The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimanline

 Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Science Fiction

Published: September 1, 2017 by Dancing Cat Books 

Pages: 231 

Rating: 4/5 stars 

CW: blood and gore, racism against Indigenous people, colonization, violence 

Futuristic Earth is ravaged by global warming, and it has impacted the world so that non-Indigenous people cannot dream. The inability to dream leads to madness, and a group of people known as "recruiters" are scouring North America for the cure. The cure lies in the bone marrow of Indigenous people, who are now on the run from the people who want to steal their marrow and wipe out their nations. Fifteen year old Frenchie and his friends are a few of the many Indigenous teens that are trying their hardest to reconnect with old family members and stay hidden from the recruiters. But, will they make it across the continent alive? 

I picked up this book on a whim because I had heard good things about it. Boy was I blown away by it! It was suspenseful, tense, and a great addition to the YA dystopia/science fiction genre. The cast of characters were powerful and well-written, and the premise brings about issues that go a lot deeper than just an apocalypse. 

First off, I think it was really smart of the author to have the reasoning of the end of the world being from global warming. This is because Indigenous people have had to deal with colonizers ruining their land for centuries. Indigenous Nations care deeply about the land and the environment, however capitalism that is often driven by racism has caused a lot of the global warming that we know today. While I hope our earth never gets to the level that it is in Dimaline's novel, I do think that the issue is represented well in the novel. This issue tells a greater story about colonization and the drive that Indigenous people have to protect their land. 

The characters were also lovable, but also flawed which I really appreciated. Frenchie is the main character, and he travels with a group of friends, along with other characters he meets along the way. I especially loved Minerva and RiRi, who eventually become like family to Frenchie. The group of teens and children in this novel were extremely tight-knit, and even though they had to survive amongst horrid circumstances, their bond was so powerful. I love reading about powerful friendships in novels. 

This book does make allusions to such horrid things in North American history. The idea of the recruiters wanting to steal from Indigenous people and commit experiments on them is sadly nothing new in the history of Canada and the States. There are also allusions to residential schools, which for those of you who don't know, was a way for the Canadian government to steal Indigenous children and torture them through the guise of Christianity. These issues and more are brought up in this novel, and I thought it was extremely powerful how the novel was able to bring about real-life issues in a science fiction setting. In this case, art sadly imitates life. 

I will say I would have loved a bit more expansion on the ending of the novel. I think I would have loved more development of the characters and a bit of a longer conclusion. I needed more to feel the novel come full circle. However, I applaud the author's use of tension and this was an extremely captivating book. 

It's also worthy to note that this book is Own Voices, which is always a good thing. Overall, "The Marrow Thieves" is for everyone. Whether you are a fan of science fiction or you wish to know more about Indigenous lives, this book does it all. It inspired me to take up a Masters Degree in Indigenous Literature, in which I will be researching the novel in greater depth. I cannot wait, and I hope you all will give it a read as well. 

Have you read The Marrow Thieves? What did you think? 

Emily @ Paperback Princess

The Dreamers by: Karen Thompson Walker

Genre: Science Fiction
Published: January 15, 2019 by: Random House
Pages: 303
Rating: 5/5 stars

When introverted college freshman Mei finds her roommate mysteriously asleep for days on end, the university is perplexed. Soon, another girl falls asleep and cannot be awoken, and then another. Slowly, more residents of the isolated Southern California town become infected with this odd sleeping illness, and nobody knows why. As residents attempt to protect themselves from an unknown threat, a psychiatrist from Los Angeles attempts to uncover why all those who fall ill are reporting heightened dream activity. But what are they dreaming about?

I received this book from one of my professors, who generously gave it to me after she found out how obsessed I am with the novel Station Eleven. She said it has a similar vibe and she thought I would like it. She was not wrong! This book was so incredibly unique and special. It was unlike any "pandemic" book I have read before. And, if you're up for it of course, I think it's really worth a read during these times as well.

