Tag: survival

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

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‘And a man without dreams is just a meaty machine with a broken gauge.’ – Cherie Dimaline, The Marrow Thieves

Are you looking for book recommendations? Ask a librarian! My latest read came courtesy of one of our Youth Services Librarians. The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline tells the story of the indigenous people of North America and their struggle to survive in a futuristic climate-change ravaged world.

People on Earth have lost the ability to dream, sending them all to madness. Desperate to find a solution, the government looks into who is still able to dream. They discover that the only people who can dream are North America’s Indigenous people. Wanting to understand why, the government looks for a cure, finding that the Indigenous people’s bone marrow holds the ability to save the dreamless. In order to get the marrow though, the donors must die. Schools are established across the country with recruiters sent out to round up the Indigenous people to harvest their marrow. This has far-reaching repercussions for all Indigenous people. On the run, Frenchie yearns to find his family, even though he fears they are lost to him. He and his travel family spend years struggling to survive as they make their way up north, looking for friends and family. Their search for refuge is dangerous, but may lead to joyous reunions.

I was left wanting more from this book. I wanted more history of the character, of the government, what exactly is happening to the people that are taken, and how/why the lands were so ravaged and destroyed. Luckily, The Marrow Thieves is the first in a series AND the second book, Hunting by Stars, is out! I’m hoping this second book will give me the answers to my questions from the first book. Nevertheless, I’m glad I decided to read The Marrow Thieves – it feels like a book that should be required reading.

‘Sometimes you risk everything for a life worth living, even if you’re not the one that’ll be alive to live it.’ – Cherie Dimaline, The Marrow Thieves

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

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“For the falling star and the rising ape to meet, the former must first be debased. No myth can remain terrifying when you’ve seen it broken and beaten, rendered as toothless as an old crone.” – The Salt Grows Heavy, Cassandra Khaw

In an attempt to read more broadly, I picked up The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw, a 2023 horror novella. This novella is a somewhat sequel to Khaw’s short story, And In Our Daughters, We Find a Voice, which can be found printed at the end of this novella and also online. While it isn’t necessary to read the short story first, it did provide background to one of the main characters in the novella that I appreciated.

Let’s get into The Salt Grows Heavy!

While I wouldn’t typically reach for horror, the first paragraph on the inside cover pulled me in: “You may think you know how the fairy tale goes: a mermaid comes to shore and weds the price. But what the fables forget is that mermaids have teeth. And now, her daughters have devoured the kingdom and burned it to ashes.” I grew up adoring The Little Mermaid, but as an adult, looking into the classic tales and different myths surrounding mermaids has consumed my interest. Seeing this novella as a twisted version of The Little Mermaid, I decided to give it a read.

The Salt Grows Heavy is dark and twisted, full of bloodshed and gore. At the core of this novella lives a mermaid and a plague doctor. The mermaid’s children are cannibals – the story begins with her daughters having massacred the entire kingdom, hungering for more. Amidst the carnage lies their father, the prince. The mermaid isn’t sad, as he was incredibly cruel to her, keeping her locked away and denying her true nature. In the aftermath of the massacre, the mermaid teams up with the plague doctor, a nonbinary, mysterious, and gender-free calming influence. The two leave the ravaged kingdom behind, searching for something unsure. On the run, they stumble upon a mysterious village deep in the snowy forest full of ageless children and the ‘saints’ who control them.

I don’t know what I was expecting in this novella, but it far exceeded whatever I was. The language is flowery, the words chosen are long (and sometimes required me to look up the definition of), and the fairytale is messy and twisted. Unexpectedly, this novella also sports romance! The mermaid and plague doctor are loyal to each other, willing to die if needed. I was a tad confused why the mermaid cared so much as her entire character rebels against such close bonds. Seeing their relationship change from beginning to end was intriguing nevertheless. The plague doctor was compelling, sympathetic, and blessedly nonbinary. Given this was also a short novella, I enjoyed how quickly the read went. Add in the bonus of a twisted fairy tale and I’m certainly on the hunt for other similar titles!

The Arctic Fury by Greer Macallister

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“Women can do far more than the narrow lens of society deems fitting. I suspect there is nothing, literally nothing, of which women are not capable.”
― Greer Macallister, The Arctic Fury

Greer Macallister is an author who frequently pops up in review journals, but admittedly an author that I have never read. When I saw her latest book, The Arctic Fury, on the shelves, I decided to give it a try. The premise was fascinating: a group of women explorers heads to the Arctic in search of missing men. Yes please.

