Author Visits (Rick Riordan and Margaret Peterson Haddix)

In October, when the Son of Neptune came out, I was about an hour away from one of the seven tour stops.  I was, of course, really excited about this and was able to convince my mom to take me.  Rick Riordan arrived on a "chariot" pulled by black horses.  It was supposed to have something to do with Hades.

I had been thinking of a question to ask him for weeks.  I wanted something unique.  We stood in line forever!  I was number 202.  That was apparantly really good; I think there were about 800 of us. 

I got up there and he signed my book.

You can't really see my face or my purple t-shirt, but still an amazing picture!!!  Here's what I asked (not paraphrased at all).

Q: In the Kane Chronicles, when you said that Manhattan had its own problems, did you mean the Greeks and Romans?

A: *nodding his head* Yes, and you'll see what I mean in book three. 

It doesn't sound nearly as exciting when you write it, so picture one of your favorite authors basically telling you, "Wow.  How observant! My third book will be completely amazing, and you know that for a fact before everybody else does."  As you can see, he even signed the person behind me's book while still talking to me! 

Personally, I was so happy about the whole thing that I almost started crying while picking up sauce at the Taco Bell on the way home.  Here's his signiture in case you're curious.  I think I have crazy eyes but I can't help it because I'm not photogentic at all.

***

Now I'm going to talk about Margaret Peterson Haddix.  She came to my school about two weeks ago.  Somehow, I managed to eat lunch with her, along with six other middle schoolers.  That was pretty exciting, too. 

However, this time I had no questions at all.  I made up some on the fly, but they weren't very exciting.  Some of the other kids had some good questions, though, so I'll list some of those, slightly paraphrased.

Q: Who is Jonah?

A:  That's a surprise, but you'll find out in the seventh book (the last one).

Q: What's your favorite book that you wrote?

A: I won't say because that would be like favoring children.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for the Shadow Children sereis?

A: My family was debating about whether or not to have a third child.  We considered over population, and I said that if it was such a problem, there would be a law against third children.  The idea just popped into my head.

Q: How did you get the idea for the Missing series?

A: I got disoriented when I woke up when our plane was landing, and I couldn't remember who I was for a moment.  I started thinking what would happen if a bunch of kids were disoriented in a plane and no one could tell them who they were.  The idea moved on to babies.

Sorry, but those are some of the only ones that I remember enough to write about.  Someone asked how much she wrote a day, and I remember that she answered with an insanely large numbers of hours, but I don't think non-exact answers are really helpful.

For all of you who have no idea what she looks like, here.



I have a picture with her, but I really don't want to look through my email to find it.  I'll try to do another screen shot of her signature; it's a bit neater than Rick Riordan's.

I hope that was at least a  little interesting for you.  It sure took forever to write.  Probably, because I was trying to take the screen shot via skype. 

Hope you all have a very nice weekend.

PS. Mrs. Haddix told us when all of the rest of her book in the Missing series come out.  You can see it in my Coming Soon page.  (There will be seven.)

PPS.  My books aren't actually yellow.  They are all white, put my lighting's awful.



BZRK by Michael Grant (Awesome)

Sorry I didn't post last week.  I had too much stuff to write about to choose.  So, this week I'll post twice.  Once on this book, BZRK, and another on author visits.  That would include Margaret Peterson Haddix, whom I met two weeks ago and, if I have enough time, Rick Riordan from October.  Oh, plus I need to review Speeding Bullet, The Always War, Prized, and the rest of the Jimmy Fincher Series.  I'm really behind!  Well, here we go into this review. The cover:



This is one of those covers that aren't very exciting/ don't make much sense until you've read the book.  It's perfect for the book.  There is a biot/ nanobot on an eye with another one on the "z" in BZRK (pronounced berserk). 

The author, Michael Grant, also wrote the the Gone series which is why I read this book to begin with.  I was a bit skeptical from the official summary (that's why I always write my own) but I was really glad I read it.

 

 

There are two sides of a battle that is going on in the nano level. Tiny biot/ nanobots are fighting. One side: The Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation (AFGC). The other: BZRK. AFGC is lead by conjoined twins Charles and Benjamin and under their command: Bug Man. There goal is to make all of the human race as one. There would be no anger or jealousy. BZRK is headed by the mysterious Lear that no one has actually met, and they're fighting for free choice (or, as Nijinsky said, 'the right to be unhappy'). Through all of this, BZRK's new recruits Noah and Sadie have to get up to speed and learn to fight before the AFGC moves to their target, the President of the United States. There is only one problem with controlling biots in the nano level: if they die, you go crazy.

 

 

This was an amazing book. Plot, characters, everything. However, I feel like I have to write a disclaimer. This book is written for a crowd older than what I usually read. That means that there was some language. They suggested things (I hope I got that point across and I don't have to explain more). Some of the tech stuff might be confusing if you're younger, but it probably won't be a problem. Lastly, most of the characters had two names. It wasn't that confusing, but I thought that I would mention that the second to last page has both their real and code names in case you get confused.

 

 

This is definitely a book that I would suggest. It will probably make you wash your face more, too, so that's a plus. Unless this is one of those books with an open ending, (I really doubt that since under Ophelia at the back, he said her real name wasn't revealed yet.) there will be a sequel. I'll definitely read that as soon as it comes out. It doesn't seem fair that I have to wait for the next book in THREE of his series. Gone, BZRK, and The Magnificent 12.

I'll try to post again really soon.  See you then.

