Book Reviews, Books and Tea Book Club, Travelling Books and Tea

Review: The Giver by Lois Lowry

The Giver by Lois Lowry
Series: The Giver #1
Genre: Science Fiction | Dystopia
Length: 240 pages
Published on 1st July 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Purchase: Amazon | B&N | TBD | Waterstones | WHSmith
Lois Lowry: Website | Twitter | Goodreads
I borrowed a copy as part of the Travelling Book Project

Synopsis:
“I have great honor,” The Giver said. “So will you. But you will find that is not the same as power.”

Life in the community where Jonas lives is idyllic. Designated birthmothers produce newchildren, who are assigned to appropriate family units: one male, one female, to each. Citizens are assigned their partners and their jobs. No one thinks to ask questions. Everyone obeys. The community is a world without conflict, inequality, divorce, unemployment injustice…or choice.

Everyone is the same.

Except Jonas.

At the Ceremony of Twelve, the community’s twelve-year-olds eagerly accept their predetermined Life Assignments. But Jonas is chosen for something special. He begins instruction in his life’s work with a mysterious old man known only as The Giver. Gradually Jonas learns that power lies in feelings. But when his own power is put to the test—when he must try to save someone he loves—he may not be ready. Is it too soon? Or too late?

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Book Reviews, Books and Tea Book Club, Travelling Books and Tea

Review: The Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee

The Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee
Series: Silver Metal Lover #1
Genre: Young Adult | Science Fiction | Fantasy | Romance
Length: 291 pages
Published on 4th May 1999 by Spectra.
Purchase: Amazon | B&N | TBD | WHSmith
Tanith Lee : Website | Goodreads
Read Jenny’s copy as part of TBP

Synopsis:
Love is made of more than mere flesh and blood….

Tanith Lee is one of the most thought-provoking and imaginative authors of our time. In this unforgettably poignant novel, Lee has created a classic tale–a beautiful, tragic, erotic, and ultimately triumphant love story of the future.

For sixteen-year-old Jane, life is a mystery she despairs of ever mastering. She and her friends are the idle, pampered children of the privileged class, living in luxury on an Earth remade by natural disaster. Until Jane’s life is changed forever by a chance encounter with a robot minstrel with auburn hair and silver skin, whose songs ignite in her a desperate and inexplicable passion.

Jane is certain that Silver is more than just a machine built to please. And she will give up everything to prove it. So she escapes into the city’s violent, decaying slums to embrace a love bordering on madness. Or is it something more? Has Jane glimpsed in Silver something no one else has dared to see–not even the robot or his creators? A love so perfect it must be destroyed, for no human could ever compete?

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Book Reviews, Travelling Books and Tea

Review: Hemlock Grove by Brian McGreevy

Hemlock Grove by Brian McGreevy
Series: Hemlock Grove #1
Genre: Horror | Fantasy
Length: 318 pages
Published on 1st March 2012 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Purchase: Amazon | B&N | TBD | Waterstones | WHSmith
Brain McGreevy: Goodreads
Received from Charlotta for this years travelling book project

Synopsis:
A charismatic young writer reinvents the gothic novel, bringing a fresh energy to our darkest myths and deepest horrors in an expectation-defying tale of adolescent deception, ravenous violence, and rumors of werewolves.

The body of a young girl is found mangled and murdered in the woods of Hemlock Grove, Pennsylvania, in the shadow of the abandoned Godfrey Steel mill. A manhunt ensues—though the authorities aren’t sure if it’s a man they should be looking for.Some suspect an escapee from the White Tower, a foreboding biotech facility owned by the Godfrey family—their personal fortune and the local economy having moved on from Pittsburgh steel—where some suspect that biological experiments of the most unethical kind take place. Others turn to Peter Rumancek, a Gypsy trailer-trash kid who has told impressionable highschool classmates that he’s a werewolf. Or perhaps it’s Roman, the son of the late J. R. Godfrey, who rules the adolescent social scene with the casual arrogance of a cold-blooded aristocrat, his superior status unquestioned despite his decidedly freakish sister, Shelley, whose monstrous medical conditions belie a sweet intelligence, and his otherworldly, sexy control freak of a mother, Olivia.

As the crime goes unsolved and the police seem more and more willing to believe any outlandish rumor, Peter and Roman decide the only way to save their own skins is to find the killer themselves. Along the way they uncover local secrets and designs that are much bigger than some small-town murder.Hemlock Grove is an exhilarating reinvention of the gothic novel, inspired by the iconic characters of our greatest myths and nightmares. At once a riveting mystery and a fascinating revelation of the grotesque and the darkness in us all, Hemlock Grove has the architecture and energy to become a classic in its own right—and Brian McGreevy the talent and ambition to enthrall us for years to come.

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Book Reviews, Travelling Books and Tea

Review: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa
Series: Haruhi Suzumiya #1
Genre: Light Novel | Fantasy
Length: 202 pages
Published on 1st April 2009 by Little Brown Books for Young Readers
Purchase: Amazon | B&N | TBD | Waterstones | WHSmith
Nagaru Tanigawa: Goodreads
Copy borrowed from Jenny during the Travelling Book Project I hosted.

Synopsis:
Haruhi holds the fate of the universe in her hands . . . lucky for you she doesn’t know it!
Meet Haruhi – a cute, determined girl, starting high school in a city where nothing exciting happens and absolutely no one understands her.Meet Kyon ­­- the sarcastic guy who sits behind Haruhi in homeroom and the only boy Haruhi has ever opened up to. His fate is now tied to hers.

Meet the S.O.S. Brigade – an after-school club organized by Haruhi with a mission to seek out the extraordinary. Oh, and their second mission? Keeping Haruhi happy . . . because even though she doesn’t know it, Haruhi has the power to destroy the universe. Seriously.

The phenomenon that took Japan by storm – with more than 4.5 million copies sold – is now available in the first-ever English edition.

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Book Reviews, Books and Tea Book Club, Travelling Books and Tea

Review: Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton

Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton
Series: Rebel of the Sands #1
Genre: Young Adult | Fantasy
Length: 358 pages
Published on 4th February 2016 by Faber & Faber
Purchase: Amazon | B&N | TBD | Waterstones | WHSmith
Alwyn Hamilton: Website | Tumblr |Twitter | Goodreads
Received from Joel as part of the Travelling Books and Tea Project

Synopsis:
“Tell me that and we’ll go. Right now. Save ourselves and leave this place to burn. Tell me that’s how you want your story to go and we’ll write it straight across the sand.”

Dustwalk is an unforgiving, dead-end town. It’s not the place to be poor or orphaned or female. And yet Amani Al’Hiza must call it ‘home’.

Amani wants to escape and see the world she’s heard about in campfire stories.

Then a foreigner with no name turns up, and with him she has the chance to run.

But the desert plains are full of dangerous magic. The Sultan’s army is on the rise and Amani is soon caught at the heart of a fearless rebellion…

An epic story of swirling desert sands, love, magic and revolution.

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