I LOVE how many books have trailers now! So, instead of me summarizing this book, you guys can watch the uber-creepy trailer, and hear the author talk about it, then I'll give my review:







This book was delightfully disturbing. It was The Hunger Games, meets The Maze Runner. I found myself on the edge of my seat the whole time I was reading it. It's oh-so-very creepy. Which is my only warning.

This book was surprisingly clean when it comes to language. After all, a bunch of teenage boys in a prison that the cover describes as worse than hell probably wouldn't have the best language, but the swearing wasn't extreme at all. Mind you, that doesn't mean there wasn't any swearing, but it didn't bother me too much, and I'm quite sensitive to it.

This book may end up giving me nightmares, but it was worth it. I love books with a good mystery. Those of you who have read The Hunger Games do you remember the shock at near the end of the game, when there were those creatures that weren't just creatures? (I'm trying to be vague to avoid spoilers) Well, there's something similar to that in this book.

Ooh. I still have the chills. I think the cover they show in the trailer is for the UK version, because my ARC has a different cover, and it doesn't come out until Tuesday the 27th.

If you don't mind horror-books (and I hadn't even thought of this as a horror book until the trailer told me it was, I thought it was just more mystery/sci-fi/paranormal, but now I can see that it is a horror book), and you liked The Maze Runner, and you're okay with characters that are FAR too young to be dealing with that kind of stuff, then check out Lockdown: Escape From Furnace

Sounds like a confusing review? I'll summarize:

This book is creepy, but oh-so-very good.

I'm very interested to see if others found it as good as I did. If you decide to read it, let me know if you liked it, or if it was too disturbing for you. Because I think of myself as a very picky/sensitive reader, and yet I could handle it.

~Enna Isilee

Oh. To give you an idea of how picky/sensitive I am: HP & The Prisoner of Azkaban gave me nightmares.

A QUESTION ON BOOK-BUYING ETHICS:
I just found out that the next two books in this series are already available in the UK. Does anyone know if there is any taboo about buying a book from another country before it comes out in the USA? I can't see why that would be an issue, can you?

All right, now I read a ton of books that I don't ever finish for various reasons, and I never review them on this blog. But that's not fair! Maybe you guys want to read them, or want a warning not to read them. Either way, I'm going to start posting about books I didn't finish. I won't go into a ton of detail, but here are some:

There are dozens, probably hundreds of books written as if the main character were writing it all themselves in a journal. This opens up a lot of doors.

1) we can see more deeply into the characters mind.
This is great if you have a strong character. But if your character has annoying flaws that the author didn't mean to put in, then getting to know the inner workings of their mind can be downright painful.

2) it opens up a chance for bias.
I love this, actually. When you have a hero or heroine writing about all these things that are happening to them, I like taking a step back and thinking, "Now, how might someone else see it? Is this person skewing things to fit their own agenda?" Many authors don't even mean to open this door, but I love to peek through it.

3) Full emmersion into the world
When you're reading someone's journal, you aren't just being told "The sky is blue." You're being told, "The sky is blue and it makes me think of rainbows and ponies." Similar to #1, this can be great if you've created a believable world. If an omnipotent narrator were to tell me "John had to be careful of breathing too much, as too much carbon dioxide in the air would cause the room to spontaneously combust." Then I might go, seriously? But if I'm hearing it from John's perspection, something like, "My lungs screamed for more air, but I knew that just the tinyest unbalance in the atmosphere of the room would send me to a fiery oblivion," then I'd be thinking, "How cool is that?!"

Looking through the eyes of a character makes me feel more at home and involved in a fictional world. But I guess that all goes back to the famous(or infamous) show, don't tell.



With all that said, I wouldn't say that I prefer journal-style books. Because sometimes I don't. Especially the ones where they're running around doing all this crazy stuff, and I'm left thinking "How in the world are you having time to write this all down?!" But they do have their perks.

What about you? What doors do 1st person journal novels open for you? Do you have some favorites? Some that you detest(please be nice!)? Here are some I know:

Book of a Thousand Days, Shannon Hale (favorite book of all time, tied with Enna Burning)
The Pendragon series, DJ MacHale (Childhood favorite series)

And, discuss.

Here we have a treat! Instead of me telling you about the book, here's a cool 1 minute trailer all about it!






Sounds pretty cool eh? And it was!

We don't focus too much on WWI in our history books, rather we talk about WWII, so this was very refreshing. I found the idea of giant war machines and fabricated monsters COMPLETELY ludicrous for 1914, but absolutely fascinating.

There is absolutely no swearing in this book! Hurrah! It is one of the squeaky-cleanest books I've ever read! I was really nervous that it would be more like Westerfeld's Midnighters series, which is not squeaky clean, but it wasn't!

This book was very gripping, I wanted to know what was going to happen, and I wanted a ton of detail on how in the world they made all these creations.



But,



horror of horrors,



IT'S A SERIES!!!! WITH A TOTAL CLIFFHANGER ENDING!!!

Unfortunately, it isn't a cliffhanger that makes you go "Oh my gosh I can't wait for the next book!" It's a cliffhanger that makes you go, "Seriously? You couldn't have told us that in this book?!" So... I am a little frustrated by that.

And it actually took a really long time for the two main characters to meet. I wanted them to meet and start getting really involved in the war. It didn't happen that way, they didn't meet until the last 100 pages or so. But it's all set up so that the next book will really be them fighting side by side. So I'm really excited.

All in all I really enjoyed it, it's a definite Squeaky Book.

The sequel Behemoth comes out in October 2010. Hopefully I can grab an ARC, because I have very high hopes for it.

~Enna Isilee

Should we have a dumroll? Suspensful music? Oh! I know! Why don't we have Bear present the award?

All right! He's all set. I had 244 entries, so I asked each of my roomates to pick a number between 1-244, and then averaged all of their numbers. They chose 200, 37, 123, and 72, which equals 432. 432/4 = 108

Hooray for #108!
Cate from Sparrow reviews!!!

So, just e-mail me your address and I'll ship off your copy of Ice. If I haven't heard from you by Wednesday the 21st, then I have to pick a new winner.

Thanks for everyone who participated. Keep an eye out for even more contests. *wink wink*

~Enna Isilee