1855 – Lady Jane Franklin is gathering women to travel to the Arctic to find the ships of her husband’s lost expedition. Virginia Reeve has been summoned by her with the enticing offer to lead these dozen women. Every other expedition she has sent has failed. At her wit’s end, Lady Franklin has decided to send all women and to let the women, specifically Virginia, make all the decisions. The catch: if the women fail, she will deny any knowledge of said expedition. If they succeed, she will pay handsomely. The women just need to bring back Lady Franklin’s husband if alive, and if not, they should bring back word of what they have discovered.

Virginia Reeve believes she knows why she has chosen, all thanks to an article written by a woman journalist. She has led over 400 people to safety across the west, but this voyage will be her first trip to the Arctic. All preparations for the journey have been made by/through Lady Franklin’s envoy, Brooks. Virginia is allowed to select a handful of women to round out the crew selected by Lady Franklin herself. When the women meet up to start their expedition, none of them have any idea what awaits them on the ice.

This story is told through flashbacks. In present, Virginia is on trial for one count of kidnapping and murder. Through flashbacks, readers learn more about the women’s perilous trek north, what led Virginia to lead this mission, as well as a look into various expedition members’ backgrounds. I found some of the sections to be dull, while others had me on edge wondering what would happen next. Overall, I enjoyed this book and can’t wait to see what the author writes next.

This book is also available in the following format:

‘Something Wilder’ by Christina Lauren

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‘Just because thoughts are loud or constant doesn’t mean they’re right.’ – Christina Lauren, Something Wilder

Something Wilder by Christina Lauren is the newest novel by authors Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings. This novel is full of laughter, romance, wilderness, and the hunt for treasure.

Lily Wilder grew up in the shadow of her father Duke Wilder. Duke was a notorious treasure hunter which sadly made him an absentee father. Lily’s mother left when she was young, leaving her to grow up with her father and her uncle on Wilder Ranch, a property owned by her uncle. After her uncle passed away, her father took control of the ranch, something he detested. He repeatedly left the ranch to go exploring with Lily to handle the day-to-day running of the ranch. Duke’s constant explorations left little money, so running the ranch was what Lily had to do to make money to survive. She grew to detest the treasure hunts that pulled her dad away.

Now that she’s older, Lily uses Duke’s hand-drawn maps to lead tourists on fake treasure hunts through the red rock canyons of Utah. Lily would love nothing more than to stop doing these tourist trips, but sadly they are the main way she makes money. She only makes enough money to pay the bills, but nowhere near enough to buy back Wilder Ranch which her father sold years ago. The summer Duke sold Wilder Ranch was also the summer that the man she loved left her and never contacted her again. He broke her, something that Lily swears she will never let happen again.

Imagine Lily’s surprise when her lost love shows up for a treasure hunt with a group of his friends. Her emotions run ragged. Once Leo Grady gets over his shock of seeing Lily in person again, he decides that he is ready to leave the past behind and reconnect with Lily. She however is only interested in keeping their relationship professional – it’s her business after all to make sure they all stay safe on the trip.

Not long into their hunt, disaster strikes, leaving the group scrambling to figure out what to do next. The biggest question: is the legend of the hidden treasure that Duke spent his life searching for actually true? In order to find the truth, Lily and Leo must work through their past. They must decide how much of themselves they are willing to risk.

This book is also available in the following formats:

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

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Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys is a young adult historical fiction book that was originally published in 2011. It is the first book written by author Ruta Sepetys that was turned into the 2018 movie ‘Ashes in the Snow‘. Ruta Sepetys writes primarily young adult historical fiction with some romance twists.

Between Shades of Gray tells the story of fifteen-year-old Lina. In 1941, Lina lives with her younger brother Jonas and both of her parents in Lithuania. Everything changes for the family one night with they are pulled from their home in Lithuania by Soviet guards. Separated at a train station, the family doesn’t know where they will end up. Eventually they are sent to Siberia where Lina learns that her father has been sentenced to death in a prison camp. Lina, Jonas, and their mother have to fight for their lives as they struggle to keep their family together. This book tells only one story of a Lithuanian family, but it serves as a catalyst for readers to start their own research into the thousands of families that were affected by this in the 1940s.

This book is also available in the following formats:

After the Flood by Kassandra Montag

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I picked up this book to read because the cover was relaxing and the lines swirling over it looked like map lines. It turns out that I was right! Those are map lines after all and they turn out to be a key element in this book.

