I crossed off another book for my goal to read more parallel-universe-stories this year with A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray.  I madly love this premise (which is sort of a given with a reading goal this specific), and the book came close to living up to it!

Marguerite has grown up surrounded by cutting-edge science and transdimensional theory.  Her parents are the leading scientists on the theory, and their research assistants have always been like extra siblings…though eighteen-year-old Marguerite is kind of crushing on both current assistants, Theo and Paul.  When Marguerite’s father is killed and Paul, apparently guilty of the murder, disappears between dimensions, Marguerite and Theo set off in pursuit.  It doesn’t take long for Marguerite to realize that she doesn’t have the full story–and that she can’t be sure who to trust.

This book is fantastic in some ways, a little disappointing in others.  One small thing I love: Marguerite’s mother is the genius scientist.  Her father too, but it’s clear he’s supporting her mother’s work, and there’s a lot about how smart her mom is without even a whisper of comment on her gender.  Nice reversal of the gender stereotypes and normalizing women in science.

On a larger thing, I love it that Marguerite is running through multiple dimensions and multiple versions of her life.  When she enters a new dimension, she occupies the body of her other self in that dimension.  She gets glimpses of who she is and what her life is like in very different worlds, which is fascinating. Continue reading “Book Review: A Thousand Pieces of You” →

One of my reading goals for the year is to read more books involving parallel universes. I don’t mean books set entirely in an alternate Earth, but ones that actually deal in some way with multiple universes, or multiple paths someone’s life could take. I kicked off with one that explored exactly that second option: Pivot Point by Kasie West.

Seventeen-year-old Addison lives in a secret community where everyone has heightened mental abilities—one special, registered Talent, like telekinesis, mood-enhancement, or lie-detection. Addie’s best friend Leila can erase people’s memories. Addie has a rare form of clairvoyance: when she’s faced with a choice, she can perform a Search, to see how her life would turn out (for a chosen length of time) if she makes each choice. At the beginning of the book, she’s faced with the news that her parents are divorcing; almost as shocking, her father plans to leave the secret community to live among the Normals. Addie must choose which parent to live with, and performs a Search to see what her life would be like for the next month if she makes each choice. The bulk of the book is alternating chapters as Addie lives out each path—until she has to choose which one to make real.

I loved the parallel-lives-ness of this book. It was so fun to see events play out in different ways because of Addie’s choice, especially when the two paths overlap. Other people are still doing the same things on the edges of Addie’s life, so the larger world follows the same trajectory, but Addie’s position in events changes…and so, some key things turn out differently. Continue reading “Book Review: Pivot Point by Kasie West” →

Finishing the wonderful Lunar Chronicles Quartet late last year could have been very sad…but happily, I already had the short story collection to look forward to!  Stars Above by Marissa Meyer came out early in February, with nine short stories letting us revisit Meyer’s delightful characters.

This was very much a supplement to the novels (Cinder, Scarlet, Cress and Winter), and I think only really works if you already know and love these characters.  But from that perspective–it’s a lot of fun, especially the last several stories.

The first six stories are all set in the childhood of one of the major characters from the series: Scarlet, Cinder, Wolf, Thorne, Cress and Winter (with Jacin).  These are all well-done, and individually each is a great story.  All together, they started to feel a little repetitive to me.  Each character and his/her circumstances are totally different, but they all have that common theme of “formative years of a major character.”  And most of them expanded on anecdotes already discussed in the main series, so I didn’t feel like they actually added a whole lot.

My favorites of the group are “Glitches” about Cinder, and “The Princess and the Guard” about Winter and Jacin.  This is a little surprising, since Cinder isn’t one of my favorite characters, but these are the two stories that did the most to really fill in backstory and give me something new.  “Glitches” is about when Cinder first joined her adoptive family, and fills in the early part of the Cinderella story.  We see how the roles and relationships within her family are set–and we see her meet the wonderful Iko.  “The Princess and the Guard” recounts Winter’s entire childhood, from seven to fourteen (or thereabouts), and gave me new dimensions to her character and especially her relationship with Jacin–and both she and that relationship are amazing. Continue reading “Book Reviews: Stars Above (Lunar Chronicles)” →

I enjoyed the new Star Wars movie quite a bit, but I still had to chant “alternate universe” a lot—because I like the Expanded Universe of the novels. As I mentioned in my movie review, the movie sent me running to read a Timothy Zahn book, just to bring some balance back. So I pretty quickly read Survivor’s Quest (and took a while to post the review…), the chronologically-last Zahn Star Wars books, after already having read the previous five he wrote. And it really did feel so nice!

By this book we’ve reached some twenty years beyond the original trilogy (not that you can tell from Luke’s face on the cover…) This one focuses exclusively on Luke and Mara Jade, now married for three years. They join an expedition to find the remains of Outbound Flight, a colony ship sent 50 years ago in an (unsuccessful) effort to reach another galaxy. It swiftly becomes clear a saboteur is aboard the expeditionary ship, with a whole host of possible suspects.

Reading this book definitely fulfilled my goal—it just felt so comfortable to read a story about Mara Jade (probably the break-out star original character of the Expanded Universe), where Luke is training up a new generation of Jedi. We didn’t get to see Han and Leia, but we know they’re out there. I loved that. Continue reading “Book Review: Star Wars – Survivor’s Quest” →