The Seeds of Rebellion by Brandon Mull (Awesome)

Sorry it took so long to post about this book, I could have sworn that I had already reviewed it. The cover:



This is the second book in the Beyonders series.  The first book was A World Without Heroes; I would really suggest reading the first book before reading this review and/or book because it would spoil it and you would be confused.

The cover shows the Blind King fighting one of the leader Amur Kell.  Pretty excited, right?

The Summary:  Jason was ejected into the Beyond and is trying desperately to get back.  If that means attacking a hippo, so be it.  Rachel and Drake are desperate to avoid the thing that is following them, which means asking for help from Elaine.  The people who protect the syllables of the word are being killed off.  All of the good guys need to raise an army and find out the future of the rebellion before Maldor ends them all.
I wish I could say more. I couldn't even mention some of the main character without revealing a lot of things.  For example, Jason does a whole lot of things over the course of the book; he's not stuck in the Beyond the whole time. (By the way, that wasn't a spoiler at all.)  That's why writing a book summary is so annoying. 
I liked this book, but it wasn't as funny as the book before it.  I think it may just be because half the book was in Rachel's point of view, which means that she's jealous because Jason isn't just talking to her.  I agree with her; Jason was being annoying by talking to Connie (my least favorite character).
Other than that, I loved the book.  He fit everything into it, and I mean everything.  From zombies to prophecies to nightmares, it had it.  I would suggest reading it, and I look forward to Chasing the Prophecy in spring 2013. 

PS  I found that I'm on the first page of google if you search:  Chasing the Prophecy Beyonders.  It's a link to my Coming Soon page.  Since I'm above amazon, I thought I would share the moment with you.

PPS Now, I'm on the top of the second page for: the arcade catastrophe brandon mull.  This is pretty cool.

Fear by Michael Grant (Awsome)

This is the fifth book in the Gone series and it came out on Tuesday.  The series goes like this: Gone, Hunger, Lies, Plague, and, this book, Fear.  I would definitely suggest reading the series, along with a lot of other people (it's a mildly famous series).  You absolutely have to read them in order, so that's why I put the order of it above; if you didn't, you would be incredibly lost. 
THIS POST WILL HAVE SPOILERS FOR THE PREVIOUS FOUR BOOKS IN THE SERIES!!!
Here is the cover of Fear:



So, the people of the cover.  The girl is definitely Diana and the guy is either Sam, Caine, or Drake (I doubt that last one).  I'm thinking it's Sam just because he doesn't look like Drake, and Caine wouldn't make that much sense. 

Now that I've covered the cover (haha), I'll move to the author then do the summary/ review.  Michael Grant is an amazing author. He has written the Gone series and the less well known Magnificent 12 series.  It's amazing how different they are, but I figured that I would mention it if there were any hard-core fans of Michael Grant's.
It's been a relaxing four months for everyone in the FAYZ (Fallout Alley Youth Zone), but everything is about to get complicated, again.  It all starts with a small realization from those outside the wall; (yes, I did say outside the wall.  They do a couple chapters from Mrs. Temple's point of view) the barrier is letting in the tiniest percent of X-rays.  That means that in the FAYZ, the dome is slowly turning black, rising toward the sky and slowly blotting out the sun. And what makes it worse? Sam is scared of the dark.  When the darkness is threatening all life in the FAYZ, Sam and Caine need to join forces to stop the gaiphage from doing all of the evil things that it wants to do.  Also important, Diana's fetus is maturing way too fast, the DNA of some people is being messed up, and, of course, there's Drake/Brittney to deal with.
I really loved this book; it was exciting all the way through and still is making me think about the ending of it.  They killed of one of my favorite characters, one that I bet no one else likes, and that was a bit shocking.  The whole thing was just so unpredictable that it was refreshing; too many books make it obvious who's going to get killed off and take most of the fun out of reading it.  Again, I would suggest reading this.
If you don't want to know if there is another book in this series or not, just skip this paragraph; that's my suggestion anyway.  Throughout the entire book, I was sure that this was the last book because they did little outside-the-wall-parts.  Well, that and the fact that the entire book seemed to be leading up to the dome coming down.  I was wrong, happily, epically, wrong.  The ending was so amazing that I woke my sister up to explain it to her. ( She had no idea what i was talking about.)  It was the perfect ending to Fear.  I really want to rant about the ending and what I think will happen later, but I'm not spoiling it.  I will give a hint that I promise won't give anything away; in fact, you probably won't even get it: The accusations between Mr. Temple and the accusers are probably going to be more intense.
The rest of you can join me again here.  If you did what I suggested and ignored the last paragraph here:  The ending was perfect.
I think I summed it up pretty well.  Please read the book, it's freakishly amazing. 
Have a nice Easter or Passover or whatever else is this weekend.

P.S.  This post made me start thinking of who I was most like out of the characters.  I would say Taylor, but Fear put a stop to that.  Not Sam, Astrid, Edilio, Caine, Lana, Brianna, Dekka, Diana, or even Quinn (the 1st book stopped that).  I decided that almost all of the characters had changed since the beginning to be: alright guys who were ruined by the beginning, evil guys who were corrupted by the FAYZ, or just kind of grouchy guys.  I just thought I would point out that everybody changed.  I challenge you guys to find one person who doesn't have a bit of evil in them, are like Taylor in Fear, or is just plain mopey. 

P.P.S.  *SPOILER ALERT* How did that couple possibly think: 1. Their cat found food  2. Anybody knew which cat "Ariel" was  3. Any one cared enough about their cat to respond when others were asking about more important things, like, their kids!!!   I wouldn't have responded to that even if all of the cat hadn't been eaten.