There is an extensive cast of characters in this book, and they all hold unique characteristics. Mei was a really strong-hearted character who I could very much relate to. There is also a couple who are trying to protect their newborn daughter from the disease, and two young girls who must fend for themselves after their grieving father succumbs to the illness. All of these characters inter-lap in a really cool way. It was awesome to see how they all affect each other's lives.

I thought that this book handles an epidemic in the way that is super unique. Normally in books that deal with this subject matter, everything gets resolved, or at least, we get answers to everything. However in this book, there is still so much that is left unanswered by the end. I don't want to give too much away, but I think this book captures the theme of uncertainty really well. Sometimes, we can't find the answer to everything. But, we just have to carry on living. I think this is a lesson that a lot of us could use nowadays.

Overall, I think this book is a very worthy read. I think a lot of people are hesitant to read plague books right now, but if it helps, the disease in this book is super fictional anyways. I think that this book offers a lot of hope in uncertain times, and I'm really happy I was recommended it.

Have you read The Dreamers? What did you think?

Emily @ Paperback Princess

Otherworld by: Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller

Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Sci-Fi
Published: October 31, 2017 by: Delacorte Press
Pages: 335
Rating: 2/5 stars

Otherworld is unlike anything you have ever experienced, or so the company says. Avid gamer Simon thought that Otherworld was a simple video game, providing an alternate reality. However Otherworld is about to become more real than he could have ever imagined, and it will suck him and his friends into a wormhole that just cannot be escaped.

I have always been on the fence about sci-fi novels that deal with simulations and alternate realities. However, when Marshall from How I Met Your Mother writes a book, you read the damn book, so I decided to give it a shot. It did fall short because of the fact that these themes make my brain hurt, but I get how the overall concept could be very interesting to people who like gaming.

I think that there could have been a better explanation on what Otherworld actually is. The novel seemed to jump right into the alternate reality without building up to it, which made the whole concept of the game very confusing and I ended the book not really knowing what I just read.

I think that there is a huge market for books like these nowadays, and I think that the Otherworld series can capture the attention of tech-savvy people as well as those who are interested in simulations and the overall concept of reality being utterly fucked up. But you definitely have to read things over to make sure things are understood.

Have you read Otherworld? What did you think?

Emily @ Paperback Princess

Carve the Mark by: Veronica Roth

Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Science- Fiction
Published: January 17, 2017 by: Katherine Tegan Books
Pages: 468
Rating: 4/5 stars

Cyra is a Shotet, a brutal group of people on a mysterious planet that are in constant war with the Thuvhe. In Cyra's world, people have current gifts that stay with them all their life. For Cyra, that means a constant pain that she can put unto others, and that her ruthless brother has been willing to exploit. Akos is a Thuvhe, captured by Shotet soldiers and tortured by Cyra's brother. But when Cyra and Akos start forming a connection, they put both of their lives in danger, as well as the fate of their galaxy.

DISCLAIMER: This book has been called out for being problematic, including being racist towards members of the indigenous community and to people of North African heritage. It has also been said to be abelist to people who experience chronic pain. Since I do not belong to any of these groups, I cannot comment on these issues, I can only comment on my honest opinions on the book. If you are a member of any of these communities, please be mindful when reading this book and be sure to read reviews from people who belong to these groups.

I was really surprised by this book! I went into it kind of dubious because I'm not the hugest fan of science fiction, but I was really surprised by how much I actually enjoyed it. I thought it was fast-paced and exciting, and left me wondering what would happen next.

I really liked the plot of this book. It had a lot of plot twists and turns, and I was thoroughly engaged through it all! I did not get bored one bit, which really shocked me because I usually find sci-fi quite boring. But Roth provided a lot of elements in the book that kept the plot super intriguing.

I thought the characters fell a bit flat in this book. I wanted to know a bit more about them, especially the antagonist, Cyra's brother. I didn't mind Akos and Cyra, but I really wanted a glimpse into the villain's mind to see his inner motifs and what drove him to where he was. I don't think this book's characters really struck me, despite me being fully taken by plot.

So overall, I loved the plot, but wanted a bit more on characters. But I think that this book was really enjoyable, you just need to make sure that you take its controversies into consideration. Never, ever read something that you're not comfortable with or that may offend you.

