Review: Hellraisers (The Devil's Engine #1) by Alexander Smith Gordon

First, thanks to Edelweiss and Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers for allowing me to read this e-galley.  This is my first book by this author.  I know his other series, Escape from the Furnace, is really popular, and I may have to go back and give them a try now.  We'll see.  When I first started this one though, the beginning had me almost ready to quit. I didn't really like the characters at first, they didn't seem very nice, and there was too much action going on without any knowledge of what Pan was doing or why she was doing it.  But I stuck with it, and soon it slowed down enough to give me the information I needed,  and I began enjoying it more as I read. 

There are two main characters and the story is told from each of their viewpoints alternately.  The first character is Marlowe.  He is a 16 year old kid who has been kicked out of school after school.  His mom is an alcoholic and his home life is horrible.  When we first meet him in the story, he has just done something to his Principal's car, getting him kicked out of what was really the last school that would probably ever take him after all his problems.  And so he leaves Staten Island and runs off to Manhattan.  When he gets to Manhattan he goes into a liquor store and tries to buy some beer.  The clerk doesn't believe he's old enough, which he isn't, and keeps giving him a hard time.  The longer Marlowe tries, more stuff starts happening outside the store.  Sirens, and yelling, and something happens that even crashes into the store, killing the clerk.  All the stuff that is going on outside is something to do with our other main character, Pan.  Pan is some kind of solder we find out at first.  She seems to be fighting demons.  And she keeps talking about getting a contract taken care of.  Plus, she seems to have superhuman strength and the ability to heal when she gets hurt.  Marlowe runs out of the store, after grabbing the clerk's gun, since he's not sure what is going on.  When he runs into a parking garage to try to hide from the cops, it turns out that is where all the ruckus is going down. 

After this experience the people that Pan works with decide that they can use Marlowe. And while it takes a bit to convince him, eventually he decides he needs to join.  He finds a world where people go and make deals with the devil in something they call an engine.  They have people who are able to find ways out of the contract so that the agents/soldiers, like Pan, don't have to go to hell.  But there is a certain amount of time they must do it within, or they will have to fulfill their end of the contract, losing their soul.  This secret group doesn't just make deals with the devil for things they want, like money, riches, etc.  They ask for skills that will help them battle the devil and the demons that are trying to take over the world.  Not only that, there is another group, with another engine, and this other group wants to unite the two engines so that the demons can come out into the world. 

Pan and Marlowe will have run-ins with these other people, two of them are the reason that Marlowe ends up joining.  A set of twins, working for the other side.  And while Marlowe works to fight them, to keep them from getting what they want and destroying the world, they keep trying to tell him that everything might not be quite as it has been explained by Pan's side. 

There is definitely a bit of a cliffhanger, and I definitely need to read on and know what will happen next.  There is more to learn about the engine, and this book was just full of action, with a little section where we get to know some of the background info on the engine and the groups who have worked with it.  I'm ready to learn more in the next book, and I'm sure there will be lots more action!

Review: Fight for Power (The Rule of Three #2) by Eric Walters (COYER Challenge #6)

First, thanks to Edelweiss and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for allowing me to read an e-galley of this.  I was interested in it because I'd read the first one, and while that one didn't blow me away, I kind of wanted to know where the story was going to go next. And I'm glad I gave the story another chance, because honestly I liked this one better than the first one. 

Where the last one left off, they were going up against a very militarized group that was just going into small settlements like the one that the main character Adam is living in, and killing people and taking what they needed by force.  Adam's group is able to defeat the group that has come to attack their neighborhood by blowing up the bridge while the enemy is on it.  But when they decide to go to the town where the enemy group was from to end it for good, they find it is deserted. Well, other than a bunch of people that they'd locked up to die in one of the warehouses.  Herb and the rest of Adam's neighborhood council cannot take back the people they find, as their own food resources are dwindling.  And while Adam's girlfriend Lori's father is really getting the farming going so that they will have a good harvest, that won't be ready until fall, so they have to have enough food to last till then.  They've put Brett, the creepy guy, in charge of a night patrol that goes out and keeps their area safe.  They also search for whatever types of resources they can find while they're out. And while Adam is dealing okay with Brett, there is still the psychotic tendencies that he shows in how much he enjoys the violence, as well as putting himself into dangerous situations.

The town has a whole system set up, the younger kids are in school during the week, then they go and work on the farms on the weekends.  The older kids, teenagers, are part of the patrols on the walls, as well as work on the farms during the days.  Adam flies the little plane still to help with keeping them informed on what is going on around their neighborhood.  Until they find a Cessna at the enemy camp, and hope to get it working for him to use.  They begin hunting deer, which leads to meeting some of the people living in tents outside their walls, and in the forest.  Herb says the forest is a weak link in their security, and with it the tent city.

