Wild Card 3

The Knife Of Never Letting Go


Now a lot of people have said this book is amazing; that it is the book of the century and everyone should love it unless the book comes to life and ruins everything you love. If that happens then you have a reasonable excuse to dislike it. But apart from that then you must love it, love it, love it. Everyone I know has said this, including my parents. But to be perfectly honest I don’t see what all the fuss is about.

Now don’t get me wrong OK, I liked the book. But it just isn’t as amazing as everyone was saying it was. It had some good positives and some annoying negatives (I will go over these in a minute). So while the book didn’t live up to what it was built up to, it did have its moments.

Let’s start with the positives: First I want to say that the idea that the story had was simply fantastic. Coming to a new world to find that it has a chemical that broadcasts your thoughts to everyone? Genius! And the characters in it are so well written I was jealous that I would have to wait 10 years to get close to that sort of writing.

However. The book did do a few things that I hated. The first is how stupid the people were when it came to plans. I mean the settler plan. Come on. 20 odd villages and not one mechanic that can fix a spaceship. Not ONE?! No way of contacting them when the purpose of these people was to check it out and then CONTACT THEM! That was a bit of a design flaw don’t you think?

Also the book did what How To Be Topp did: deliberately misspell words. I HATE that.  SHAME ON YOU STORY! But apart from those rather large cons the book does alright on my scale. I will give the book 71/100 for excellent story writing and good execution of an idea.

This is the last challenge review I am doing so when I next post something I hope to be £10 richer.

Jay Writes

Look guys - it's the last review of the 50! 
It came as no surprise to us that Luke used his final Wild Card to avoid reading Little Women. That's the one I'd pegged from the start as the least likely to appeal to him. Instead, we chose the start of an award-winning trilogy of modern YA fiction. 
I hope Luke is immensely proud of himself for finishing this challenge. We're all chuffed to bits!

Wild Card 2

Ender's Game

This book has recently become one of my all-time favourite sci-fi books. A really positive review. 

For a big book (and it is big) it doesn’t over explain things or leave loads of plot holes for me to fill in and gets the story across to the reader at a good steady rate. The gist of the book is that in the far future the race of humans are preparing to go to war with the insect race of the buggers (clever). For the best results they get people to help them genetically engineer amazing super generals to lead their armies to victory. 

Ender Wiggin is one of these kids and after he is pulled away from his home and placed in battle school only then does he unlock his true power as a leader of the human space fleet. TO WAR. At least that is what everyone tells him. But he doesn’t want that to be true. He just wants to go home. 

A fantastic book for all people with two digits in their age. I hope the public enjoys it as much as I do. For the amazing piece of art that is this book 99/100.   

Jay Writes - Luke cashed in his second Wild Card to replace Mistress Masham's Repose.  Our lovely friend Immi loaned it to us and he just didn't fancy it. (I enjoyed it!) We chose Ender's Game as a classic science fiction story that had an awful lot to say. I'm so glad he embraced it with such enthusiasm

Animal Farm

I have to start this review by saying “I want a book not a history lesson!”

I admit that this was a good story that got the emotion that the animals had across as well as telling an excellent story. But I thought that this was going to be little story about the animals standing up for themselves and proving that the humans ought to pay more attention to them. I mean come on listen to the name “Animal Farm” if that doesn’t sound like the name of a book for five year olds then I am a bottlenose dolphin (which I’m not of course) 

It was so confusing with all the stuff happening at the same time and how somehow the animals can talk to humans and stand on two feet and build windmills and have whips and believe in candy land and well you get the Idea. But to its credit it explains the Russian revolution a lot better than I could plus at SOME times in the book you feel like you really know these animals and you want to help them out of their terrible predicament. 

But the fact remains that is a lesson. A very good lesson with a fantastic way of teaching in fact the only history lesson that was better than this one was when my mum made the Tudor family tree out of ginger bread men and woman. That was awesome. But still a lesson. Kids don’t want history lessons they want fictional stories.

“WHAT DO WE WANT?!”

“GOOD STORIES!”

“WHEN DO WE WANT THEM?!”

