Review: Willful Machines by Tim Floreen

First, thanks to Simon Pulse and Edelweiss for allowing me to read an e-galley of this title.  I really enjoyed it, and feel like it was a very unique type of story, with some themes that I'm beginning to see more and more of in YA.  It was also a good science fiction story, and I really liked what we learned about how the robots worked. 

The main character is Lee.  Lee's father is the President of the United States.  So he's got that to deal with.  And he is going to a prestigious school that his father went to, as well as his grandfather.  His grandfather is the headmaster of the school, and is a military veteran who is well-known for having had to kill his best friend in the enemy's prison and use his synthetic leg to get away and save himself.  This is a future story, maybe not too far ahead.  They have begun working and actually created a sentient computer.  Only that computer, named Charlotte, went a little crazy and killed someone, Lee's mother.  But somehow she escaped, into the World Wide Web possibly. And since that, Lee's father has been trying to get all kinds of laws put in place, defining what is a machine and what is human, but some of his laws are even taking back human rights, like women being discriminated against even. 

Lee is having to deal with all of this, along with being a teenage boy, and being gay.  But he has to keep it a secret, as it would probably cause problems for his father.  He's always under surveillance, at least one member of the Secret Service guarding him every minute.  And then, where we begin the story, a new student has arrived at the school.  His name is Nico, and he seems to be interested in Lee.  He seems to know Lee's secret, and flirts with him.  Lee finds that he really likes Nico, and so takes many chances to be with him.  But there are still dangers.  Charlotte has threatened more terrorism, as bad or worse than her last one that destroyed the Statue of Liberty.  And while Lee has always enjoyed working with robotics, like his mother, his creations have started to turn against him.  So it seems someone, maybe Charlotte, has found a way to take them over and use them against Lee.  And all along Nico also has a secret, one that could also cause Lee even more problems.

I really liked the story. While I kind of figured out Nico's secret pretty quickly, you probably will too, there were other things that were still surprises, and kept me reading to find out what exactly was going on.  I loved all the little gadgets and robots that Lee had created.  I really liked the relationship between Nico and Lee.  It was playful and fun like any relationship between a boy and girl in a book, and I felt that was very realistic and wonderful to be able to read.  I will definitely be ordering this book for my school library, and recommend it at the bookstore where I work.  I look forward to reading more from this author.

Review: Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles #1) by Marissa Meyer (TBR Challenge #5)

Well, yeah, I know, I'm one of the last people to read this book.  I've had a copy of it sitting on my TBR shelf for about two years now.  I got it at a Scholastic Books Warehouse Sale.  I had a hard time seeing why it was such a popular book as I began reading it.  I'm not saying it wasn't a good read, I just wasn't getting the big deal.  I did finish the book and enjoyed it enough that I need to go on and see what happens next.

It is a Cinderella retelling with a robot/android as Cinderella.  She's part human though, not a complete robot.  She does have a wicked "stepmother".  She was brought home by a man, who then died, and left her with his wife and two daughters.  Really only one of her stepsisters is not nice.  The other one is friends with her. The story begins with the Prince showing up in Cinder's booth where she does mechanical jobs for people.  In fact she is known as the best mechanic around really.  She doesn't want the Prince to know that she has the robot foot and arm, and so wears gloves and also keeps her leg/foot hidden.  He asks her to help him fix one of his own robots, one that has some kind of information in it that he needs, that is very sensitive information that could be bad if it fell into the wrong hands.  Shortly after the prince leaves, someone in the market gets sick with the disease that is killing so many people.  Cinder hides out until it is safe to leave, because she fits the description of the other people/robots that have been taken to be experimented on in order to figure out a cure.

