The Fellowship of the Mothership

Mothership

Author:
Martin Leicht and Isla Neal
Publisher:
Simon & Schuster (2012)
Number of Pages:
308
Review: “Really, for all the poetry in the world on the subject, when you get right down to it, it's mostly just boom! penis vagina.” What’s so funny about a school for pregnant teenagers? Well when you place the school in outer space and have a main character that is as sarcastic and witty as Elvie Nara… simply put: everything!!

Elvie Nara was just your typical teenager until she made the mistake of doing the horizontal limbo with the new hottie in school Cole Archer. To her surprise she found herself pregnant and when she told the dumb as a brick Cole he was going to be a father he skipped town, presumably never to be heard from again.  Her father decides that the best option for her is to attend the Hanover School For Expecting Teen Mothers, the only thing is, it’s in outer space. As if that isn’t bad enough, once she boards the ship she finds herself in the company of Britta (who didn’t need hormones to be bitchy) Coles girlfriend, and a slew of other weird characters. When the ship is invaded by this weirdo army commando, the girls find out their teachers as well as their boyfriends are not quite who they thought them to be.

I cannot write how much I loved this novel. Nothing I say could ever bring it justice but I shall attempt to do it justice. First let me say that it was the single most hilarious piece of literature I read in 2012 and probably my most recommended book. I haven’t laughed out loud (no really I let go of some unhealthy guffaws during this novel) as much as I did during this book than any I’ve read recently.  Elvie was such a dry, sarcastic and witty character I immediately fell in love with her. She reminded me of Juno and I think that’s why I loved her so much.

Elvie is different from your typical YA heroine. She starts off the novel pregnant. Yes people, she is not a virgin (insert gasp here). YA tends to villainize its non-virginal female characters, the male leads are almost always “experienced” but the females for some reason haven’t even had a proper kiss, which is why I found it so refreshing and unique to have the heroine be a non-virgin right off the bat. But aside from Elvie being Hymanally absent it was her personality that got me, and kept me reading. She is hilarious, more than hilarious! She’s mean, conniving, sarcastic, cynical, but there’s this vulnerability and loving side of her that makes her so human and real. Reading her story was like reading a person’s journal, you know if they were in space or whatever. If Jane Austin was a pregnant teenager living on a space ship in 2079 she would be Elvie Nara.

I loved the rivalry between Elvie and Britta; I also loved the fact that they both shared the same baby daddy. I mean we all know that Cole is hot but what are the chances he’d knock up two chicks at once? Well a very good chance considering Cole isn’t really a normal human boy.  Thus the disappearing act in the beginning of the novel. Cole’s love for Elvie and his affection for his children almost make you forgive him for neglecting them (and deceiving them). I also loved the fact that the authors didn’t dumb down their female characters. These girls were strong, fierce and ready for anything that came their way.

But my favourite character of all has got to be Elvie’s dad who has a solution for everything I mean how can you not love a man who is so prepared for anything he has a folder entitled "Folder three, scenario four: going into labor during a high-speed chase with extra-terrestrials.” Talk about a man who plans!

The plot is so much fun. There are not a lot of novels out there where you can say you had legitimate fun reading, but this novel it’s fair to say fun is in every atom of ink on the page. The commando takeover of the ship, the alien invasion, the sheer love between Elvie and her father, the love Cole shows his baby mamas, and every single strange, weird and hilarious scenario Elvie and the crew find themselves in makes this book my favourite read of 2012.

So if you haven’t done so yet I suggest you check out Mothership as soon as possible. It doesn’t seem to be as popular as the other books in the YA genre but search it out online from sites like Book Depository or Chapters Online. I really recommend this book and think that if you enjoy weird and sarcastic humour you will most definitely appreciate this jem of a novel.

Happy reading!

We Are All Ugly

Uglies

Author:
Scott Westerfeld
Publisher:
Simon Pulse 2005
Number of Pages: 
425
Review: “What you do, the way you think, makes you beautiful.” What negates beauty? Is it our perceptions that we imply upon others? Is it ingrained upon us from childhood? Is it socially instilled within ourselves or something that is essentially one’s own and no one else’s? But more importantly can we use beauty to control the emotions and actions of other peoples, or on a greater scale, a whole country? These are the questions that Scott Westerfeld asks in his novel called Uglies.

Uglies takes place in a futuristic earth where humans are grouped into five categories: Littlies, Uglies, New Pretties, Middle Pretties and Cumblies. Uglies pretty much look like humans from the 21^st century. Flawed, different, unique; and taught at a young age that everyone deserves to be pretty, every ugly at the age of 16 will go through a series of surgeries to make them pretty. Tally is just a few months away from becoming a New Pretty when she meets Shay, the rebellious and adventurous new friend who’s also waiting to become a Pretty but unlike Tally, she is not looking forward to the surgery. On the day before her scheduled surgery, Shay decides to run away begging Tally to go with her. When Tally refuses and goes in for her surgery she’s given an ultimatum: Find Shay and expose the Ugly Society called The Smoke or remain Ugly forever. Tally must make a decision, one that will alter her future forever.

I must admit I didn’t like the first half of Uglies. In fact I hated it.  It wasn’t the concept that I hated but Tally. Talk about your typical shallow female. She complained all the time about her flaws, other people’s flaws and then I realized, of course she was complaining, she lives in a society that calls normal people UGLY! When I got over the fact that she’s supposed to be shallow I started to warm up to the story, by the time Tally got to the Smoke, I loved it.

