ARC Review - Exile from Eden: Or, After the Hole (Grasshopper Jungle #2) by Andrew Smith

Book info:

Title:  Exile from Eden:  Or, After the Hole
Author: Andrew Smith
Series:  Grasshopper Jungle #2
Genre:  YA science fiction
Release Date:  September 24th, 2019
Publisher:  Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers
Source:  Physical ARC received from publisher which did not influence my review
My rating:  5 stars

Synopsis:
From New York Times bestselling author Andrew Smith comes the stunning, long-awaited sequel to the groundbreaking Printz Honor Book Grasshopper Jungle.

It’s been sixteen years since an army of horny, hungry, six-foot-tall praying mantises forced Arek’s family underground and into the hole where he was born; it’s the only home he’s ever known. But now, post-end-of-the-world, the army of horny, hungry praying mantises might finally be dying out, and Arek’s ready to leave the hole for good.

All he has are mysterious letters from Breakfast, a naked, wild boy traveling the countryside with his silent companion, Olive. Together, Arek and his best friend Mel, who stowed away in his van, navigate their way through the ravaged remains of the outside world.

This long-awaited sequel to the irreverent, groundbreaking Printz Honor Book Grasshopper Jungle is stunning, compelling, and even more hilarious and beautifully bizarre than its predecessor.


My Review:
I loved this book by Andrew Smith.  As usual, it was a total "boy" book.  But I love that about it!  While we started out and I was worried I might not remember who was who from the first book, Grasshopper Jungle, it was very nice that the main character, Arek, kept kind of reintroducing the other characters as he narrated the story.  I liked so much about the story, all the different characters and viewpoints we got.  It was towards the end when they all collided it seemed, and it was the perfect way to get them to meet up.  Not a meet-cute since this isn't a romance, but is there another name for it?  I don't know.  Just know that it was a perfectly seamless way to fit the stories together.  Now, in the first book we kind of got the background on how we got those giant praying mantises that were attacking, but in this one, I don't know that we ever find out exactly why they are changing or having issues, just that they are.  

One thing that really stood out to me personally from the story is a note from the author at the back of the book.  There is an artist that Arek is constantly referencing, Max Beckmann.  Now I'd never heard of him before, but of course from this book I found I had to go look him up.  What Smith talks about at the end is that Max Beckmann painted so many self portraits trying to maybe see who he was.   Now the author also mentioned that he feels each of his own books are in a way his own self-portraits in a similar vein to Beckmann's paintings.  That really stood out to me personally, because recently I realized a lot of the stories I write end up being kind of my own daydreams.  Sometimes even starring me, just with different names and places.  When I realized this, I also decided that this was okay.  I remembered something another of my favorite authors once said, to write the book I want to read, she wrote her story for herself.  And that's what I'm going to continue to do.  While my books and writing are nowhere near as good as Andrew Smith's stories, I like that I'm not the only one who sees their writing this way.

Highly recommended, if you liked Grasshopper Jungle, you'll enjoy this as well! 

Cover Reveal with Giveaway: Cold Falling White (The Nahx Invasions #2) by G.S. Prendergast

Today Gabrielle Prendergast and Rockstar Book Tours are revealing the cover for COLD FALLING WHITE, the sequel to her Sci-Fi Book ZERO REPEAT FOREVER which releases November 19, 2019! Check out the awesome cover and enter the giveaway!

On to the reveal! 

About The Book:

Title: COLD FALLING WHITE (The Nahx Invasions #2)

Author: G.S. Prendergast

Pub. Date: November 19, 2019

Publisher: Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers

Formats: Hardcover, eBook, audiobook

Pages: 352

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, Audible, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, Kobo, TBD

The 5th Wave meets Beauty and the Beast in this fast-paced and heart-stopping follow-up to Zero Repeat Forever, which VOYA called “an edge-of-your-seat page-turner.”

Xander Liu survived the end of the world—just barely. For more than a year he has outsmarted, hidden from, and otherwise avoided the ruthless alien invaders, the Nahx, dodging the deadly darts that have claimed so many of his friends. When the murder of his friend Raven leaves him in the protective company of August, a rebellious Nahx soldier, Xander is finally able to make his way back to human controlled territory and relative safety.

But safety amongst the humans is not what it seems. Nothing is anymore.

Raven remembers dying in the arms of August. She remembers the pain, and the way he cried as she faded away. But months later when she wakes up on a wide expanse of snowy sand dunes, shackled to a boy she thought was dead too, she has a lot of questions. What has happened to her and the other reanimated humans gathered on the dunes? What is the meaning of the Nahx ships that hover ominously above them? And most pressing of all, where is August, who promised to keep her safe?

In the shadow of an unforgiving Canadian winter, Xander and Raven find themselves on opposite sides of an alien war neither of them signed up for. Left with little choice about their roles in the great battle that now seems inevitable, they search for answers and allies, all while feeling inexorably drawn back the place it seems their respective fates were determined, and to the one who determined them: August.

