This book is good. Five stars good. Better than pizza. I know I say this about every book, because I can't ever say anything mean about a book (Except Beautiful Creatures, don't get me started on that horrendous book). Basically, my job here is to tell you everything that is amazing about a novel, and why. This has been pretty easy because I love to read, and 99.95% of the book I read are AMAZING.
This infamous book? The Darkest Minds, by Alexandra Braken. Spoiler: It's not actually dark.
This book is about four kids who have powers- some can conduct electricity, some are freakishly smart, some play with fire. Then there's Ruby. She's the main character, and she can control minds. All four kids- Liam, Su, Chubs and Ruby- are running from the government (I feel like in every book nowadays the kids are running from the government) and have nowhere to hide but a camp called East River. The only problem is that they actually need to find the camp, and make it there alive.
Now that I've done my summary, I can get to the fun part. Why do I love this book?
1. It's fast paced. There's always something happening.
2. There's a love triangle!
3. Dystopian society- I love to read these kind of books because it makes me appreciate the world we have today. But I do with I had superpowers sometimes.
4. First person POV: it might just be me, but I love a first person point of view because I feel more like I'm with the character than watching them.
5. Makes you think. After you finish the book, on page 500 something, you're still thinking about it. It's that good.
6. The main character, Ruby, is hilarious. She adds a great twist to the plot.
6. The main character, Ruby, is hilarious. She adds a great twist to the plot.
7. You can't leave out the great Classic Rock allusions that somehow make their way into the novel.
8. Alexandra Bracken says it herself, "Black is the absence of all colors (whereas white is the presence of all colors), so it’s a largely symbolic gesture. They’re basically saying, there are no colors here except for the one we give ourselves—they’re trying to assert some independence from the system while acknowledging that they’re all equal regardless of what abilities they may have."
8. Alexandra Bracken says it herself, "Black is the absence of all colors (whereas white is the presence of all colors), so it’s a largely symbolic gesture. They’re basically saying, there are no colors here except for the one we give ourselves—they’re trying to assert some independence from the system while acknowledging that they’re all equal regardless of what abilities they may have."
(SPOILER COMING!) After I've named all of the great things, there's nothing bad about it, right? Here's what I hate. MY FAVORITE CHARACTER DIED.
Honestly, I'm still not over it. Sometimes I'll just stop what I'm doing, and silently mourn for that character. Yeah, I get attached to characters. Long live character-who-can't-be-named-because-I-can't-say-spoilers. They were a favorite of mine, right up there next to Jace Wayland from The Mortal Instruments, which happens to release the very last book in the series on May 27th!
Here's a link for you lazy people who decided to skip down to the bottom, hoping for me to summarize what I just wrote about. If you actually read all of this, I applaud you. Sorry making it so long.
Alexandra Braken's The Darkest Minds Book Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3kRUt92i2PQ
Here's a spoiler, in the "Amazing Spider Man 2", Peter Parker's girl dies. And it's a rarity for a writer to have the guts to kill off a main character, but it adds to the message the writer wants to get across to the audience that makes the reader wonder, why? So in a sense, the author does this to add to the meaning of the book, no matter how much the audience despises the decision. And adding on to why you love the book, a love triangle is a very common method to get people hooked and was used as far back as "Midsummer Night's Dream". Overall, you are doing a great job blogging and you seem very comfortable with it!
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