From: It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey
Interesting Book Passages – May 27, 2024
Uncategorized
Audiobook Review: Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling
Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling
Narrated by: Emily Tremaine, Greta Jung and Graham Halstead
Published: April 4, 2023 by Simon & Schuster Audio
Buy this book at: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Kobo
Synopsis:
In the far north of Canada sits Camp Zero, an American building project hiding many secrets.
Desperate to help her climate-displaced Korean immigrant mother, Rose agrees to travel to Camp Zero and spy on its architect in exchange for housing. She arrives at the same time as another newcomer, a college professor named Grant who is determined to flee his wealthy family’s dark legacy. Gradually, they realize that there is more to the architect than previously thought, and a disturbing mystery lurks beneath the surface of the camp. At the same time, rumors abound of an elite group of women soldiers living and working at a nearby Cold War-era climate research station. What are they doing there? And who is leading them?
An electrifying page-turner where nothing is as it seems, Camp Zero cleverly explores how the intersection of gender, class, and migration will impact who and what will survive in a warming world.
Rating: 
Review:
“Why do men take so easily whatever they want? Because nothing will ever be enough, she realizes. The more a man possesses, the more he thinks he deserves.”
This book tried to accomplish a lot of things in its pages. This audiobook ran for 10 hours and some change, so an average length story. But this book wanted to be a dystopian thriller, a commentary on climate change, a commentary on race, and a commentary on gender, plus throw in some examination of misogyny. In the end, it was largely successful on these fronts. But not all of them.
This book follows the perspective of three individuals/groups. Rose is a half-Korean young woman who is hired at the camp as a “Bloom”, a woman who is hired to “entertain” the men in charge. What this means without euphemism is that she is a sex worker. Sex work seems to be a large part of the world of Camp Zero, and it’s an interesting examination of gender roles. Many of the woman seem perfectly happy to be involved in sex work, viewing it as a way to make a better living than most other jobs, and an opportunity to better their station in the world. In Rose’s case she is not only at camp as a sex worker. She has also been tasked as a spy. We don’t learn exactly what her mission in for quite a long time, but there are clues along the way. She also tells us about her childhood and her mother’s life. This was a really great way to not only build the character but the world. We see several different facets of life in the world of Camp Zero through her eyes. And they were all fascinating. I loved the bits that talked about Rose’s history, I learned so many interesting things.
We also follow Grant. He is a trust fund baby. His family is one of the wealthiest and most influential families in this world. But when a tragedy leaves him examining his privilege, he is desperate to escape his family’s influence and make his own reputation. That’s why he takes the job to be an English teacher at this remote northern camp. He figures that it is so remote that his father’s influence couldn’t possibly reach him and he will be free. But he quickly learns that the job he was hired for isn’t exactly what he thought it would be. He is also very troubled by the existence of the Blooms. All in all, I grew to like Grant by the end but found him horribly naïve. It was quite clear to me that he had lived in a giant bubble for his entire life.
The third narrative is that of White Alice. This narrative is presented in the plural, it is the story of a group of women. These women are tasked with manning a climate change research outpost. Every day they are to report on the changes to the environment and also work on methods of living independently in a largely inhospitable environment. At first the woman are apprehensive about working together, having come from the male dominated military. But, over time, they build relationships and a community and find the remoteness of their lives to be refreshing and comforting. I loved the story of the women of White Alice, though I struggled to understand their relevance to the larger story for longer than I thought. In the end the narratives came together, but it took awhile to get there.
Each of these narratives has its own narrator. I found all of the narrators to be very good at their job. They humanized their characters and their individual styles were complimentary to the other narrators, so the narration felt seamless. It also made it extremely easy for the listener to identify who was telling us the story and when we switched narratives.
My only complaints about this book are that it tries to take on too much. Between the climate change, gender roles, misogyny, racism, wealth privilege…it all just started to feel a little too surface level. We don’t get an opportunity to examine any of these issues with any depth because there’s so many other themes happening. The ending was very good, but it got a little bit confusing. There was a lot of action happening and frequent narrative switching and this was the only time I found it confusing to follow what was happening. I caught up in the end and enjoyed the conclusion. I feel that this book stands on its own perfectly well, but I would be very happy to see the author visit this world again.
Progress Update Friday – May 3, 2024
Synopsis:
A shooting at a Chicago beach leaves several dead and dozens injured. In the year before the attack, four individuals emerge as possible suspects.
An apathetic computer programmer.
An ex-college athlete with a history of head injuries.
An Army veteran turned Chicago cop.
A despondent high school student.
One of them is the shooter. Discover who and why.