“NOW!”

“WHAT DO WE WANT?!”

“GOOD STORIES!”

“WHEN DO WE WANT THEM?!”

“NOW!”

You see?

But the book still had a good setup, well designed characters and was well written. For all those positives 61/100.  

Greek Myths

Well this review is gonna take me a while because I have to write 300 words before my mum and dad can finish their work so here we go:

The Ancient Greeks is my favourite point in history after the Egyptians. Their mythology is fascinating. It is filled with everything from arrogant kings who challenge the gods to noble heroes who simply ask for the gods blessing on their quest to save the damsel in distress. And there are plenty of damsels who are in distress. Many of these situations are caused by Hera queen of the gods. She deals with most problems by turning into an old woman and planting seeds of doubt in people’s minds.

My favourite story is the story of Melampus, the man who could understand animals big and small. One day he was walking along the road when he found a dead mother snake. Instead of just kicking it of the road like most people would he gave the snake a proper funeral and took care of the babies. When the snakes grew older they licked his ears so clean that he could understand what all creatures were saying. He used this ability to learn the secrets of nature and to help people with their problems. Like when he put out a large hunk of meat and two vultures came down and discussed how to heal a very sick prince who was watching.

 The Greek myths have lots of stories like this except in the others the blessed man usually gets cocky and angers the gods who make him spend the rest of his life as some kind of wild animal. As well as having many good stories the Greek myths also make good reading material for all ages. Little ones will marvel at the great tasks of Hercules while older readers can enjoy the tale of Oedipus.

Great stories for the whole family 89/100        

Jay Writes - 

Luke reviewed D'Aulaire's Book Of Greek Myths.  It's the book I grew up with too. I highly recommend it for readers age 7 and up. Its family trees and memorable illustrations are a great introduction to the myths. As Luke says, these stories are great for everyone.

The Secret Garden

I have mixed feelings about this book. I like the story but dislike many of the characters. I like the book’s means of getting the story across to the reader but I dislike the Yorkshire accents everyone speaks in. 

This book just didn’t really fit in with me I am sure though that in a few years’ times this book will appeal to me. In fact the only thing that will not appeal is that whiney Colin. Oh my god please shut him up. But apart from that this book did OK. I can’t give it a good review for year seven though so I’m afraid all it can have is 63/100.        

After the First Death

This is the second time I’ve written a review for this book because my mum thought I didn’t understand the book. So now that it has been explained to me the parts that did not make sense to me before now adds to the general awfulness of the book. We have three main storytellers or four. It’s kinda hard to explain. 


Anyway the story focuses on three points of view during a terrorist hostage situation. The first is Miro the terrorist. I am supposed to feel pity towards him but after a while all I am thinking is

“Dude, get sniped”

He is just so sick in the head and his decisions and logic make me want to throw the book in the fire.

Then there was Kate, the bus driver. This girl is the only reason I did not throw this book into the fire. She acts like someone would in her situation and her logic is sound and most importantly she is actually well written. I can picture her very well in my mind. She is the only pro of this book.

And then we have Ben. The most pointless, useless annoying character, who is not supposed to be all of these things, I have ever read. He spends half the time he is given moaning about how he is afraid of his dad and the other half moaning about how this one random girl didn’t like him. He deserves that torture he had to endure. Then there was the sniper thing. The whole time I was thinking

“Please snipers just shoot the bad guys and end this book. It says that they go out in the open a lot. Just kill them. Please.”

There was also Ben’s dad who I give the same description as Ben. Just replace the word pointless with moronic.

4/100 for plot holes and Ben.                

The Hobbit

The Hobbit

This was one of the books in this challenge that was much more to my liking. Unfortunately my brand new game Skyrim (EPIC!) had arrived and a lot of my spare time was going into that. But I finished the book all the same and managed to enjoy it as normal. I really enjoy the sci fi and fantasy genre and this book was not a let down to its relations.

The story focuses on a group of fourteen, thirteen dwarves and a hobbit. The hobbit Bilbo Baggins is the hero of the story and discovers many things about himself and Middle Earth on his journey to the lonely mountain to claim the treasure of Smaug the last of the great dragons.

