Follow Friday #77

Feature and Follow Friday is a weekly event hosted by Parajunkee & Alison of Alison Can Read.

The question this week is:

Question of the Week: How many books have you got on your TBR list? - Suggested by Obsessive Compulsive Reader

The above picture shows the bulk of my unread books. I do have my unread stand alones on a separate shelf though. 


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Book Review #551 - The Death Cure (The Maze Runner #3) by James Dashner

The Trials are over. WICKED is planning to restore the survivors'

 

memories and complete the final cure for the Flare.

But Thomas has already remembered more than they think. And he 

knows WICKED can't be trusted...

The time for lies is over. But the truth is more dangerous than Thomas could ever imagine. Will anyone survive the Death Cure?

My Rating: 3.5/5

This is the third and final book in the Maze Runner trilogy. It is the sequel to The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials. 

Whilst I didn't like this book as much as The Maze Runner, it was significantly better than The Scorch Trials and The Kill Order. 

With a series like this - where the reader knows as much about the plot as the characters who have had their memories wiped, a lot depends on the last book. We want answers and for the most part we got them but there were still significant holes. 

There was a significant death about 250 pages in but I found that it didn't affect me as much as it should have because I don't have much of a connection with any of them. This is because after 3 books I still don't know very much about them. 

The most under-developed characters were Teresa and Brenda and at times they were both just plain annoying. James Dashner definitely creates better males better than he does females. 

Teresa and Brenda's relationships with Thomas was just plain weird and awkward. 

The way the series ends leaves the door open for a possible sequel - which published I would more than likely read. 

This book was absolutely action packed and because of the short chapters I breezed through it very quickly. 

Book Review #550 - Arkarnae (The Medoran Chronicles #1) by Lynette Noni

With just one step, sixteen-year-old Alexandra Jennings's world changes--literally.

Dreading her first day at a new school, Alex is stunned when she walks through a doorway and finds herself stranded in Medora, a fantasy world full of impossibilities. Desperate to return home, she learns that only a man named Professor Marselle can help her... but he's missing.

While waiting for him to reappear, Alex attends Akarnae Academy, Medora's boarding school for teenagers with extraordinary gifts. She soon starts to enjoy her bizarre new world and the friends who embrace her as one of their own, but strange things are happening at Akarnae, and Alex can't ignore her fear that something unexpected... something sinister... is looming.

An unwilling pawn in a deadly game, Alex's shoulders bear the crushing weight of an entire race's survival. Only she can save the Medorans, but what if doing so prevents her from ever returning home?

Will Alex risk her entire world--and maybe even her life--to save Medora?

My Rating: 3/5

I received this book for review from Simon and Schuster Australia. This is the first of five proposed books in the Medoran Chronicles. 

The perfect way to describe this book would be a combination of Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia. 

Alex, the protagonist was easy to relate to and the secondary characters like Jordan, Bear and DC had significant depth to them unlike most other YA literature. 

The pacing of this book was a little unpredictable. At times I felt like I could read it non-stop and others I was just waiting for something to happen. 

I loved the Hogwarts like setting of the Akarnae Academy especially the library which was constantly full of surprises. 

The classes at the school and the teachers were all interesting but definitely could have been explored deeper. 

It was also very interesting and somewhat refreshing to read a book where there was absolutely no romance. 

Overall, this was a very compelling and enchanting read and I am looking forward to reading the sequel Raelia.