Thoughts so far:
The characters are becoming increasingly distinct through the narrative at this point. I no longer need the author to tell me which character we are following, I can tell by their voice and the circumstances who it is. Each chapter opens with a short piece on morality, or crime or the morality of crime. I am not entirely sure yet if this piece is supposed to be a part of a “manifesto” that the killer is writing, and therefore offering clues as to who it is, or if it is just a part of the narrative. We’ll see how that turns out, I am interested to see the purpose of those fascinating pieces. I still have the same suspicion on which character the shooter is, but the author is carefully laying the pieces to where it could logically be any of them. So far I am really enjoying this book.
For this week, that is all I have. It was a crazy busy week with school coming to an end, so I didn’t get a chance to start anything else and made only marginal progress on this one. Hopefully a longer update next week.
Review: Alive by Scott Sigler
Alive (Generations Trilogy #1) by Scott Sigler
Published July 14, 2015 by Del Rey
Buy this book at: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Synopsis: I open my eyes to darkness. Total darkness. I hear my own breathing, but nothing else. I lift my head…it thumps against something solid and unmoving. There is a board right in front of my face. No, not a board…a lid.
A teenage girl awakens to find herself trapped in a coffin. She has no idea who she is, where she is, or how she got there. Fighting her way free brings little relief—she discovers only a room lined with caskets and a handful of equally mystified survivors. Beyond their room lies a corridor filled with bones and dust, but no people…and no answers.
She knows only one thing about herself—her name, M. Savage, which was engraved on the foot of her coffin—yet she finds herself in charge. She is not the biggest among them, or the boldest, but for some reason the others trust her. Now, if they’re to have any chance, she must get them to trust one another.
Whatever the truth is, she is determined to find it and confront it. If she has to lead, she will make sure they survive. Maybe there’s a way out, a rational explanation, and a fighting chance against the dangers to come. Or maybe a reality they cannot comprehend lies just beyond the next turn.
Rating: 
out of 5 stars
Review: I cannot begin to tell you how dismayed I am to be giving a book by Scott Sigler just two stars. I can honestly say I don’t think I have ever given one of his books less than four stars. For me, Scott Sigler is an auto-buy, auto-read author. If he puts it into print, I will read it. And every single time, I have loved it. Until this time. When I first heard this book was being published I was a little surprised. Young Adult is not really the Sigler wheelhouse. Dick jokes and very colorful language is part of the writing style, none of which can be in a young adult book. But he’s an extraordinary writer so I didn’t worry about it too much. Surprised but not worried. In hindsight, I should have been worried.
Now, in order for me to be intellectually honest, I also have to mildly rebuke the author a little. On the podcast for Alive, and apparently on the book (at least the advance copies), he felt it necessary to add a little notation that said if you’re going to review this book, please don’t post spoilers and ruin it for other people. This shocked me. My jaw literally dropped. Scott Sigler has never been someone that didn’t understand the reader/author line and always been very respectful of any and all feedback. But this was not okay. Once that book is out into the world, you no longer control it as an author and you certainly don’t control the way it is read or reviewed. If someone doesn’t wish to be spoiled, they should probably not read reviews. Or look for ones that specifically state no spoilers. Let’s not repeat this pattern Scott Sigler, it’s not a good look.
Alright, all that finished. Consider yourself warned, there be spoilers ahead.
***SPOILERS***
Let’s talk about the redeeming qualities about this book first, that’s the shorter of my two lists. The premise of this book is very good, it’s intriguing and mysterious and horrifying at time. It was executed badly but the premise was great.
Em was a character with a lot of potential. A scared little girl who is thrust into a position of authority when she doesn’t know anything more about the situation than anyone else. Where Em fell short was that she ended up being largely boring. Most of her verbal dialogue and inner dialogue alike are “I’m the leader, I think that person wants to challenge me to be leader but I’M THE LEADER!!” Seriously, she repeats this so many times I was praying someone would actually challenge her leadership so she could stop stressing about it.
All of the other characters really don’t matter. Bello is very important to Em for some reason that I never figured out, she didn’t do anything except sit around, look pretty and be boring. O’Malley has some potential to be interesting because I got the sense that he is a secret trouble maker, he always seems like he’s supportive of Em but I think he’s undermining her behind her back. Bishop is scary and violent but, oh, those dreamy eyes and muscles of his. We hear a lot about liquid eyes and taunt muscles and flat stomachs too. Which brings me to my biggest problem with this book:
These kids are supposed to be 12 year olds stuck in adult bodies. Why are they all so sexually interested? Kids at 12 have crushes based on who looked at them across the playground, not because they are enthralled with their muscles and boobs. 12 year olds haven’t figured out what boobs are yet. So on one hand you have prepubescent kids acting like 16-17 year old kids, but then also calling these mysterious people who locked them away “grown ups”. I am pretty certain that most kids stop referring to adults as grown ups much earlier than 12 years old. It was very strange.
