Speaker for the Dead - Book for the dead?

Speaker for the Dead is the sequel to Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. It continues the story of Ender as he has taken upon himself the title and role of "speaker for the dead" whose job is to discover the complete unbiased truth about someone who has died and eulogizes what he has found out about them. He spends his time on a world called Lusitania with a colony of scientists studying a race of alien called the pequeninos or "piggies". The scientists have moral arguments about the extent to which they should socialize and have contact with the piggies.

Speaker for the Dead was a huge change of pace from Ender's Game. Fans of the original book may be disappointed to find that there is nothing similar between the two books other than the characters who still exist from the first. There is no action filled, clever battle scenes. Just a story about a colony of researchers and the alien race they are observing. I was expecting more action so I was taken a little off guard for this book.

Despite the book being so different I found myself enjoying the story quite a bit. The alien race is interesting to learn more about and the interaction between some of the researchers and the piggies is exciting to read. I found myself cheering for the piggies because I didn't really like many of the humans. I think the reason I ended up liking this book is because of the interesting aspects of the Pequeninos and their existence. Ender is also an endearing character and maintains that throughout this book.

Eddie Fantastic... More like Eddie Snotty-pants

Eddie Fantastic by Chris Heimerdinger is a story about Eddie Fanta. Chris Heimerdinger is a local author and is not widely known. The story focuses on Eddie and a mysterious man nick-named the Lizard man, who we come to know as Louis Kosserinski. Eddie gets himself into trouble with a bully at school. He then goes to investigate the lizard man's house and find Louis is waiting for him. He learns that Louis looks the way he does because he had been very severely burned. It turns out that Louis is an inventor and genius who has invented several awesome devices, but the one Louis is most interested in for Eddie is the jacket. It can accelerate or decelerate time for the wearer. Louis insists that Eddie take the jacket for protection from the bully. When time is decelerated for the user it makes them super-fast in real time which makes them super dangerous because the smallest of touches is enhanced a hundredfold.

I enjoyed this book. Heimerdinger does a fairly decent job of constructing an interesting sc-fi story. Eddie is given great power and a great gift and his selfishness leads to trouble for him and his friends. The book does a good job at portraying how idiotic some teenagers can be when it comes to decisions involving the opposite sex.

American Born Chinese

American Born Chinese is a graphic novel written by Gene Luen Yang. Jin Wang is a tween boy who is not only dealing with the difficulty of growing up and school he also has to deal with the insecurities he has about being a Chinese-American. Jin finds that his body is changing and along with it he begins to notice a white-girl named Amelia. Along the way Jin makes friends with a picked on foreign student from Taiwan name Wei-Chen. Wei-Chen quickly becomes good friends with Jin and helps him to appeal to Amelia. All this time there are two parallel stories signifying the shame that Jin has for his chinese-ness and how he is embarrassed by his culture. He ends up trying to be someone who he is not and alienates his friend Wei-Chen along the way.

Yang really captures many of the emotions that teenagers go through as they begin to mature. The insane self-awareness, the insecurity, the wild emotion... all of these elements are at play as Jin tries to find out who he is and to fit in. The two other side stories illustrating several moral principles are fun and informative. Yang also does a great job at wrapping the book up and teaching what who we are is more a product of how we treat others.

The Witches

The Witches by Roald Dahl is a story about a boy(yep, that is all the info we get on his name) and his grandmother who live together. The grandmother informs the boy that witches exist and have been responsible for the disappearance of children. She teaches him how to spot a witch. In the course of the book he encounters a witch and recognizes her as what she really is. Later in the book the grandmother and the boy travel to a nice hotel in England where the boy discovers a large witch convention where all of the witches from England have gathered. The boy is turned into a mouse and goes on a quest(as a mouse) with his grandmother to do the same to all of the witches at the convention and the world.

I really enjoyed the story and the language that Dahl presented in the Witches. The imagery he painted of several hundred witches gathering together, all bald headed and wretched, planning the demise of all the children of England was very entertaining. Maybe I am still as immature as a kid, but the witches in the convention referring to the children as smelling worse than dogs' droppings and yelling "Poooooooooo!" had me laughing pretty hard. The book is filled with humor, action and suspense. Because I am such a sucker for perfect endings, however, I was a little disappointed that the boy, now a mouse, was never able to regain his human boyness.

Emotions on steroids... Twilight

Twilight by Stephanie Meyers is about a teenage girl named Bella Swan who moves into a new town and is fascinated by some exotic looking people called the Cullens. Through some not so subtle hint dropping and research Bella is able to figure out that the Cullens are vampires, albeit ones who only drink animal blood. The only problem is that she loves one of the Cullens named Edward and being in love with a vampire is... unnatural. Edward is very attractive, smart, funny... you know, the qualities of a vampire. Edward is as equally fascinated with Bella and they have this forbidden relationship with each other with Edward trying to to eat Bella and Bella trying not to explode with emotion. Eventually some nasty vampires come to town and they start hunting Bella.

I have to give Stephanie Meyers some credit. It is an interesting and creative story if nothing else. I enjoyed the suspense and mystery of the interaction with the opposing vampire coven. However, I have a hard time believing that Bella could be so emotionally volatile all the time. When she is not defining Edward using the word "granite" she is talking about some other physical attribute. She is running 150% emotions all the time... which made the story hard for me to read. I did find, however, the the book glamorizes being a vampire so much that I found myself wanting to be one a few times. That is the true romance of the book.

The Spiderwick Chronicles

The Spiderwick Chronicles by Tony DeTerlizzi and Holly Black is a story of a broken family who moves from New York to live with Aunt Lucinda in an old mansion. The main characters are 9 year old twins Jared and Simon, the former being more troubled and unable to cope with the divorce of his parents, and Mallory the big sister who is 11. Jared is mad to be made to relocate and finds the new home creepy. The children complain about hearing a "squirrel" in the wall and set out to rid the home of the pest. They find a nest and get rid of it only to find out, the next day, that many pranks have been played on them during the night. Everyone blames Jared, but he sets out to find the real culprit and discovers the field guide which introduces him to the unseen fantastical world.

The characters in this book have good dynamics between each other. Although completely different they are complimentary, which made for good story progression. The underlying theme of the fairy world was fun to discover with Jared and made for continued interest throughout the book. Although I tend to despise characters who are persistent troublemakers, especially when they admit that they know better, I found myself wanting Jared to succeed and clear his name.

The Ender of All things Evil - Ender's Game

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card is set in a period where earth is at war with an alien race called the Buggers. Andrew "Ender" Wiggins is the third child in a family of geniuses. He has a loving sister name Valentine and semi-evil brother named Peter. Ender is recognized as a military genius by the leaders of a "Battle School" and is convinced to attend. He rises through the ranks and wins all of his battles and simulations. He is constantly tormented by rival commanders (other kids) and deals with their physical attacks by striking back fatally. He graduates from battle school and moves on to destroy the Bugger race unwittingly, thinking he is playing a game which is continuing his training.

Ender's Game was a lot of fun to read. The battle scenes are innovative and exciting and we really come to like and empathize with Ender as the picked on little boy. Perhaps the most surprising thing in the book is Ender killing several students. The author makes it out to be a "kill or be killed" scenario, but the mindset of killing your enemies as a way of ridding yourself of the threat seems extreme. However, this good destroys evil theme exists throughout all tween literture... albeit not as graphic. Overall, I found myself liking the characters and the dynamic between them as well as enjoying the fantasy story.