My favourite character in this story is Gollum. When he talks to himself and how he says it, he creeps you out to no end. He and Bilbo have a competition where they take turns to tell riddles and whoever cannot answer the others riddle first, loses.

All the characters in this book are brilliant the story is fantastic and the ending is well written. I hope everyone who reads the book enjoys it as much as I did 99.9/100             

Wild Card 1

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

This was a very hard book to read because everything was described at a very different pace to what I am used to. For example in many action scenes the author is describing the scene as if it is a poem. Another thing that made it hard to understand were the way the characters talked and expressed themselves, I had to reread many pages to even comprehend what was going on.

While I know that this book inspired many other stories such as the Hulk, the fact is, is that I couldn’t find that story in the jumble of words. But in the end I got the story out and thought it was really good. I am going to give it 59/100.        

Jay Writes - 

Luke chose to cash in the first of his wild cards rather than read I Capture The Castle.  I think this was a good choice - I love Dodie Smith's book but I am not an adventure-loving 12 year old boy.

We chose Jekyll and Hyde as a replacement because, as Luke observed above, this is one of the most influential horror stories we know.  From episodes of Scooby Doo to The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen and beyond, Luke's seen cartoons and films inspired by Jekyll and Hyde.  Reading the source material is a cool thing to have done.

Swallows and Amazons

I cannot say with all honesty that I was looking forward to reading this book. It was big, it was in that time where everyone is perfectly delightful and worst of all it had that thing where instead of writing tomorrow like a normal person they write to-morrow with doesn't make any SENSE! But as it turns out it wasn’t that bad. 

How were the characters? OK. How was the storyline? OK. How was the ending? OK. 

If someone asked me “Hey Luke can you sum up the quality of swallows and amazons in one word?” I would reply “Eh” The book overflows with mediocrity. Nothing is noticeably horrible yet nothing makes me fill with happiness or burst out laughing. 

This is the kind of book that you read when you just got nothing better to do. I hope that in future this book will mean more to me but for now it will just sit on my shelf until I lie on the floor groaning with boredom. 50/100.             

Carry On Jeeves

The Jeeves and Wooster series is a fantastic set of small stories written by PG Wodehouse about a rich man named Bertie Wooster and his new butler Jeeves and their experiences in New York and London. 

These stories are very entertaining and interesting. The character design is excellent, the story lines are great and the made up words that the author uses are really weird and yet very good. But while the made up words are funny they really have to said out loud in order to understand them. 

As well as that there is also the continuing joke that Jeeves always throws away one of the items of clothing that Bertie has. At first it was pretty funny but after that it got a little repetitive. 

Over all it is agood book with funny jokes and strange words but to really get the feel of the book you have to read it aloud. 79/100           

how to be topp

I found how to be topp:
stupid, insane, badly spelt, really not funny, boring, ridiculous, brainless, deficient, dense, dim, doltish, dopey, dull, dumb, foolish, half-baked, half-witted, idiotic, ill-advised, imbecilic, inane, indiscreet, insensate, irrelevant, laughable, ludicrous, meaningless, mindless, moronic, nonsensical, obtuse, pointless, puerile, rash, senseless, simpleminded, slow, sluggish, stolid, stupefied, thick, thick-headed, trivial, unintelligent, unthinking and moronic. 

I must thank thesaurus.com for the majority of these words.

I HATE THIS BOOK EVEN MORE THAN THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, AUTHOR? WHY DID YOU MAKE ME READ THIS? DO NOT READ THIS BOOK IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE!

 Ok, taking deep breaths. Listen people: this book is terrible! It tries to be funny but it isn’t. Curse It! The little rich brat telling the story cannot spell. The bad spelling is supposed to be a joke but when he does it I just think “?” All Molesworth does is say weird stuff about his posh school for boys and pretends he is a spaceman/cowboy/hero. What kind of a storyline is that? In order to even understand this book I would have to be in the upper class 5 generations ago.  Makes stupid jokes and has a horrible story line. For pure stupidity and suckiness this book is cursed with
0/100.   

