It's one of the best and most quoted opening lines in world literature: "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." The line is from Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, and not only does it grab readers and pull them into the story (just try not being curious about what happens to poor Gregor next), it establishes the work's dominant theme: that we can become so alienated from our true selves that we turn into someone, or something, else. In Gregor Samsa's case, a boring job, dreary social life, and a bullying father have made him feel so much like an insect that he literally transforms into a bug.
The story forces readers to consider some troubling questions. Can we ever truly know who we are? Will we always look and feel the way we do today? What if we woke up one morning and discovered everything we thought about ourselves and the world were proven to be an illusion?
Though the five novels featured in this edition of Hardly Reads don't contain any man-sized bugs (promise), they do take readers deep into the territories of alienated souls, swapped identities, secret destinies and troubling conspiracies. In these stories, nothing is as it first seems, and you may want to think twice about looking in your bedside mirror after putting the book down.
The story forces readers to consider some troubling questions. Can we ever truly know who we are? Will we always look and feel the way we do today? What if we woke up one morning and discovered everything we thought about ourselves and the world were proven to be an illusion?
Though the five novels featured in this edition of Hardly Reads don't contain any man-sized bugs (promise), they do take readers deep into the territories of alienated souls, swapped identities, secret destinies and troubling conspiracies. In these stories, nothing is as it first seems, and you may want to think twice about looking in your bedside mirror after putting the book down.
THOSE THAT WAKE
by Jesse Karp
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Thomas Allen)
Teenager Laura Westlake feels like she's stuck in the worst morning ever after her vacationing parents forget to send her a wake-up call and she shows up late for an important interview for a summer internship and doesn't get the position. Calls to her parents' hotel room go unanswered and Laura finds her favourite mug mysteriously cracked down the middle.
Can things get worse? Oh yeah. When Laura does finally get through to her parents, they both claim not to know who she is. Furthermore, no one at her school knows who she is either and her name is not in any of the school records. Laura, it seems, has been erased from her own life. Cast out of her home and with no official identity, Laura luckily befriends Mal, a tough amateur fighter, whose identity was also erased after his brother went missing. Together the two reluctant sleuths find themselves investigating a mysterious corporate conspiracy whose downtown headquarters, a mysterious glass skyscraper occupied by a single man in a business suit, cannot be seen by people passing the structure on the street.
Author Jesse Karp uses this dramatic sci-fi premise (the novel takes place in the near and very scary future), to expose the ways that corporations, governments, and the media can conspire to reduce citizens to zombie-like consumers. In Laura and Mal's world, people are constantly distracted by their hand-held devices and TV and computer screens, hypnotized by constant advertisements that anticipate their every need, oblivious to the real world and real people.
Actually, that doesn't sound very futuristic at all, does it?
by Jesse Karp
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Thomas Allen)
Teenager Laura Westlake feels like she's stuck in the worst morning ever after her vacationing parents forget to send her a wake-up call and she shows up late for an important interview for a summer internship and doesn't get the position. Calls to her parents' hotel room go unanswered and Laura finds her favourite mug mysteriously cracked down the middle.
Can things get worse? Oh yeah. When Laura does finally get through to her parents, they both claim not to know who she is. Furthermore, no one at her school knows who she is either and her name is not in any of the school records. Laura, it seems, has been erased from her own life. Cast out of her home and with no official identity, Laura luckily befriends Mal, a tough amateur fighter, whose identity was also erased after his brother went missing. Together the two reluctant sleuths find themselves investigating a mysterious corporate conspiracy whose downtown headquarters, a mysterious glass skyscraper occupied by a single man in a business suit, cannot be seen by people passing the structure on the street.
Author Jesse Karp uses this dramatic sci-fi premise (the novel takes place in the near and very scary future), to expose the ways that corporations, governments, and the media can conspire to reduce citizens to zombie-like consumers. In Laura and Mal's world, people are constantly distracted by their hand-held devices and TV and computer screens, hypnotized by constant advertisements that anticipate their every need, oblivious to the real world and real people.
Actually, that doesn't sound very futuristic at all, does it?