After the Flood by Kassandra Montag is set over a hundred years into a dystopian future where rising flood waters have crept up and overtaken the continents. This slow rise of water has obliterated and destroyed the mountaintops and known landscape and has, as a result, left in its place deep wide expanses of open water.

Myra is angry. Why is she angry? Her husband Jacob abandoned her while she was pregnant with their daughter Pearl. To top it off, he took their oldest daughter Row with him when he took off. Myra and Pearl are travelling from island to island on Bird, the boat that Myra’s grandfather made in the attic of their house before he died. Surviving by fishing and trading at the islands they visit, Myra is constantly on the lookout for any information about Row and Jacob.

Their life may be tranquil and at an even keel, but Myra knows that this peace can be interrupted at a moment’s notice. A bad wave, an interaction with violent people and breeding ships, or a fish shortage could all spell disaster for the pair. While stopped at an island to trade, Myra learns that Row may in fact still be alive. This chance encounter leads her to pack up Pearl, search for help, and start the dangerous journey to The Valley. Far up north, the trek to The Valley will be full of breeding ships and savage people looking to steal anything they can and willing to take over any unsuspecting ships. Add in the fact that The Valley might be going through an epidemic and Myra needs to get there as soon as she can to save Row.

On their way to The Valley, Myra and Pearl are hit with obstruction after obstruction with death and strangers littering their path. They eventually end up on board the boat, Sedna. This boat couldn’t be more different than Bird: Sedna has a fully able crew and seemingly all the supplies they could ever need (food, ammo, weapons, building/boat materials). Myra slowly discovers that in order to make it to Row and rescue her, she will have to betray and deceive everyone around her. Is Myra willing to sacrifice Pearl in order to save Row? Is Row even there? Could this all be for nothing? Myra has to decide what she’s willing to do to find out the truth.

This book is also available in the following format:

Freefall by Jessica Barry

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I’m an anxious flyer. The whole process terrifies me. To keep myself calm, I usually avoid fiction that has anything to do with planes or crashes. Jessica Barry’s novel, Freefall, was a notable exception as from the very beginning, readers know that the main character survived! A novel involving a plane crash with a positive outcome? Yes please!

Freefall by Jessica Barry is a psychological thriller following the lives of Maggie Carpenter and her daughter Allison. Maggie lives in Owl Creek, Maine. At home one day, Maggie isn’t surprised to see a police officer at her front door, given that he’s the husband of one of her best friends. What he has to say, however, shocks her to her core. Allison is dead. She died in a private plane crash in the mountains in Colorado. People keep telling Maggie that Allison’s death was a terrible accident, but she finds that hard to believe. Allison has always been a survivor. Looking for answers, Maggie digs deep into Allison’s life and the situation that led to her death. Maggie lost touch with her daughter over two years ago, but she hopes that Allison’s life hasn’t changed that much since then. Her research pulls up startling revelations that Maggie isn’t prepared to know, but what she finds gives her more hope that Allison is alive. Maggie must do everything she can to find Allison, even if that means looking through every detail of her daughter’s life.

While Maggie learns more about Allison, Allison herself is struggling to survive. She has survived the plane crash and is wounded. Hiking through the mountains, Allison is running from her past. As she fights her way to freedom and struggles to survive in the wilderness, Allison has to come to terms with the mess her life has become. She has lost her perfect fiancé and the luxurious way of life to which she has become accustomed.  As she trudges through the forest looking through any signs of civilization, Allison frequently flashes back to previous moments in her life. Engaged to wealthy pharmaceutical CEO Ben Gardner, Allison thought she had it all. How did she end up with so many dark secrets? How did she end up willing to leave it all behind? How will she survive? What if the people after her get to her mother? Allison must make it back to her mother in time. Hoping against all hope that Maggie is safe, Allison fights to get to Maine no matter the consequences.

This book is told from both Maggie and Allison’s perspectives giving readers a glimpse into how far a mother and daughter are willing to go when the other is in danger. Even though they are separated by distance and their relationship is strained, both Maggie and Allison feel a tug connecting them as each works to protect and keep the other from coming to any harm.

Also I forgot to mention that Maggie is a retired librarian! How cool is that?? Read this book and let me know what you think of it in the comments below.

This book is also available in the following formats:

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

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the 5th waveA brand new movie to hit the theaters recently is The 5th Wave. This movie is one of many young adult books that have been made into movies with producers and directors hoping to score big with both young adult readers and fans of somewhat dystopic literature. In order to fully prepare myself for the movie, I decided to dive into the book to see if I liked it.