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a series of short stories told from the point of Dr John Watson, Sherlock's friend and companion in his investigations.
I am very fond of these 'shorts.' Each one had a different storyline and is full of excitement. The formula is that someone comes to Sherlock Holmes with a problem and tells his story. Sherlock Holmes says 'of course,  will solve this,' goes off and does strange things that no one understands and at the end Holmes catches the killer/thief/criminal and explains to everyone in the room how he solved the mystery. My only criticism is that in some stories when he is catching the killer/thief and explains what he'd done, I didn't have a clue what he was talking about. That and in some stories I had to ask my mum what they meant when they said so and so or such and such.
My favourite story was The Speckled Band but that was just because I loved the killer's method.
A really good set of stories based on the phenomenal character of Sherlock Holmes. 77/100

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time

This is an interesting book because instead of having normal chapter numbers this book's chapters go up in prime numbers like this: Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 5, Chapter 7, Chapter 11 and so on.
This book is told by a 15 year old boy named Christopher who has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and hates touching people.  His mother dies in a hospital and he lives with his father. When he finds his neighbour's dog speared by a garden fork he decides to conduct a full investigation.
His father has other ideas and tells him to "Stay the f**k out of other people's business." So Christopher stops investigating. Then he talks to Mrs Alexander who sheds some interesting light on his mother's death. After that Christopher discovered that the person who killed the dog was   (not telling)     so he runs away from them and gets into a LOT of trouble.
This was a good book with a great storyline and a fantastic character design. I loved Christopher's way of seeing the world. This book earned a 99/100

Stormbreaker

The has got to be one of the best books for 12 year olds around. Certainly one of the best I've seen - and I've seen a lot. Stormbreaker has everything from teenage spies to deadly jellyfish. If you like books full of adventure and near death experiences READ THIS BOOK NOW. If you are reading this review stop reading, shut down the computer and pick up the book. This is the most important decision of your lifetime so choose carefully.
Will you
A. Shut down the computer and read the amazing and sinister story of teen spy Alex Rider and his quest to save the world
B. Read the rest of this review and then go and read the Alex Rider story of creepy scarred men and psychopath millionaires
C. Stop reading the review and go and play Scrabble with your family

If you chose A then Go! Read the story, your life will improve, HURRAY!
If you chose B then fine, enjoy your mediocre life/
If you chose C then get out. You have your short sad life so stop wasting it.Goodbye!

99/100 for awesomeness

The Singing Tree

The Singing Tree is a story about cousins Janski and Kate and their struggle to continue life on the Hungarian plains during the First World War. At the start of the book Janski is 15 years old and the book covers about 5 years of his life. He loves horses more than anything else and when his father leaves to join the war he is put in charge of the horses along with the rest of the farm.
While Janski is struggling with the problems of the farm, Kate is having troubles of her own. You don't find petticoats growing on trees, you know! She often surprises Janski as he is used to the little girl who loves riding her white horse Milky, whereas Kate is becoming a young woman.
Throughout this story they lock girls in barns, gain 6 Russian men as workers and adopt 7 German children.
While I am sure this is a good book for some people it's simply not the kind of book I like. It lacked action, adventure and humour.  I think it would have been better if Janski's love of horses had been used in a dramatic escape.  Since I'm very fond of books and even I found it rather dull I'm giving The Singing Tree 50 out of 100 because it lacks interest for your average 12 year old.

Skellig

WARNING - this review contains a spoiler

This is a story that focuses on a boy named Michael and how his life changes when he moves house to a place 2 bus rides away from his school.But the most important change in his life is that thing he finds in the garage covered in dead bluebottles and spider webs. What is this strange being asking for Chinese food? And why does it cough up bones and fur like the owls do? It'sup to Michael and his newly found friend Mina to discover the truth behind Skellig.
Wow, that is the most dramatic review I've written but the book really is that good. I love the references to evolution through the book even though it is themed around angels. (That was the spoiler)
I think this book has all of the requirements of a great book. 1. A good plot 2. Great character design 3. a fantastic conclusion. Oh, wait, it looks like I was wrong, it only has 2 out of the 3 requirements. (Guess which one it lacks) 88/100 for this book's fabulous writing and plot. (that leaves a 50/50 chances of you getting it!)

