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

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.