Have you read Carve the Mark? What did you think?

Emily @ Paperback Princess

Station Eleven by: Emily St. John Mandel: Why You Need to Read this Book in Your Lifetime

Genre: Literary Fiction, Science Fiction
Published: September 9, 2014 by: Knopf
Pages: 336
Rating: All the stars in the universe

One winter night, esteemed actor Arthur Leander dies of a heart attack while on stage performing King Lear. A few hours later, the world as we know it begins to crumble as a deadly flu swipes over North America, killing everyone who comes into contact. 20 years later, The Travelling Symphony are a group of surviving actors and musicians who enter towns rebuilt after the apocalypse and perform Shakespeare plays. Kirsten Raymonde is one of those actors, and she longs to remember any ounce of her past life, including finding information about a famous actor who died moments before the flu started coming. Told in alternating storylines and time periods, Station Eleven weaves past and present in a extravagant story about love, fame, and isolation.

I am going to cry while writing this review. It seems like I always get a bit teary-eyed when talking about this book. This book was unlike anything, ANYTHING that I had read before. I'm not the hugest fan of literary fiction, but this didn't feel like that to me. It felt like a spellbinding story that was so expertly crafted that every page adds a new twist to the story. And the overall meaning of this book tore me to shreds.

St. John Mandel is such an expert writer. The way she ordered the events, connected characters to each other, and allowed for so much metaphor that was so easy to understand, is something that I aspire to be like. Every single time I read a chapter I just kept thinking about how badly I want to write like her someday. She's just so clever!!

I loved every single character in this book. Even the antagonist was so amazingly written and so well developed that you will at least connect completely with one character. There is absolutely no way for you to not feel for someone. St. John Mandel was able to capture every single character's backstories and all in under 350 pages.

There's pretty much nothing else I can really say about this book other than the fact that you have to experience it for yourself. It's science fiction without being too sciency, it's literary without being boring in the slightest, and guaranteed you will find something to love and respect about this novel. It's truly a work of art, and I'm so happy to have discovered it and experience it.

P.S. My sister, who hates reading more than anything, loved this book so if that isn't a reason to read it, idk what is.

Have you read Station Eleven? What did you think?

Emily @ Paperback Princess

The Knife of Never Letting Go by: Patrick Ness

Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Science Fiction
Published: May 2, 2013 by: Walker Books
Pages: 528
Rating: 4/5 stars

In the town of Prentisstown, everyone hears everyone else's thoughts in an endless stream of Noise. When Todd and his dog Manchee uncover a town that has complete silence throughout, Todd becomes weary of the life he thought he knew that the people he thought he trusted. Just weeks away from becoming a man, Todd faces great danger, and must choose whether or not to reveal the silent town, or continue as if everything is normal.

Mr. Ness creates some unique books. His books are so odd and yet so cool that it seems like he thinks differently than everyone else. I love his ability to weave fantasy and diversity together so perfectly, and creating truly, one of a kind themes.

This book will mess with your head. It will make you rethink everything you thought about sci-fi, and it reveals it in a whole new light. Like I said before, this book is unreal. I guarantee that you have not read anything like it.

This is kind of a weird thing to love about a book, but I loved that there was a dog as a central theme. I am a huge dog person and I don't read many YA books that have a dog as a fearless sidekick, so I found this so unique and cute too! It was really really special.

Like I said, I loved the diversity of this book and how Ness approaches it. He looks at different sides to all kinds of spectrum's, and he doesn't shy away from talking about serious issues. At the same time though, he also has this great wittiness about him that he manages to put in every book, which I find so comical. He's really a jack-of-all-trades.

The one thing that I didn't like about this book was that I tend to not completely *get* science fiction. It's not really my point of interest, and for that reason, I tend to find almost every sci-fi book a tad boring, no matter what it is. So I will say that for me, there were some slow parts, but don't let that discourage you if you love sci-fi.

Overall, this was a really intriguing read with the wit and charm of Ness that we all know and love.

Have you read The Knife of Never Letting Go? What did you think?

