Pitacus Lore vs. Suzanne Collins Part 2.

     When I finished last weeks blog I had said the reasons why I had disliked the Hunger Games and I had left you at the edge of your seat waiting for why I thought The Rise of Nine was better. Later in the week I was conversing about books with one of my friends and when I said that in my opinion, I did not think it was well written the death threats started pouring out of their mouth. So I have decided to make this a 4 part blog and in this section of the blog I'm going to tell you about the few ways I liked it.

     In the hunger games series I found that the most interesting characters were not Katniss and Gale. I always liked Peta and well um... I can't really think of anybody as interesting as Peta especially in the third book. In the third book of the Hunger games Peta is tortured beaten and held prisoner by the capital and that changes his type of character drastically. He was already controversial and spoke only his point of view and then he becomes enraged and his wounds from his tortures become more and more visible. As his interviews with the capital go on Suzanne describes every disgusting detail of his torture.

    Another thing I like about the Hunger Games is that They always give you cliff hangers. Like fr example each chapter starts something new so it can become addictive. Although I definitely  didn't feel this way about the books I know I did for a few chapters. Especially the ones with guns and killing. In the third boo this happened a lot even a bit too much.

     I can't believe I'm saying this but this book actually builds suspense. Not in an amazing way but it works. I mean the books always build up to a climactic victory or loss. Some times it even shocked me about what happened in the book. Also as you can guess it sometimes surprises me.


     

Pitacus Lore vs. Suzanne Collins. Part one.

    The Rise of Nine by Pitacus Lore is in my opinion a better than any book written by Suzanne Collins.   Collins' books to me were never quite well written and for me the only reason I even read the three horrid books known as the Hunger Games trilogy was to make people stop telling me "Hey dude you should read these books they're awesome." I personally, I repeat personally, (because if you don't  agree with me notice that this is my opinion) believe that the writing in her books was poor. Sometimes I think that the only reason anyone even likes those books is because that they're so brutal. I have also noticed that these books have no real deep story-line.  In fact, the only reason it has a story at all is to lead up to the third book where the entire book series turns into a readable CALL OF DUTY.   The Rise of Nine, coincidentally the third book in its series, in my opinion has a story and plot better than any of the Hunger Games books.

     In the first book of The Hunger Games series, the story line make sense.  She rescues her sister from the Hunger Games by joining herself. She then trains for the upcoming Hunger Games. Then the games begin and she and her "friend" Peta kill a bunch of people and survive the Hunger Games, and no it wasn't the first book I had problems with, mainly it was the second book.

     In the second book Collins couldn't find a way to continue the story without repeating the same plot line of the first book. She couldn't think of anything original so she made her characters have to go through the Hunger Games a second time. This time though all the past time victors would also be contenders.  At first I thought to my self, oh okay, this might be interesting. I noticed that in the sequel there was a lot less action and character development than in the first. In the end I'm not going to ruin your excitement but something COMPLETELY RANDOM DESTROYS THE HUNGER GAMES AND SAVES EVERYONE.

                                                                                            Stay tuned for Part two where I show you how much greater the books Pitacus Lore wrote are than Suzanne Collins.

Dang, this is one bad fever.

     Fever by Laurie Halse Anderson, (Yes the person who  wrote both Chains and Forge. If you didn't read my blogs about them do it now while you still can!!!) is a very emotional book. It takes place in Philadelphia in 1793, when a huge yellow fever broke out and thousands of people died. Matilda, the main character, lives with her mother and grandfather and older sister and servants. Life is going perfectly well until one of their servants dies of a (not so) mysterious cause and  people start spreading rumors of the yellow fever. Then, as many guessed, it escalated. The next day, hundreds of people are dying, and, of course, people like our main character are oblivious until it becomes an epidemic.  Matilda's mother catches it, and tells Matilda and her grandfather to leave the city. While they're  trying to get to the country, they get stopped and sent back.

     In my opinion, this book is full of cliches and is definitely not Anderson's best work, although the author shows lot of disgusting details about the fever. If don't  believe me, well here is an example, straight out of the book for you: "Mother flew off the pillows and was violently ill, vomiting blood all over the bed and floor."
Besides the fever, I wish there was more detail based on this time period.

    Matilda doesn't go through much change, and her traits are also cliche main character traits such as, loving, perky, or nervous. There wasn't a climax either.  Compared to Chains and Forge, Fever doesn't have the type of complex story line her other books do.   In Chains, Isabel gets beaten, and clearly changes her attitude from beginning to end because of it. In Fever, though, Matilda loses her grandfather and one of her friends but her attitude does not change, she doesn't seem to grow. So maybe it's a good book, or maybe it's not. Anyway in the comments, please tell me what rating this book is to you after you read it, or even if you only read this blog. Bye and read me next Sunday.

Revolt of the Evil Fairies.

     Revolt of the Evil Fairies by Ted Poston is a perfect example of how far racism can go. In the Booker T. Washington grammar school for colored people, light skins still get priority over dark skins. A forceful example of this is Ted's memory that "a major part of the school play was picking the good and bad fairies, and strangely enough the good fairies always had light complexions while the bad fairies always wore black costumes and were dark skinned."  Another way he shows the prejudiced society is that the white people always sat in front and the blacks in the back, and the people with enough money got box seats.  The teachers, of course, planned it this way knowing it would please the whites. A different piece of evidence of  racism is that only the light skinned African Americans got good jobs, such as becoming a doctor, artist, or business man.
   

     Even though he tried very hard to become the lead role of Prince Charming because his crush was playing sleeping beauty, a "Yaller" (a very, very light skinned African American) named Leonardius (who by coincidence also liked that girl) got the role. This led to a feud. Eventually, during the performance of the school play things got out of hand when Leonardius got away with hitting Ted, in an act of revenge Ted struck out at Leonardius and then everybody started beating each other up.

     I personally enjoyed this story because it was very emotional and true (in my opinion) and in the end it was very funny to me. It showed what troubles African Americans were going through in their own public. So all in all I think it passes by as a pretty good story.