THE GATHERING
by Kelley Armstrong
(Doubleday)
Readers are probably familiar with the name Kelley Armstrong from her bestselling and seriously addictive Darkest Powers trilogy (The Summoning, The Awakening, The Reckoning) and her various supernatural series for adults. Armstrong is back again with The Gathering, the first novel in a new trilogy. As the title suggests, the story brings together the key players in a drama that unfolds in a strange village on Vancouver Island called Salmon Creek. Not only can the village not be found on most maps, all of the buildings, houses and properties are owned by a single pharmaceutical corporation that also employs the village's citizens.
No one's complaining, though, certainly not Maya Delaney, the adopted native-American teenager who narrates the novel. Life is pretty good in Salmon Creek. Everyone knows each other, the kids go to a small, well-funded school and the village is in the middle of a massive private nature reserve overseen by Maya's dad, who encourages his daughter's strange talent for healing the wounded and orphaned animals he occasionally brings home.
There are a few dark clouds massing on the horizon, including the death of Maya's best friend, a competitive swimmer who drowned in the nearby lake on a calm, summer morning. There's also a nosy reporter asking questions about the village's top-secret medical research facility, as well as the recent arrival of a impoverished boy who seems to know more about Maya's mysterious origins than she does herself. When she's called a yee naaldlooshii (witch in Navajo) by an old woman in the nearby town of Nanaimo, Maya reluctantly begins seeking clues to her real identity, and to the secret that binds her to her friends and their families.
The Gathering introduces readers to a lively and believable cast of teens and their parents, while slowly revealing Maya's supernatural powers and origins and dropping tantalizing clues to the secrets of Salmon Creek. The novel builds to a powerful climax that asks as many questions as it answers. In other words: a great beginning to a new trilogy.
by Kelley Armstrong
(Doubleday)
Readers are probably familiar with the name Kelley Armstrong from her bestselling and seriously addictive Darkest Powers trilogy (The Summoning, The Awakening, The Reckoning) and her various supernatural series for adults. Armstrong is back again with The Gathering, the first novel in a new trilogy. As the title suggests, the story brings together the key players in a drama that unfolds in a strange village on Vancouver Island called Salmon Creek. Not only can the village not be found on most maps, all of the buildings, houses and properties are owned by a single pharmaceutical corporation that also employs the village's citizens.
No one's complaining, though, certainly not Maya Delaney, the adopted native-American teenager who narrates the novel. Life is pretty good in Salmon Creek. Everyone knows each other, the kids go to a small, well-funded school and the village is in the middle of a massive private nature reserve overseen by Maya's dad, who encourages his daughter's strange talent for healing the wounded and orphaned animals he occasionally brings home.
There are a few dark clouds massing on the horizon, including the death of Maya's best friend, a competitive swimmer who drowned in the nearby lake on a calm, summer morning. There's also a nosy reporter asking questions about the village's top-secret medical research facility, as well as the recent arrival of a impoverished boy who seems to know more about Maya's mysterious origins than she does herself. When she's called a yee naaldlooshii (witch in Navajo) by an old woman in the nearby town of Nanaimo, Maya reluctantly begins seeking clues to her real identity, and to the secret that binds her to her friends and their families.
The Gathering introduces readers to a lively and believable cast of teens and their parents, while slowly revealing Maya's supernatural powers and origins and dropping tantalizing clues to the secrets of Salmon Creek. The novel builds to a powerful climax that asks as many questions as it answers. In other words: a great beginning to a new trilogy.
RAGE
by Jackie Morse Kessler
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Rage is the second title in Jackie Kessler's Horsemen of the Apocalypse series. The first novel, Hunger, told the story of Lisabeth, a young anorexic who, after overdosing on her mom's meds, is visited in her hospital room by Death himself (the fourth of the Four Horsemen). Death has a proposition for Lisabeth: she can either die from the overdose or take on the recently vacated post of Famine, the first Horsemen. Lisabeth chooses the Famine job and her subsequent adventures across the world force her to confront the true meaning of hunger, gluttony and suffering.