The kids, Em in particular, at times struck me as both a much younger and much older child and it did not make sense. She also seemed very disingenuous as a female character, often times she read like a boy. This could be explained by something I heard the author say in his podcast when he was asked how difficult it was to narrate a 12 year old girl. (Note: while in quotations, this is not a direct quote, but it’s close), “It really wasn’t that hard because the world of Alive is post-gender, post-race, post-everything except the caste system that they don’t even understand yet.”
This leads me to a question, if your world is post-gender, why differentiate between girls and boys at all? Presumably the “grown ups” that are cultivating their bodies for their own use don’t need to breed because they can live for millennia, so…why was this important anyway? And why exactly is everyone so obsessed with how attractive the opposite gender is, if it is really irrelevant? It was the strangest remark I’ve ever heard, I listened twice just to be sure I heard it correctly. And I am not sure what this caste system is because we were too busy obsessing over leadership and muscles to explore it at all.
While we’re on the subject of gender in characters, what the fuck was with dressing 12 year olds in too-small, too-tight, busting-at-the-seams Catholic schoolkids outfits? And everyone was so completely hot? Are we really sexualizing 12 year old children? I found that to be one of the more disturbing aspects of the whole book. My brain just kept screaming “Stop it! These are children! Literally prepubescent children!”
I will walk away from that for awhile and move on to tropes. This book has all of them. Smoldering eyes, liquid eyes, scintillating muscles, flat firm stomachs, boobs popping out of shirts, wistful glances across fields of flowers. There was so much purple prose I was inspired to quote from Willy Wonka. Sigler, you’re turning violet Sigler!
Lastly, the plot. It was boring. 70% of the book was walking, arguing about leadership, gazing longingly at each other, and occasionally doing something they think is a bad idea (I shouldn’t look in that room, oh I did anyway, OMG that’s awful I shouldn’t have looked!) Then when we finally started getting answers I was presented with Brewer the Cheshire Cat who I thought was supposed to be the bad guy, but apparently isn’t. But if he is a good guy, then why the hell was he talking in so many circles. I also lost my mind when Brewer gave them a lecture about “why tell you when I can show you, that’s so much better”….and then proceed to TELL them for about 6 pages everything that was going on. That was followed with 10 more pages of the actual bad guy, Matilda, once again telling them everything they need to know about what’s going on. I thought showing was better? I could almost hear the author over my shoulder whispering in my ear, “Are you so super surprised? You never saw it coming did you?” Honestly, no I didn’t see it coming but it also wasn’t that great either. My final feelings once I turned the last page were a big, whomp whomp.
Unfortunately, this trilogy will tie directly into the larger Siglerverse very heavily, I can see that, so I have to read the next two. I really don’t want to, but I will. Maybe it gets better, if not, I’ll let you know.
Coming tomorrow….
I had the pleasure of receiving an ARC for this great book and the opportunity to participate in the blog tour. I read the first book in the series if you remember (https://stefani140.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/cracked-by-eliza-crewe/) and gave it 4 stars too. And if the ending of this book is anywhere as good as the rest of it has been, it’s gonna be a really fun ride.
So join me tomorrow for the review and lowdown on where to get this book tomorrow. But be patient, it won’t be posted until after work but I will try as I might to make it as soon as possible.
Until then, content yourself to visiting another blog tour participant, Bookshelf Reflections.
Review: Red Cells by Jeffrey Thomas
Red Cells by Jeffrey Thomas
Published March 18th, 2014 by DarkFuse
Buy this story at: Amazon
Synopsis:
Private detective and mutant shapeshifter Jeremy Stake (hero of the novels Deadstock and Blue War) has fallen on hard times in the far-future city of Punktown. When he is offered an opportunity to masquerade as another man to do his prison sentence for him, Stake agrees, but this is a new type of penitentiary—existing in its own pocket universe.
In this isolated prison, a series of gruesome murders have occurred, and the inmates soon force Stake to investigate. Can Stake catch a killer that might not even be human, without becoming just another victim?
Rating: 
Review:
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this story from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thank you DarkFuse!
A story that is under 100 pages has no excuse to be boring, this one was boring. But it was also not badly written. In fact, I think if the story was given more time and space to develop then it could have been really good. As a short story, however, it felt rushed and hectic.
The character of Stake was an interesting one. He is a mutant who can assume the physical form of another human. He is normally a private investigator but things are tough and he agrees to do a stint in prison for someone else. Naturally chaos follows and gives him a mystery to solve. I liked him as a character, though he was a tiny bit stereotypical for a private investigator type. However, because the story was so short I felt like I didn’t really learn much about him. Since he is the main character in two novels this is not to be expected, but it would have been a nice addition.
The story was also a good one. A prison that is located in pocket universe and something is killing the prisoners. That is very interesting. But unfortunately, the story was told to me almost exclusively instead of showing me. That was annoying. Don’t tell me! For heaven’s sake do a little bit of creative writing and show me.