Emily @ Paperback Princess

The Martian by: Andy Weir

Genre: Science Fiction
Published: February 11, 2014 by: Crown
Pages: 369
Rating: 4/5 stars

Mark Watney had just become one of the first astronauts to walk on Mars. Then, after a dust storm causes his crew to evacuate and assume he was dead, Mark finds himself stranded on the red planet. All alone. But Mark is determined to survive. With his botanic engineering skills, he constructs a plan to grow food, rebuild damaged rovers, and get contact back to Nasa. But time, along with his food supply, is running out, and Nasa must decide how to get the first man on Mars, off of it.

I committed the sin of watching this movie long before I read the book. IT WAS OSCAR'S SEASON AND I WAS WATCHING ALL THE MOVIES, OK?! But anyways, this book filled up all the expectations of what I thought was a great movie. It was funny, clever, and even light hearted at times.

I liked how this book uses humour as a main element to it. It's not all drama, death and science fiction, but Mark had a great wittiness about him and provided comic relief to even the toughest of times. The author gave Mark a brilliant and very distinct voice, that I found myself even laughing out loud at times. It was very well done.

I also liked how this book was very easy to get through. I didn't find it boring even though there were heavy scientifical elements, and I think the humour helped with that. I definitely think that even if you're not a fan of science fiction, you would still like this book.

The one somewhat negative thing I'd have to say about this book is that I think that if I hadn't seen the movie first, I wouldn't have understood the book that much. I think that some scientific terms and problems that Mark encountered could have been hard to understand having not seen to first, so I think the movie helped a lot. It might be a bit confusing.

Overall though, this book was very well done. It was hilarious, interesting, and will have you cheering on Mark the entire way.

Have you read The Martian? What did you think?

Emily @ Paperback Princess

Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles #1) by: Marissa Meyer

Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction
Published: January 3, 2012 by: Feiwal and Friends
Pages: 390
Rating: 4/5 stars

As an incurable plague rages over New Beijing, mechanic and cyborg Cinder faces mistreatment by her stepmother and stepsisters, as well as keeping a secret from the charismatic Prince Kai, one of her clients, that she is part robot. When her sister falls ill, Cinder is immediately blamed for her exposure, but her life is spared when she finds out that she is immune from the disease. Suddenly Cinder is whisked into testing and prodding, as scientists try to figure out if she is the key to an antidote. But war from the Lunar People is on the horizon, and when their ruthless leader Queen Levana comes to Earth to pursue Kai, it's up to Cinder to try and save her beloved nation, and her heart.

I dnf'ed this book a few years ago. I thought it was weird and boring, and there were too many elements to it. So when this book reappeared in my life now, I was a little dubious. However I gave it a try again, and I was very surprised by my change in heart and I really appreciated it's uniqueness.

I loved how this book had a very diverse take on Cinderella. It had some of the elements to the original story, such as the evil stepmother, the ball, etc., but it was done in a way that was really cool and unique. Cinder is not your typical princess at all, and I loved how they didn't portray her as a damsel in distress or anything. She was a strong independent mechanic, which is not something you see everyday.

I don't usually go for science fiction as I can find myself getting lost in it sometimes, but this book was very engaging and I felt engrossed in it! Maybe I was just in a reading slump last time I read it, because I found that this time around, it was very interesting and cool to read about! It's something that I've never read before, that's for sure.

I think that the only thing I didn't like about this book, is that it has many elements to it. There's science fiction, robots, royalty, fairytale retelling, dystopia, that sometimes it's hard to grasp all the concepts. I feel like there's too many elements to this book that some things just get lost.

So overall, I'm happy I gave this book a go again and I'm happy with the result. However I do think that maybe there are just a bit too many things to this book, that it's hard to appreciate all of it.

Have you read Cinder? What did you think?