Rage finds Death looking for a replacement for Horsemen Number Two, War. He soon finds the ideal candidate in Melissa (Missy) Miller, a troubled Goth girl who vents her rage and frustration by cutting herself with a razor. Recently dumped by the love of her life after he discovered the clusters of scars that mar her naked body, Missy spirals ever deeper into despair, until she decides to take her own life after being humiliated at a party. She cuts herself deep enough to kill, but as the blood drains from her veins Death shows up and makes her an offer: die from her wounds or live on as War, the spirit of vengeance and rage and destruction. Missy agrees and is soon riding through the skies on a massive red horse and wielding a sword that reduces the mighty and the weak to whimpering wrecks.
The emotional content of Rage does not always make for the easiest reading. Cutting (a sadly common form of self-harm amongst adolescent girls) is presented in graphic detail, and many readers will be all too-familiar with Missy's fits of self-hatred and doubt. Missy's adventures as the God of War also demonstrate that vengeance and raw physical power are not all they're cracked up to be, even for those who've been ostracized and bullied.
There are a surprising number of funny moments in the novel (Death gets off some hilarious one-liners), and the writing is vivid and fast-paced. This is one of the most intriguing supernatural/fantasy series in bookstores today, opening windows into some very dark but compelling places.
by Jackie Morse Kessler
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Rage is the second title in Jackie Kessler's Horsemen of the Apocalypse series. The first novel, Hunger, told the story of Lisabeth, a young anorexic who, after overdosing on her mom's meds, is visited in her hospital room by Death himself (the fourth of the Four Horsemen). Death has a proposition for Lisabeth: she can either die from the overdose or take on the recently vacated post of Famine, the first Horsemen. Lisabeth chooses the Famine job and her subsequent adventures across the world force her to confront the true meaning of hunger, gluttony and suffering.
Rage finds Death looking for a replacement for Horsemen Number Two, War. He soon finds the ideal candidate in Melissa (Missy) Miller, a troubled Goth girl who vents her rage and frustration by cutting herself with a razor. Recently dumped by the love of her life after he discovered the clusters of scars that mar her naked body, Missy spirals ever deeper into despair, until she decides to take her own life after being humiliated at a party. She cuts herself deep enough to kill, but as the blood drains from her veins Death shows up and makes her an offer: die from her wounds or live on as War, the spirit of vengeance and rage and destruction. Missy agrees and is soon riding through the skies on a massive red horse and wielding a sword that reduces the mighty and the weak to whimpering wrecks.
The emotional content of Rage does not always make for the easiest reading. Cutting (a sadly common form of self-harm amongst adolescent girls) is presented in graphic detail, and many readers will be all too-familiar with Missy's fits of self-hatred and doubt. Missy's adventures as the God of War also demonstrate that vengeance and raw physical power are not all they're cracked up to be, even for those who've been ostracized and bullied.
There are a surprising number of funny moments in the novel (Death gets off some hilarious one-liners), and the writing is vivid and fast-paced. This is one of the most intriguing supernatural/fantasy series in bookstores today, opening windows into some very dark but compelling places.
HAVEN
by Kristi Cook
(Simon & Schuster)
Think Harry Potter meets Twilight meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I'll stop before it gets any more crowded), and you'll get a pretty accurate feel for Haven, the first in a new series of paranormal novels set in the fictional Winterhaven School in New York State. Winterhaven is a posh boarding school where recent transfer student Violet McKenna, whose journalist father died two years earlier in Afghanistan, tries to fit in with the other students.
Violet, who foresaw her father's death long before it happened and who continues to be overcome by premonitions of future violent events, is at first surprised and then overjoyed to discover that all of Winterhaven's students also possess various psychic gifts such as telekinesis, precognition, mind reading, and the ability to travel beyond the boundaries of a physical body. It turns out that Winterhaven has a mysterious power that draws gifted children to its classrooms, where they learn their three Rs while learning to control their special powers.
Violet is drawn into a love affair with the mysterious and reportedly untouchable Aidan Gray, whose psychic powers seem to dwarf those of the other students. Drawn into Aidan's secret-filled world, Violet soon discovers a few things about her own destiny that seem too far-fetched to believe, even in the upside-down world of Winterhaven.