Moominsummer Madness

I'm going to start this review with the words Never Read This Book.
It's insane.
It's incomprehensible.
It's silly.
Not the nice, funny-cos-it's-so-weird kind of silly, the Oh-my-god-I-can't-make-sense-of-what-they're-saying kind of silly. Through the jumble of strange words I managed to pick our some sort of storyline in which a flood hits their home and so the family goes to live in a floating theatre. Then the family gets separated and the son and his girlfriend are arrested while the mother and father put on a play. Then they all meet up and go back home.
I think that this book is really to be read out loud to 4 or 5 year olds. One of the most negative points about this book is that when you read something you should not have to go online in order to find out who on earth these strange people are. After reading a few chapters I realised that there weren't going to be any hints about who the characters are so I was forced to go to their website and read their character summaries.
Due to its lack of sanity and incomprehensibility I'm giving it 29 out of 100.

Jay Writes
I love a bit of whimsy, but I'm with Luke on this one. Because this book is part way through a series, and the author gives no quarter to the uninitiated, he and I floundered about having no clue who anyone was, nor their relationship to one another. The book would have been immeasurably improved with a cast of characters - including illustrations - so newcomers to the Moomins would have a fighting chance. Thanks to a Canadian childhood I'd only ever heard of Moomins as illustrations on a friend's coffee mugs Ss I was as clueless as Luke. Ah well, one fewer book to read for the challenge!

The Tygrine Cat

The Tygrine cat is a fictional story written by Inbali Iserles about a cat named Mati and what happens when he meets the Cressida Cats of London. Mati comes from Egypt and know very little about his past. He can't even remember the name of his mother. All he knows is that he must learn the Three Pillars Of The Cat. Unfortunately he does not have much time to learn them because his mother's deadly enemies, the Cats of Sa, are determined to destroy him and take his unknown power.

Although this was told from the point of view of a cat, the cats all had very human traits like betrayal, suspicion, laughter and homesickness. It wasn't at all cutesy, unlike some cat things can be, nor any old puns about things being purrfect. The author treated the characters as people, which I liked.

This was a very good adventure story with action, mythological references and magic. Because I love Egyptian mythology I'm giving this book 87 out of 100.

The Story of Tracy Beaker

The Story of Tracy Beaker is based on events happening all over the country in, as Tracy calls them, dumping grounds (children's homes). The author of this book, Jacqueline Wilson, often writes about problems that affect children such as being left at children's homes, divorcing parents and moving to new places.

Tracy Beaker is a 10 year old girl who has an extra 10 years of attitude. She is waiting for her Hollywood movie star mum to pick her up in a limo and take her to a tropical island where she will swim with the dolphins and fly with the eagles. Unfortunately, until that happens she is stuck with Justine No Good Littlewood and everyone else in the dumping ground.

Because I loved the character of Tracy Beaker so much, and her opinion of the world, the humour in this book has gained it a 96 out of 100.

Jay writes -

This is my first Jacqueline Wilson and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I guess she is the Judy Blume of this generation, tacking issues and emotions affecting kids in a funny and realistic way. Tracy is a wonderful character. Much of the pathos comes from what she doesn't say - her Hollywood mum is really a young woman with an abusive partner and Tracy has no idea how to find her. Tracy's angry, destructive streak and her passionate creativity never let her slip into someone you pity. She'd be very hard to be friends with but probably worth it.
We both liked that Tracy 'never cries, just gets hayfever,' which happens to coincide with being upset.

Just William

Just Williams is an interesting set of stories written by Richmal Crompton about the 11 year old boy William Brown and his adventures in his small village in the country. He and his group of friends, the Outlaws do many things from kidnapping kids to setting up marriages.

I found the book very humorous and witty. The plots were interesting and lifelike. Williams behaves like lots of young boys do: challenging every rule and finding loopholes for everything.

A good classic LOL book. Because of Richmal Crompton's excellent writing I'm giving this 90 out of 100