She gets home and of course her two sisters are getting their dresses fitted for the upcoming ball.  When one of her sisters gets sick, her stepmother blames her, and gives her to the lab to be used in the testing.  Well, this leads to finding out more about her past, and also more chances to meet with the Prince, who seems to be interested in her.  Now, the Earth is trying to work out a peace treaty type of thing with the people who live on the moon, and their queen, Levana, is in town to negotiate.  She wants to make a deal with the King to marry the Prince and unite their worlds that way.  But Prince Kai doesn't want to marry her.  There is something about her that creeps him out.  Not to mention the power she has, something that "Lunars" have, hers is mind control, she can sway the way people think.  When more is learned about what is going on up on the moon, an army has been noticed by a satellite, so all the other countries of the Earth are trying to prevent a war.

The Cinderella story has many of the same kind of major story points, the dress, the lost "shoe", etc.  So many things that definitely fit the storyline.  And yet it is its own world, own characters.  I don't know if I'm as gaga over the series as everyone else seems to be, but I will be reading on!

Review: Renegade (Mila 2.0 #2)

First of all, thanks to Edelweiss and Katherine Tegen books for allowing me to read an e-galley of this title.  I read the first book in this series around this time last year, right after I got to meet the author at the RT Convention.  So I was very excited to get to read this one early as I was ready to know where the story went next.

Mila is an android, something she didn't know when we started the first book.  By the end of the first book though she'd been captured by the original lab who had made her, her mother/creator killed, and she had escaped from them again, thanks to the help of the nephew of the evil General Holland.  She calls her friend Hunter from back where she'd been living with her mom before.  Before she died, her mother had told Mila to look for her father, or at least the man that Mila assumes must be her father.  She convinces Hunter to come out and help her on her quest.  But soon she realizes it might be dangerous for him, and so a couple times she even tries to have him head home without her, and let her go on searching on her own.  But he sticks by her.  Now, unlike what you would think, at least from other books like this, Mila doesn't tell Hunter that she is an android or being chased, just that she is searching for her father because her mother is gone.  As far as Hunter knows, Mila just has a very advanced mechanical arm.

The first man that Mila looks for gives her some doubts about Hunter though.  Convinces her through just subtle statements that maybe Hunter isn't as innocent as he seems.  Maybe he is part of the Vita Obscura, the mysterious organization that is also looking to capture Mila.

So now she doesn't know who to trust.  At one point it seems as if the Vita Obscura, who hate General Holland as much as she does, might even be on her side.  The ending is a good one, if hard to read, and again we're left hanging, wondering still who Mila will trust, and how she will solve the issue of being able to live her life the way she wants to, and not trapped in some lab being dissected and experimented on, before being scrapped.

A great 2nd book. Like I've said before, the 2nd book seems to be a traveling book, and this definitely is one of those.  But it isn't boring in any way. There is lots of danger, and action, and many clues to figure out and ponder.

Me and Debra Driza (the author) at the RT Convention, May 2013.