Emily @ Paperback Princess

The 5th Wave by: Rick Yancey

Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Science Fiction
Published: May 7, 2013 by: G.P. Putnam
Pages: 457
Rating: 4/5 stars

The world as we know it is in shambles. Aliens loom overhead, sending the apocalypse down in waves. The 1st Wave: a worldwide power outage. The Second Wave: An earthquake shakes the nation. The 3rd Wave: Infection that spreads like wildfire. The 4th Wave: Sending the aliens down in human form to capture the humans. Cassie Sullivan will do anything to protect her brother from the Waves. But when they capture her brother, she must learn to fight, to conquer, and to strategize to get him back. But who can she trust?

This book was a whirlwind of thrills, excitement and shock. It's not everyday that you read a book about the apocalypse in it's full form, most books I read are about the post-apocalyptic world. However this book was different, it gave a fully unique glimpse of a life that seems so familiar to us, that is torn apart without warning. It was like a breath of fresh air.

I really loved the concept of this book. Like I said before, you almost always read about what life is like for the humans after the end of the world, but never during. The earth was set up exactly how it would be nowadays, with teenagers biggest worries being relationships and grades. Cassie was just a normal girl trying to get through life, but now she is forced to play a protective role.

I really had a deep appreciation for Cassie. She wasn't set up like a kickass dystopian heroine who automatically is assumed different and forms a revolution. She had no one to learn from, and she was just trying to get by, and she tried the best she could. She was an accurate representation of an average teenage girl.

I didn't really care for the supplementary characters in this book though. Cassie was the only one who really stood out to me, everyone else I found kind of dull and underdeveloped. Evan annoyed me to no end, he seemed so overly stoic and I didn't like his relationship with Cassie at all. Ben was ok I guess, but I didn't find he added much. I just couldn't really couldn't fully appreciate the other characters in this book, they didn't bring much to the table.

I thought that the plot could have been executed better too. While it was very action packed and fast paced, I found it lacking in information. I found that it took forever to figure out what the different waves were, and I just needed things to be explained a bit more.

So overall, a very cool concept with a great lead, but it needed some more description to add some explanation. If you're into dystopia, I really suggest this one as it is not your average science fiction at all.

Have you read The 5th Wave? What did you think?

Emily @ Paperback Princess

A Thousand Pieces of You ( Firebird #1) by: Claudia Gray

Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Romance
Published: November 4 2014 by: Harper Teen
Rating: 4 Stars

This book was different in both positive and negative ways.  It takes place in futuristic America, where Marguerite Caine lives with her physicist parents. Her parents have invented a revolutionary device: The Firebird, which allows users to jump into alternate dimensions. When Marguerite's father is murdered, her and her best friend Theo, follow the suspect through different dimensions to hopefully, avenge her father's death. But with each dimension, Marguerite's feelings towards the killer alternate and she begins to wonder if he is, in fact the culprit.

Like I said before, this book was really unique. On the positive sides, the book characters were so cool. Marguerite was a brave and intelligent character, and I admired her. There was no annoying heroine here! Then there was Theo. He was so cute and loving, and I loved his friendship with Marguerite. Even Paul, the murder suspect, was very well written. Like Marguerite, I began to wonder if he was the culprit as well. There were so many plot twists in this book, that it was always kept interesting. I would think one thing, and the exact opposite would happen. It kept me hooked through and through and all of the twists complimented each other. It was very unpredictable.

The only thing that I did not like in this book, was that it could have been very confusing particularly in the beginning and end. The middle was brilliant, however I could not understand what was happening at the start and end. The beginning moves so fast, as if we already know about Marguerite's past with her father. Then the ending or solution was really confusing. I couldn't follow what was happening, at all. Many pages were re-read.

I wouldn't normally go for a science fiction, so that is why I wasn't really used to it. The romance component, of course I was familiar with and enjoyed a lot! It was really just the start and end that I found a bit messy. I couldn't comprehend what was happening.

So overall, considering the fact that this book was a new genre to me, I really did like it. If you like science fiction, then this book is definitely for you. Even I enjoyed it, and I don't normally go for science fiction. I rated it 4 stars because it was really interesting and different, however could have been a bit messy. For my first science fiction book, I think it went rather well!

Have you read this book, or other science fiction books? What did you think?

Bye for Now!

Emily @ Paperback Princess