The Fault in Our Stars

Author: John Green

Genre: Young Adult, Tragicomedy

Rating: A

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

This book should come with a warning label. When you read the first couple pages or the back of the cover it makes you think that it's going to be this dark comedy about kids with cancer. Maybe even a bit romantic, but not overly depressing. It has a very "I'm a normal person despite my cancer" feel to it at first - I mean, heck, protagonist Hazel Grace Lancaster complains about missing an America's Next Top Model marathon in order to go to her support group in almost the first chapter (possibly even the first chapter). This book sucks you in and makes you think it's going to be light and funny and dark, only to completely fuck with you. The Fault in Our Stars should come with a warning label, so here it is: this is a book about kids with cancer. Books about kids with cancer are dark and depressing, no matter how light and humourous they might present themselves.

Hazel Grace Lancaster is a girl with cancer. She is sixteen and has been living with it for a long time now - and will continue to do so thanks to this magic, fictional drug that she's on. Weekly her parents force her to go to a support group for kids with cancer, where she meets the handsome and charming Augustus Waters. Gus is seventeen, in remission, and very smitten with Hazel. This is the story of them, and it you think it's going to end badly you'd be right.

There is a lot to Fault, at least in terms of the bask plot, that is predictable. You know they're going to fall in love, you know it's going to end tragically. I mean, the book is about kids with cancer and is named from a Shakespearean quote. There's no other way it could end. There's still mystery though - I spent half the book trying to guess which one of them would die, or if it would be both, or if it would be one and one of their friends, or a whole splatter of kids with cancer dying, or if one of the non-cancerous characters would die, or what. The boon itself isn't overly postmodern, but Hazel and Gus spend a lot of time discussing a book that, based on their descriptions, is postmodern, making you wonder if perhaps Fault is going to end like the fictional book within it - that is just stop mid sentence. I'm not going to tell you if it does or not, I'll let you suffer.

Despite being about kids this book is very adult. It meshes the adult world that its heroes have been forced into with the teenage world that they're clinging to amazingly well - alongside discussions of postmodernism and life and death they're also playing video games and reading ridiculous video game based novels and lamenting about heartbreak in a way that only teenagers can do. This is a depressing book, but it's also a light and funny one. It's complicated, but it's also very light.

A friend and I have this habit, however unintentionally, of recommending to each other the saddest and most depressing books that we've read. When I finished reading Fault and had wiped my tears away I instantly thought that I had to lend this book to her. If I spent half of it trying to guess what was going to happen and how it was going to end I spent the other half balling my eyes out. By the final chapters I was a mess of tears and snot, but I didn't want to put the book down long enough to blow m nose and dry my eyes because I had to know what was going to happen next. This book completely took hold of me and made my heart wrench. I felt as though I knew Hazel and August and had grown deeply attached to them. And really, that's exactly what a boom should be like.

Just a side note, the quote at the top if the page is from Act 1, Scene 2 of Julius Caesar, and is where Green got the title for the novel.

The Warrior Heir

Author: Cinda Williams Chima

Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult

Rating: C+

This book actually took me two tries to get through; the first time I sat down to read it I didn’t get to the second chapter before giving up.  Now having actually read through the whole thing (a number of years later), I’m not entirely sure if my first impression was right or not.  The world that Chima creates is an interesting one, but I couldn’t help but feel as though she was withholding information the entire time.  Granted, authors are always withholding information, but in The Warrior Heir it’s done in a way that’s more annoying than intriguing.

The Warrior Heir follows fifteen-year-old Jack Swift, who for much of his life appeared to be an unremarkable boy.  Then one day he forgets to take his medicine and his life drastically changes; while at soccer tryouts he unleashes a power that he never knew he had, then his aunt shows up and takes him on a trip to retrieve some magic sword…. From there Jack learns that he’s a part of an underground society of magical people, the Weirland.  He is a warrior, a pawn in the battle between wizards, and is expected to compete in a fight to the death with another warrior; the house to whom the warrior belongs to gets to have control over all the Weirland.

In general, I enjoyed this story.  There were a lot of elements to it that I found to be really intriguing and I did really get into the characters.  At the same time, I disliked the way that information was presented, and the fact that so much of it was provided in a taunting manner.  I like reading works set in vastly detailed worlds, but in The Warrior Heir I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that Chima had half assed the creation of a detailed world.  A lot of terminology is thrown at the readers, and it’s stated that there’s a lot of history behind the Wierland, but I found that the attempts to develop it just left me confused.  This is just another one of those books that left me wanting more from it instead of more of it.