It was also pretty predictable. As soon as they described the killer to me, I thought….well of course it’s that X thing/person that they told us about. And it was. This could have been done a lot better. I have no doubt that the author can write better than this, I can see the talent there. But this story did not showcase that talent at all.
Happy 4th of July!
Happy 4th of July to all my fellow Americans! Eat a lot, watch some great fireworks, and enjoy your family. And let’s all hope that by next year we have even more to celebrate.
Wanted: More Hours in the Day
Whew, what a few weeks it has been. I went on a business trip to North Carolina for the day job last week. That was a lot of fun but a lot of work. I was working extra hours at that office nearly every day plus 2 days of travel. Now I’m back and the first thing out of everyone at the office’s mouths was “Hey, welcome back…can you work overtime?” Cue sigh here. It’s nice to be considered so valuable around here but really, I’d just barely walked in the door!
I’m working hard on my rewrite of Schooling of a Monster. I have heard rumors that a certain publisher is accepting un-agented manuscripts right now that are right up my alley as far as genre goes. I really want to get this done so that I can try that and see how it goes. I look at it this way, what’s the worst thing that could happen? They tell me no? Heard it all before and the word no does not intimidate me.
I know I promised links for Helium articles far too long ago and haven’t had time since. So I shall do so now!
What are some of the more common myths concerning domestic violence? Do you think you know? Find out here!
Have you ever wanted to increase your vocabulary in just seconds per day? Now you can, read it with me to figure out how.
If you will need surgery anytime soon, this article will be of particular interest to you, it discusses the side effects associated with general anesthesia.
Lupus is a disease that affects thousands worldwide every day. But what causes this auto-immune disease? I explore that in this article.
Imagine for a moment that you’re camping with your family, you hear a noise from the trees and turn to find a cougar looking right at you! What do you do? Let’s all find out together here.
Perhaps you’ve heard someone compared to a wolverine because they seem to devour anything edible within their grasp. It’s a rather common phrase, but how did this assocation come about? Are wolverines really that greedy? Now you can know by reading here.
Sea cucumbers, it’s a strange name for an equally strange creature. Find out just how strange in this article.
I have a bunch more that I’ve done in the last few weeks, but for now I think that will suffice. I don’t want to overwhelm anyone’s brain too much. Have a wonderful hump day and leave me a comment if you feel so inclined. I love knowing you guys are out there!
Business Trips
Like I promised, I am here way sooner than my usual gap between posts. It’s been a busy week but I wrote a bit on Helium and wanted to keep everyone updated. The day job has been exhausting and really limited the amount of writing I can do because I’m just do tired. But on the plus side they are sending me to North Carolina for a business trip to train our team out there the week of the 12th. That is going to be really fun, I have never been on a business trip before. I am a bit nervous but mostly excited.
I’m also considering writing more fan fiction, probably for Supernatural. I remember that I started a story on a Fan Fiction website back during the summer break between seasons 4 and 5 but never got around to finishing it. And now after the finale of season 6 my mind is racing with all the possible theories and possibilities for season 7. I won’t share my ideas here in full, but let’s just say I think I figured out who God is and it’s not Prophet Chuck. I might just write that new fan fiction after all because I just love this idea I thought of.
I do have a few new articles on Helium but I cannot post links yet. The purchase deadline isn’t passed yet so they are not available on the website yet. I’ll make another post this weekend when the links are available.
Happy Friday!
Same old, same old…
It’s been quite awhile since I actually had the time or inclination to post on here. It’s strange but I seem to completely forget I have this place until I look at my history and think, oh yeah I do have that blog I should really update it. I have basically been working myself into oblivion lately. The day job has been pushing me ever further into a nervous breakdown with constant overtime and hundreds of new expectations every day. But until the writing can pay the bills, we have to do what we have to do right?
I have been considering something as far as my novels go, publishing it myself as an ebook. Ebooks are exploding in popularity as the paper book market continues to shrink by the month. But publishing yourself as an ebook takes out the publishing game that is almost impossible to win and gains you an audience without investing thousands of dollars like typical self-publishing schemes. I have not decided on this yet, but just know that it is in my mind and being considered. If that would be something you’d be interested in me doing, let me know cause I want to know if there’s an interest out there for me to go that route.
I also have decided to invest more time in my freelance writing on Helium. So I will post some updated links here, please give them a click cause it helps me make money and you may just discover something interesting too.
Ever wonder what the most common STDs are in women? Find out here.
Learn the best ways to grow oregano, dill, and peas for all levels of gardening skill.
Should Happy Meals be blamed for rising obesity levels in children? Find out what I think, with just a little bit of added sarcasm.
And the newest edition, discover some of the most rare breeds of cat in the world!
I hope you enjoy the latest batch of my freelance work, and I promise to update these links more often now that I am writing more.
Written Among The Stars 