kids who *think* they are training to be colonists on a new planet with their families — only to discover when they get there that their families aren’t coming, and they’ve more or less been handed off to something that’s half slave labor, half reform school for the unwanted. The kids struggle to get along with each other, to protect their siblings and friends in the group, and in the end, to defeat the evil plans of the people running the program.

This book is not only an interesting, fun read, it is also thought-provoking in a lot of ways that would be great for use in a 5th-7th grade classroom. The book touches on issues related to bullying, disabilities, protecting the environment, what “alien” means, communicating and relationships with people who are very different from you, etc.

Really, Hidden Talents is a great read for just about anyone — it’s probably targeted at 4th-8th graders, but I know plenty of adults who have enjoyed this book about reform school “misfits” who discover hidden powers just as much as their children.

There are lots of other people here posting reviews that go into detail about why this is such a great book in general. The main reason I wanted to post a review was to point out that I’ve found this book to be an AMAZING choice for 6th-8th graders (especially boys) who are struggling in school academically and/or socially, who are starting to feel “burnt out” on school, or who aren’t usually able to enjoy reading. This book has done such a good job getting students like this that I’ve know to be actually excited about reading something that it has really been amazing.

I just keep hoping they will come out with a manga series based on these books. That would be even beyond amazing.