Review: Expiration Day by William Campbell Powell

Thanks again to Tor Teen and Edelweiss for allowing me to read an e-galley of this back in the fall.  I chose this one based on the synopsis, and it wasn't bad.  I enjoyed it, and once I got into it I was hooked. I do have to say that unfortunately the end of it was disappointing though.
The main character is Tania Deeley.  It is the year 2049, and humans are dying out.  Fewer and fewer people are able to have children.  Now this is something that seems pretty realistic in a way to me.  It seems there are more and more people who have to go through doctors with lots of help to get pregnant.  And even then it doesn't always work well.  So I like this bit of reality pulled in to make the story.  So in this future, to help stop the violence that had been overtaking the world, the robot industry, and the government, now offer to families who are unable to have children a robot child.  But this robot is so lifelike, the parents don't usually even notice it is a robot.  Part of the contract is that the "child" will get updates every so often, so that they "grow up".  The robots don't know they are robots.  When they go have their updates, a story is told that they had to have surgery, and they remember being like they are now.  Now, they only get to be with their families until they are 18.  At which time the company that they came from takes them back.  Supposed to be the same as normal children who go off on their own at the age of 18.  We begin with Tania who is the daughter of the Vicar in her town.  She has a loving family.  She wonders which of the children around her are robots.  She does know of one boy that was a robot because she found him after he fell in the water.  She thinks maybe the one girl that she is really friends with, Sian, might be.  But then she has to help her with school work, and Tania doesn't think that sounds like something a robot would need help with. So she's unsure who is.  Until she goes out on a holiday with Sian and her family.  And as they're playing a game of hide and seek or tag or something, Tania falls in the water.  And now Tania knows she is a robot.  Normally, once the robot children find out they are robots, they often begin to act weird, and the family can no longer handle them.  And so they send them back, and get a partial refund.  But Tania and her family seem to get past all of this okay.  Tania also met a boy on a past holiday named John.  But she doesn't want him to know she is a robot.  But she decides she's ready for an upgrade because Sian is growing up, and Tania doesn't want to look like a 13 year old, she wants to look older.  So we get to follow Tania through her life, and see how being a robot might affect her life now that she knows.  But sometimes she wonders how can she just be a robot.  She loves to play the bass guitar.
I love the story, and the build up of how can this be just a robot when she has feelings and makes her own decisions.  Her family also got a robot servant before she knew she was a robot, but he was not like her.  He had to be given orders and told what to do.  You really feel for Tania, and when it gets close to her 18th birthday, and her father wants to fight to keep her, I really enjoyed the evidence he gathered and how he presented it to the judge/magistrate.  I won't tell you how the book turns out.  I just don't know that I was satisfied with the ending.  Oh yeah, the book is told in a diary format, and Tania pretends she is writing to an alien named Zog.  And partway through the book, it is as if this alien has found her diary and we get his point of view.  Not sure how I felt about that part either.  Overall a good, quick read.  Just not probably the best wrap up to the story.  I must say I am glad to read something that is a standalone for a change instead of a series.

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

This was an ARC that was just sitting out on the breakroom table at the bookstore where I work. I cannot believe it hadn't been picked up yet as we have many science fiction fans working at the store it seems.

Anyway, this was a good book. It reminds me in a way of the book World War Z in how it is told. It is several different entries. These are supposedly videos saved by Archos, going through the whole time from when the robots began to take over and try to eliminate humans, to the end where humans fought back to save their world. I honestly wonder how some of these videos were obtained, as if they are showing the ways that humans came up with to defeat the machines, wouldn't them being recorded have given their side away to the robots if they were recording it?

It of course is along the lines of Terminator, and that is quite interesting. The machines in this story though don't want to destroy the world, they, Archos, just believe that humans time is over, and they want to study the earth without humans around destroying it as they believe. In the end the humans are able to use the technology against itself, in ways that you don't always see coming. I love that the author of this actually has a Ph.D. in robotics and that is why it is so realistic I think. Some people might say too technical, but I'd have to disagree. I can't wait to recommend this book at the store.

Crashed by Robin Wasserman

I was so excited when this came out and I actually ordered it in to the bookstore because we didn't have it in. But, something else came up, can't remember what it was at this time, and I just now got around to reading it. And it was good, just like I knew it would be.

This is the sequel to Skinned by Robin Wasserman. Our main character is Lia Kahn. In Skinned, Lia died in a car crash and her father had her brain scanned and put into a robotic body. A skinner as the people call them. Well, people aren't really accepting of these robots. Including Lia's own family members. Even though she has all her memories and feels like herself, people won't give her a chance. There was one guy, Auden, who did believe in her, and at the end of Skinned he got hurt from trying to save her, and then he sent her away. So she's gone and lived with the other mechs, as they call themselves. Jude, Riley, Quinn, and Ani. Among others who come to live with them in Quinn's huge family home.

There is the religous group trying to stop this practice of putting people's memories into these robots. And Auden has joined in against Lia. It has become a big deal, mechs against orgs(living people). And after several attacks, the government has started to consider taking away any "rights" that the mechs have, turning them back into machines or property.

I'm told that the shortlived SyFy show called Caprica is a lot like the theme in this book, so I'll have to find it on DVD and watch it. Now I'm just looking forward to reading Wired, the third in the series.