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey is the first book in a trilogy (the second book is The Infinite Sea, but the third book, The Last Star, won’t be released until May 24, 2016!). The 5th Wave concentrates on the life of Cassie Sullivan, a teenage girl living with her mother, father, and brother when things start to change. While she’s in school, everything goes dark. All the lights go out and everything electronic stops working. Looking up into the sky, they see a giant ship. An alien invasion has begun.

The Earth is quickly decimated by the alien invasion. Cassie realizes that everything is happening in waves, the largest of which is when a plague is unleashed killing the majority of the world’s population, including her mother. Leaving their home, Cassie, her brother, and father are forced to rely on each other. When further tragedy strikes, Cassie is left to rescue her brother and to keep her promise. The problem is, she has no idea where he might be, only a vague idea that he could be at an army base. On her way to rescue him, Cassie is forced to confront the idea that the aliens may have been living amongst the human population for years and that the very person she has come to trust most could actually be an alien.

I found this book to be extremely intriguing because alongside Cassie’s story, Yancey designates different sections to other characters, so you are able to see how the invasion affects people besides Cassie as well. This adds depth to the book, which I really enjoyed. Check out this book or see the movie and let me know what you think!

The Maze Runner

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I have a love/hate relationship with movies that are based on books. Sometimes the movies are well put together and follow the plot lines and character development of the book almost perfectly. Other times, I can tell just by the preview that the movie has completely gone off the rails and does not follow the book. Depending on how attached I am to the book, I might be able to let go of the differences in the movie, but if I feel any deep connections to the book, I pity the people next to me in the theater because I will point out how the two differ. Thankfully, I have found a few book-based movies that have changes that enhance the book or even make more logical sense than the world created in the book.

With the recent upswing in popularity of post-apocalyptic dystopian literature, especially those marketed towards young adults, movie producers have seemingly been turning to these novels as fool-proof ways to draw people into the theaters. (Case in point: The Hunger Games movies based on books by Suzanne Collins, as well as the Divergent movies based on books by Veronica Roth.) A similar post-apocalyptic dystopian book/movie pair just made it to the top of my to-be-read/to-be-watched list and I must say that I actually enjoyed the two.

the maze runnerThis pairing is the book, The Maze Runner written by James Dashner published in 2009, as compared to the movie The Maze Runner released in 2014 by Twentieth Century Fox.

In the book, Dashner begins the story of the Maze by introducing Thomas, the newest Greenie who wakes up in the bottom of the Box not knowing anything about himself, not even his name. He is greeted by the other boys, the Gladers, and shown around his new home, the Glade, a large expanse of land surrounded and enclosed in huge stone walls. Each boy has to pull his own weight in order for them all to survive, leaving them all with jobs to make their enclosed community run smoothly.

As Thomas soon learns, the Gladers are sure of only a few things: every morning the stone doors open, every night the doors close, and you do not want to be stuck in the maze at night because that is when the Grievers, a weird mechanical, bulbous type of monster that, if they corner you, can sting you and make you go through the Changing, come out. Every night after the doors close, the maze changes, making it even harder for the boys as solving the maze is the only way they can escape. Every thirty days a new Greenie is delivered in the Box. These things have been consistent since the first group of boys woke up in the maze over two years ago. Until Thomas shows up… Then everything changes.

the maze runner dvdThe movie version deviates from the plot of the book, but in a good way, in a necessary cinematic way. Some of the plot points Dashner makes in the book would have been difficult and a little far-fetched to allow for on-screen time, but at the same time, the exclusion of those significant details changed the plot from what Dashner wrote in the book. (For example, the exclusion of the Cliff, the abyss that is mentioned throughout the book, allowed the movie producers to instead dive more into the mechanics of the Grievers and the interlocking technology aspects that WCKD, also known as the Creators, used to control the boys.) Many other changes were done to enhance the book, but the overall themes of the book are still present within the movie.

All in all, the movie allows viewers who have read the book a better understanding of the workings of the boys’ minds, to see in better detail the immensity and confusion of the maze, and the destruction that the Grievers, and therefore the Creators, run the boys through on a day-to-day basis.

In my opinion, the movie version did not detract from the book, but instead adds a necessary level of cinematic pop to keep viewers engaged in the Gladers’ lives and their struggle to get free.

The Maze Runner is also available as an e-book, an e-audiobook, a playaway audiobook, and a cd audiobook.