Tally is smart. She knows wrong from right, yet she lives in this society that makes decisions for her. When Shay comes along and shows her a life that is beyond the ugly/pretty boundaries she begins to open her mind to the fact that perfection isn’t always perfect. She’s a strong female character. Once she’s out of the ugly mindset she’s not afraid to be herself, and she’s not afraid to embrace the beauty of the people around her and of her own beauty. I loved how she developed from a little girl to a strong independent young lady.

In terms of the other characters, Shay was a great ally and sometimes enemy of Tally. The rivalry between the two as well as the friendship and love they have for one another makes the characters realistic. Yes they are best friends but even best friends fight. As for the main love interest, I like the fact that it wasn’t instalove. This relationship was a slow development. I felt that David was a good match for Tally, he challenged her, and fought with her beliefs, and let her make her own decisions. He was never pushy with his beliefs and she was respectful of his opinions as well. Where Shay gushed over David, Tally actually listened to what he had to say. I liked that contrast between the two friends.

The plot was interesting. To be able to control a whole population by telling them they’re ugly and they have to look a certain way in order to feel accepted is not too far off from where our society is heading now. Everywhere we go we are constantly bombarded with advertisements, movies, even books that say we have to look a certain way in order to have fun, get a mate and live a full wealthy life. More and more people are opting for Plastic Surgery these days, if we could somehow get that kind of extreme surgery for free I’m pretty sure the number of plastic surgeries performed per year would sky rocket. This false sense of happiness can be used against us into making us do things we really don’t want to do after all.

Scott Westerfeld really put a lot of great plot twists and ideas in this novel.  The Uglies society is something we should pay close attention too because the way society is shaped upon looks these days this may very well be our future if we’re not careful and don’t show people that everyone is beautiful in their own way.  I highly recommend you checking out the first book in this series and I plan on continuing with it in my future reads.

Happy Reading!

The Children of PD James

Children of Men

Author:
PD James
Published:
Vision (1994)
Number of Pages:
241
Review: We live in a society that measures success in three ways: a. The material belongings of a person, b. the fame of a person, and c. the number of a person’s offspring. Now what if one day we wake up to find that no human (none) would ever get the chance to procreate, that the human race will become extinct because no one can reproduce, how will our world react? What will become of our species? What would then be considered valuable? These questions are asked in PD James’ novel Children of Men.
Theodore Faron lives in a world where no human can procreate. It happened suddenly and with no explanation. Through the depressing blow to all humans that they can never be parents again and the chaos that occurs Theo feels the need to document his life in a diary on the death of the youngest human alive, 25 year old Joseph Ricardo, the last human who’s birth was the last ever to be recorded. As he starts to document his feelings for the first time in fifty years he is suddenly thrown into this chaotic world of secrecy  when he meets a young woman named Julian and vows to protect her and her secret. Throughout the novel’s progression one sees the fight for survival intensify, the destruction humans are able to create, the political chaos that can occur within our species, and the beauty, love, compassion and care our species is able to portray at even the most desperate and evil of times.
This novel is FANTASTIC! It has suspense that would make Alfred Hitchcock shiver and the concept is very unique and daring, after all who would ever dream that a scenario would occur where humans could never reproduce again. That concept is ridiculous and even laughable when you think about it, and yet it is not impossible either. Improbable maybe but not impossible.
The language is beautiful. James does a wonderful job to describe the collective feelings the human species share while living in a scenario where no human being feels safe or protected. “We are outraged and demoralized less by the impending end of our species, less even by our inability to prevent it, than by our failure to discover the cause… Western medicine haven’t prepared us for the magnitude and humiliation of this ultimate failure.” This sentence sequence alone shows the contempt, the fear and the disappointment the species as a whole feels for the situation they find themselves in. Once thought to be the masters of the universe, the inventors of machines, a God among nature, humans have failed to stop or even recognize their own demise.
What James does best in this novel is build suspense. There were moments  when as I was reading my thoughts of serenity turned into total fear and chaos just from her words and unexpected fearful events that happen. “And in that second the Omegas were upon them. Horribly, they came at first unheard, in total silence. At each car window the painted faces stared in, lit by flames of torches. Miriam gave a short involuntary scream.” The narrator is just as unaware of the events to come as the character and the readers. In some parts of the novel the plot line was completely unpredictable which helped keep my attention and kept me in suspense throughout the novel. 
What James does exceptionally well throughout this novel is describing this essentially doomed and post-apocalyptic world. “The old were too weak for the work, the middle-aged, on whom the burden of maintaining the life of the State largely depended on, were too busy, the young cared little for the preservation of the countryside.” We see a world where everyone gives up all hope of keeping the world politically and morally/ethically in check. They give up living life for they know that their species will not carry on, and really there’s no reason to look after the world (and especially the world of their species) for there’s no one to leave it too when they’re gone. It’s basically a world lost. A world no longer worth fighting for.
This novel, at it’s worst, was probably one of the best science fiction novels I’ve read in a long time. The concept was unique, the prose nothing short of perfect and the plot line: breathless. It’s a great book to keep you occupied during the long fall nights, and to keep your mind occupied as you try to make sense of the world she’s created and as you try to imagine what it would feel like for you to live in such a situation. As for myself, if I were to live in such a situation, I’d probably still try to live my life the best I can. Of course I say that now but who knows what I’d think if I found out no human being could ever reproduce again. I might very well live the life Theo Faron did.
Happy Reading!!!