Romance and dorm-room gossip occasionally dominate the narrative, which will no doubt delight some readers while sending others into high-skim mode between the supernatural-themed scenes. The story grows more tense and brooding as it focuses on Aidan's tortured plight, and the ending points toward some exciting future confrontations between the forces of good and evil.
by Kristi Cook
(Simon & Schuster)
Think Harry Potter meets Twilight meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I'll stop before it gets any more crowded), and you'll get a pretty accurate feel for Haven, the first in a new series of paranormal novels set in the fictional Winterhaven School in New York State. Winterhaven is a posh boarding school where recent transfer student Violet McKenna, whose journalist father died two years earlier in Afghanistan, tries to fit in with the other students.
Violet, who foresaw her father's death long before it happened and who continues to be overcome by premonitions of future violent events, is at first surprised and then overjoyed to discover that all of Winterhaven's students also possess various psychic gifts such as telekinesis, precognition, mind reading, and the ability to travel beyond the boundaries of a physical body. It turns out that Winterhaven has a mysterious power that draws gifted children to its classrooms, where they learn their three Rs while learning to control their special powers.
Violet is drawn into a love affair with the mysterious and reportedly untouchable Aidan Gray, whose psychic powers seem to dwarf those of the other students. Drawn into Aidan's secret-filled world, Violet soon discovers a few things about her own destiny that seem too far-fetched to believe, even in the upside-down world of Winterhaven.
Romance and dorm-room gossip occasionally dominate the narrative, which will no doubt delight some readers while sending others into high-skim mode between the supernatural-themed scenes. The story grows more tense and brooding as it focuses on Aidan's tortured plight, and the ending points toward some exciting future confrontations between the forces of good and evil.
FLIP
by Martyn Bedford
(Doubleday)
This smart, highly original page-turner asks readers to imagine what it would be like to wake up one day to discover that you are occupying a complete stranger's body, with no memory of how you got there. In Martyn Bedford's Flip, 14-year-old Alex Gray finds himself in just that unenviable position, stuck inside the body and life of the much cooler (and richer) Philip Garamond, who lives hours north of Alex's real home in London.
Alex does the best he can to adjust to his new life, not an easy task considering that he doesn't even know the names of Philip's sister, friends or even the family dog. Alex does remember playing chess with his best friend back in London the night before, but it turns out six months have passed since that night. A little online research reveals his worst fears: Alex was hit by a van that night and has lain in a vegetative state in a London hospital ever since. How he escaped his ruined body is a mystery, as is the location of Philip's soul. Has it passed on to the other side or is it trapped in Alex's comatose body? Should Alex feel guilty about hijacking another boy's body, and would it be wrong to make out with that boy's hot girlfriend?
Flip plays with these questions of identity and many more as Alex desperately tries to find a way back to his old life without hurting his new family members and friends. The story veers from the horrifying to the comic, often on the same page, and the dialogue is witty and believable throughout (though you'll have to hone up on such Britishisms as "strop," "chivvying," "skive" and "swot"). Flip is Martyn Bedford's first novel for teens: let's hope he has a few more up his sleeve.
by Martyn Bedford
(Doubleday)
This smart, highly original page-turner asks readers to imagine what it would be like to wake up one day to discover that you are occupying a complete stranger's body, with no memory of how you got there. In Martyn Bedford's Flip, 14-year-old Alex Gray finds himself in just that unenviable position, stuck inside the body and life of the much cooler (and richer) Philip Garamond, who lives hours north of Alex's real home in London.
Alex does the best he can to adjust to his new life, not an easy task considering that he doesn't even know the names of Philip's sister, friends or even the family dog. Alex does remember playing chess with his best friend back in London the night before, but it turns out six months have passed since that night. A little online research reveals his worst fears: Alex was hit by a van that night and has lain in a vegetative state in a London hospital ever since. How he escaped his ruined body is a mystery, as is the location of Philip's soul. Has it passed on to the other side or is it trapped in Alex's comatose body? Should Alex feel guilty about hijacking another boy's body, and would it be wrong to make out with that boy's hot girlfriend?
Flip plays with these questions of identity and many more as Alex desperately tries to find a way back to his old life without hurting his new family members and friends. The story veers from the horrifying to the comic, often on the same page, and the dialogue is witty and believable throughout (though you'll have to hone up on such Britishisms as "strop," "chivvying," "skive" and "swot"). Flip is Martyn Bedford's first novel for teens: let's hope he has a few more up his sleeve.