I think I'm kind of rambling.  I don't know a lot I can say without giving away too much. Suffice it to say that there will be some major catastrophes, fires, people being attacked, and there will also be betrayal by people working for the neighborhood, as well as reunions with family members who have been missing since it all started.

It's left on a huge kind of cliffhanger, the bad guy gets away, barely. But Adam knows they haven't seen the last of him, there will be trouble in the future.   I was really much more into this one.  Maybe because I knew the characters from the last book.  So we didn't maybe need any of that this time?  I was able to jump right back into the story, didn't really have to try to remember anything as it all picked up at a perfect spot.  I recommend reading on in this series, and starting it if you haven't yet.  It has the male main character which would make it a good one to recommend for the boys, not that I think it is only for boys, I just know it may seem like a lot of dystopian books have female main characters. 

The Rule of Three by Eric Walters

First I will thank Netgalley, FSG, and Macmillan Children's Publishing Group for allowing me to read an e-galley of this.  As anyone who follows my blog probably knows, I am a huge fan of dystopian stories.  So this sounded like one of those, although, really more of a post-apocalyptic, but similar.  And it was.  However, it was a bit slow for me.
The main character is Adam Daley, and strangely enough his elderly neighbor Herb.  Things seem to be just a normal day at school.  Adam and his best friend are sitting in computer class, when all the electricity and computers go out.  Now, it's not just those things connected to electricity, even laptops go out.  Something has happened that has caused anything that works with computers to no longer work.  Which means any car without computers in it, older cars, will still work.  And that included Adam's '79 Omega.  Up until this point, his friend Todd had made fun of it.  But now, when it is about the only car in the high school parking lot that will actually start, he's not so amused by it.  Once Adam gets home, after picking up his younger brother and sister from their school, dropping his crush Lori off at her family farm, and also dropping Todd off, he is met by their neighbor Herb.  Herb has a favor to ask.  He wants Adam to drive him to the Pool store.  The drive there is a bit scary as there are people who stare at them as they drive by, some looking as if they'd like to steal the car.  At the pool store Herb has a lot of cash that he give the guy for a ton of chlorine tablets.  It seems Herb may have an inkling about the whole situation not just being a temporary one.  As they're loading the car up with buckets full of the chlorine tablets, they even have a group of men who once again try to take the car.  But Herb moves his jacket to show a gun and the situation is defused.  They get back home and now Herb begins to talk about what may be going on.  He begins planning what they should do, how to be safe, and keep themselves safe.  Many of the plans seem to be quite pessimistic in Adam's point of view.  But as things that Herb has somewhat hinted at begin to occur, it seems maybe he knows what to do.  They must figure out how to secure their neighborhood, as well as what to do in order to keep themselves fed in case things don't get back to normal soon.  This includes talking to Lori's family about farming, and making some improvements in the walls/fences around their neighborhood, as well as planting some fields in yards and school lands.  Also, Adam has a very light plane, called an Ultralight.  And he gets it ready to be flown, and they are able to use it to do scouting to try to help their situation as well.  And while mostly it is just groups of people from neighborhoods that they see walking outside their area, there seems to be a larger group that may not be as innocent, may be out for only themselves.
This is a book that really just goes into the setting up of a community for this type of situation.  Yes there are times when we have conflicts with other people and neighborhoods. But a lot of it is about how they figure out what to do and how to help themselves to survive.  In a way, it feels like what maybe following how the Governor set up his town in The Walking Dead.  Or on the show Revolution, just the beginning of how they got to handling the disaster.  All the stuff that is usually skipped in books or movies or tv shows.  Because it is kind of boring.  Maybe it is important for us to know if such an event does occur.  But honestly, I found it a bit boring.  While it was interesting to hear Herb's strategies, and the reasoning behind what they did, the story did kind of just stall out in my opinion.  And the end was really just kind of a sudden ending, and you're left before probably any of the stuff that would normally be in this type of book starts to occur.  That's just my opinion.  I still gave it a 3, because it may be something that others want to read.  Another issue I had is that I want to know why the things with the computers went out.  And what has happened to Adam's father who is a pilot and would have been in Chicago at the time.  Is the author planning a sequel?  Can't tell.  But I don't know if I'd read on or not.  My need to know those things may not be strong enough to read through another slow story.  400 pages of slowness.  So not one of my top books.  But like I said, on Goodreads I gave it a 3, because it wasn't bad, just wasn't my cup of tea.