Title: ZERO REPEAT FOREVER (The Nahx Invasions #1)

Author: G.S. Prendergast

Pub. Date: August 29, 2017

Publisher: Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers

Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, eBook, audiobook

Pages: 496

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, Audible, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, Kobo, TBD

The 5th Wave meets Beauty and the Beast in this fast-paced and heart-stopping novel about an invasion of murderous creatures and one girl fighting for her life at the end of the world.

He has no voice, or name, only a rank, Eighth. He doesn’t know the details of the mission, only the directives that hum in his mind.

Dart the humans. Leave them where they fall.

His job is to protect his Offside. Let her do the shooting.

Until a human kills her…

Sixteen year-old Raven is at summer camp when the terrifying armored Nahx invade, annihilating entire cities, taking control of the Earth. Isolated in the wilderness, Raven and her friends have only a fragment of instruction from the human resistance.

Shelter in place.

Which seems like good advice at first. Stay put. Await rescue. Raven doesn’t like feeling helpless but what choice does she have?

Then a Nahx kills her boyfriend.

Thrown together in a violent, unfamiliar world, Eighth and Raven should feel only hate and fear. But when Raven is injured, and Eighth deserts his unit, their survival comes to depend on trusting each other… 

ZERO REPEAT FOREVER Book Trailer:

About Gabrielle:

Gabrielle is a writer, teacher and designer living in Vancouver, Canada.  You can read about her books here. She is represented by Barbara Poelle at the Irene Goodman Literary Agency.

In 2014 she was the Writer in Residence at Vancouver Public Library. In 2015 she was nominated for the BC Book Prizes and chosen to tour the province to promote BC Books. In 2017 Gabrielle took part in the TD Canada Children’s Book Week Tour. She has also been nominated for the White Pine Awardand the CLA Award.

Gabrielle won the Westchester Award for Audacious. Audacious was included in CBC’s list of 100 YA Books That Make You Proud to be Canadian. A poem from Capricious was chosen for the 2014 Poetry in Transit Program. Pandas on the East Side was chosen as an Ontario Library Association Best Bet for Junior Fiction in 2016. It was also nominated/shortlisted for the Chocolate Lily Award, The Red Cedar Award, the Diamond Willow Award and the Myrca Award.

ZERO REPEAT FOREVER Website |Website |  Twitter | Facebook | Intstagram | Pinterest | Goodreads

Giveaway Details:

• 1 winner will receive a signed Zero Repeat Forever hardcover, USA and Canada Only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Promo Post - Review and Giveaway: The Swan Riders (Prisoners of Peace #2) by Erin Bow

Book info:

Title:  The Swan Riders  
Author:  Erin Bow
Series:  The Prisoners of Peace #2  
Genre:  YA Science Fiction
Published:  September 20th, 2016
Source:  ARC received from Publisher - Simon and Schuster Teen

ABOUT THE SWAN RIDERS:
Greta Stuart had always known her future: die young. She was her country's crown princess, and also its hostage, destined to be the first casualty in an inevitable war. But when the war came it broke all the rules, and Greta forged a different path.

She is no longer princess. No longer hostage. No longer human. Greta Stuart has become an AI.

If she can survive the transition, Greta will earn a place alongside Talis, the AI who rules the world. Talis is a big believer in peace through superior firepower. But some problems are too personal to obliterate from orbit, and for those there are the Swan Riders: a small band of humans who serve the AIs as part army, part cult.

Now two of the Swan Riders are escorting Talis and Greta across post-apocalyptic Saskatchewan. But Greta’s fate has stirred her nation into open rebellion, and the dry grassland may hide insurgents who want to rescue her – or see her killed. Including Elian, the boy she saved—the boy who wants to change the world, with a knife if necessary. Even the infinitely loyal Swan Riders may not be everything they seem.

Greta’s fate—and the fate of her world—are balanced on the edge of a knife in this smart, sly, electrifying adventure.

LINKS: Amazon | Barnes and Noble

My Review:
I was so excited when I saw that Irish Banana Tours was going to be featuring this book.  I really enjoyed the first one in the series, and was excited to see where it would go from where it left off.  If you want to read that review instead of reading this one, go check that out HERE.    

This book fit into something that I often notice as a trend in second books in a series, an "on the road" or traveling story.  That's not a bad thing, just not always the most fun for a story.  I really liked the way this book went about making the Artificially Intelligent being, Talis, feel what it was like to be human again, since he hadn't been human in such a long time.  Being with Greta and seeing just how the transformation into being an AI so recently after being human was definitely an eye-opener,  and really helped explain a lot of the things in the story.  There are also the issues the Swan Riders themselves are dealing with, that the AI don't even have any record of.  There is also a debilitating palsy type of condition that the Riders go through after being possessed by Talis or other AI.  Meeting some of the other AI personalities was also intriguing. The fact that someone let a 9 year old girl become one of an AI group that would eventually be in charge of the whole world is really kind of a horrible thought.  

