Gathering Blue

    If I was to look for a terrible book to read, one that I would struggle through valiantly only to receive a confusing and disappointing end, I would not think to read Gathering Blue. First off, its supposed to be a dystopian novel, a genre that I tend to like. Second off, it's the sequel to The Giver, which, although it didn't blow me away, was still a good read. Yes indeed, my quest to find a terrible book would most likely bypass Gathering Blue altogether, not knowing that it would be a gem for it's patheticness. Now,   where to start my criticisms?
   OK, first off, this supposed sequel has absolutely nothing to do with the original book. Yes, if your thinking of reading this book in an attempt to figure out what happened after that cliffhanger in book 1, put the thought out of your head. Indeed, Jonas is not mentioned at all in this novel. In fact, they seem to be two completely different worlds, those of Jonas and Kira; one interesting, with a feeling that something is amiss from page one, and one thats... boring. I guess we'll never know what happened at the end of The Giver. In fact, unless you like reading books about people weaving all day, bypass this book altogether. I swear, thats all that happens in the whole entire book. Just weave, weave, weave. Oh, whoops, sorry for the spoiler. The book summed up in three sentences; 'Once upon a time a girl named Kira's mom died and her father had disappeared, and she was sad. She had a crippled leg, and it looked like she might be thrown out of the village. Luckily, she wasn't and she happily weaved all day for the rest of her life.'
    And thats the entire book. I was waiting for some kind of good twist to come at the ending; explaining some shocking secret about the village in which Kira lived. The'd been hinting about something, it seemed... Kira's supposedly nice guardian yelling at a child hidden in the lower levels of the government building, people mysteriously dying all the time... and yet in the end of the book, nothing really happened. As with any luck you will have the good sense not to read this book by now, I feel that I can now safely 'ruin' the ending for you. Perhaps this way I can save any of you who still want to read the book by deterring you. Are you ready?
   First off, I'll do a tiny bit more explaining. Kira's father was taken by "beasts' before she was born. At the start of the novel, her mother dies from a mysterious disease. With her mother no longer protecting her, a member of the village, Vandera, wants her chucked out of the village for having an unresponsive leg and therefore being "useless." Luckily for Kira, she is good at weaving, and the council allow her to stay in their building, provided she works for them.  There she lives happily, weaving all day, talking with her friend thomas (a wood carver) and Matt (a younger village boy). Then the book promptly stalls for about a hundred pages, with nobody doing much of anything. The only thing anyone seems to care about is that Kira can't find some blue thread to stitch with.
And now for the shocking twist; Matt, while searching around other villages looking for blue thread for Kira, happens upon her father (gasp) who, when reunited with his daughter, tells her that her Gaurdian, a member of the village council, tried to murder him so as to take his place in the council. Luckily, he survived and was taken in by another, more peaceful village where everyone dances around all day and everybody is nice. Soon after her fathers appearance, Kira realizes that her mother was poisoned in order for the council to secure her weaving skills, as she had no other guardian.  (though the council could have just asked if Kira wanted to work for them. She and here mother lived in little more then a hut from what I understand, and so of course Kira would accept. It's just down the street from her mothers, anyway). And, although that was a sort of lame twist after hours of "and she selected a green thread and wove it into...," the ending might still have earned the book a four out of ten stars. But no. The book had to be destroyed further.
After learning that her guardian is an axe wielding maniac, after learning that her mother was poisoned, after learning that she could go with her dad to a nice, happy village a little ways away, what does Kira do? For some reason, she decided to stay. She said; "I am an artist! I like weaving even though I'm doing it for some corrupted government and my guardian is a criminal! And I, the person nobody likes, the person who some people want thrown out of the village, am going to change the corruption in my society without being killed by the council!"
O.K, I'm sorry to sound like such a downer, but… yeah, good luck Kira.
 And so, my final judgement on the book; Boring beginning, boring middle, and what-the-heck-just-happened ending...
2 out of 10 stars.

Thanks for reading

The Lord Of The Rings: Book One

Hi again,

   After not giving a second thought to this blog for several months, I decided that it was time to step my game up and actually post something for my loyal readers. (Or, maybe more accurately, to gather some loyal readers :). Anyone reading this who know's anything about The Lord Of The Rings will probably have noticed and objected to the fact that I wrote 'The Lord Of The Rings: Book One,' instead of saying 'The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring.' However I have recently found that all three of The Lord Of The Rings novels were split into two smaller books, for a total of six books in the series. Yes, I do hear you critics sneer "Well then, why didn't you call the book by whatever It's real name is?" However, I couldn't be bothered to retrieve my copy of the book and find out for you, and my two-minute search for it on Wikipedia did not yield the answers either. And so in fact maybe the book is unnamed. However, I catch myself rambling on about nothing in particular again (I have a feeling in my gut that my first post was much the same), and so I feel that the time has come to actually get down to my review. I will, however, save you the summary of the plot. If you don't know enough about The Lord Of The Rings to follow this review, then I invite you to leave my blog until such time as you have repented for your sin. And so.
   The reason why I didn't just read all the way 'till the end of The Fellowship Of The Ring and save you the speech up above is simple; I had enough trouble getting through the first book to be bothered fighting through the second (all in good time, dear readers). And that fact is in stark contrast to the one I am about to present to you; that I enjoyed the book. Perhaps I can explain it this way; I enjoyed finding out what was originally intended to happen to Frodo and the Gang, and yet to be perfectly honest I really didn't need to know all the lyrics to a song that the hobbits sang while taking a bath. Also the famous Tom Bombadil, as much as I enjoyed his character, didn't really add anything to the plot. On the other hand, however, all these tiresome songs and useless scenes did work together to create for the reader a 3-D world for the characters to explore, which allowed you to immerse yourself in the story when you weren't drifting off from boredom. And so I find myself conflicted; bored yet enchanted with the book simultaneously.
And now, though I hate to cut my review short, I end it here for several reasons, which may include that my idea of 'cutting it short' is probably your idea of a droning speech that you zone out of halfway in (much like the book, in fact), and also the fact that it is fast approaching midnight here. So now for the final verdict. As I am in a generous mood and it must be pretty good to be so universally popular, I will give The Lord Of The Rings a respectable rating of… (drumroll) 8/10. A discussion for the comments; which do you prefer, The Lord Of The Rings books or movies? My votes on the movies right now :). Cheers,

Mark Jones