Where the story left off this time makes me think there could be another book, although it is possible to end it where it did.  I really do hope for another book though, as there are still some things I didn't quite understand completely yet, or issues that I didn't feel had been resolved satisfactorily for me.  But once again this was a really unique look at a future where AI is in charge of our human lives, and tries to keep peace the way it thinks is best.  And I was glad to see that Greta got the chance to see Elian once again, and find out just what he would think of her now, even if there was more of a rebellion that he had become part of.

ABOUT ERIN BOW:

Hi!  My name is Erin Bow -- physicist turned poet turned author of young adult novels that will make you cry on the bus. I'm a white girl, forty-something, feminist, geeky enough to do the Vulcan salute with both hands -- in public.  I live in Canada.  I love to cook, hate to clean, and yes, I do own a cat. 

In the beginning, I was a city girl from farm country—born in Des Moines and raised in Omaha—where I was fond of tromping through wood lots and reading books by flashlight. In high school I captained the debate team, founded the math club, and didn’t date much.

In university I studied particle physics, and worked briefly at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva, Switzerland. Physics was awesome, but graduate school kind of sucked, and at some point I remembered that I wanted to write books. 

Books:  I have six of them — three novels, and two volumes of poetry and a memoir (the poetry under my maiden name, Erin Noteboom). My poetry has won the CBC Canadian Literary Award, and several other awards. My two novels, Plain Kate and Sorrow's Knot, also have a fistful of awards, including Canada's top award for children's literature, the TD.   The third novel, The Scorpion Rules, still faces its award season. No one read the memoir. 

Right now I'm looking forward to the publication of my fourth novel,  a companion piece to The Scorpion Rules called The Swan Riders, which will be out September 20 from Simon and Schuster.  I'm at work on an new an entirely different novel, and a book of poetry about science.

Did you notice I got to Canada in there somewhere?   Yeah, that was true love.  I'm married to a Canadian boy, James Bow, who also writes young adult novels.  We have two small daughters, both of whom want to be scientists.   

 LINKS: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr

Giveaway:

• 3 Finished Copies of THE SWAN RIDERS (US Only) 

    a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Schedule:
Week 1:
9/12: Fangs and Fur Fantasy Book Review - Review
9/13: The Cover Contessa - Guest Post
9/14: Live to Read - Review
9/15: Such A Novel Idea - Q&A
9/16: Intellectual Recreation - Review

Week 2:
9/19: Novel Ink - Q&A
9/20: The Story Sanctuary - Review
9/21: Book Stacks Amber - Playlist
9/22: Lisa Loves Literature - Review - YOU ARE HERE
9/23: A Backwards Story - Q&A  

Review: The Creeping by Alexandra Sirowy

First, thanks to Edelweiss and Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers for allowing me to read an egalley of this book.  Overall it was a good story.  Although I didn't really find it as creepy as I know some other reviews have said it was. 

The main character is a girl named Stella.  When she was 5 years old, she and her friend Jeanie disappeared while playing in the woods, picking strawberries.  But only Stella was found.  The whole town went into shock after it.  Jeanie's older brother has always blamed Stella, saying it should have been Stella and not his sister.  He was so bad about it she even had to have a restraining order put out against him.  Now Stella is 17, it is time for her senior year, and things are supposed to be going the way her best friend Zoey wants it to be, they will be the popular girls and date the hottest guys.  But on the anniversary of the day Stella and Jeanie disappeared, another young girl's body is found.  It is a red-headed girl like Jeanie was.  And along with the death, other things start to happen.  Jeanie's mom is killed.  And then Jeanie's older brother comes back to town.  Now Stella can't remember anything from that day.  But she is trying hard to remember, if only to help figure out who killed Jeanie, or took her, or at least what happened.  But along the way she will have to figure out if it was just a sicko, who maybe has been taking other girls.  Or maybe it was people over time killing for some kind of superstitions.  Or maybe, just maybe, there really is a monster in the woods that takes girls in retribution for what it feels it is owed by the people who caused it to lose its land.  The story gives lots of clues, lots of evidence, and all the different scenarios are examined.  In the end, Stella's life will be in danger again, along with those she loves.  She will find a connection to a boy that she used to be best friends with, until Zoey's quest for popularity began.  And that old friendship will be rekindled, and maybe even become more.

I really did like the relationship with Stella and Sam.  I felt it was very realistic, and I was rooting for the two of them.  I liked that all the time things were left so that you couldn't for sure figure out what was happening. And at the end it was definitely explained in a good way.  And while I might have had an inkling of what the truth was, there was so much misdirection and other clues left that I was kept guessing until the end. To me that is a good story.  I did have a bit of a problem at the beginning, it took a bit to get into it, and I wasn't sure how much I liked Stella and her friends.  It is really easy to not like Zoey.  But towards the end, I began to change that feeling and like her more. 

A good mystery, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys this type of story.  Just give it a little bit to get really going, and you won't be disappointed.