If you love watching this, you'll love reading these: The 100 edition

Who would have thought when it started that The 100, a series originating on The CW about an attractive group of young people who have no parental supervision, was going to be about politics, love, survival, war crimes and more? Certainly not me, but The 100 has proved it's a TV show that is constantly underestimated.

It regularly explores difficult ideas - whether there is ever a right time for torture, if it's okay to sacrifice a few for the survival of the many, what rules matter in a new society and what rules can fall by the wayside, and plenty more.

And of course, The 100 is one of the most feminist programmes on television, something I spoke at length about at the end of season one (here and here). It is chock full of female characters with agency, and its male characters exist on a level playing field with its female characters. In having to recreate society, The 100 as a show has decided to go for all out equality.

The 100 is based on a series of books by Kass Morgan, but if you've read those (and warning, they're very different from the TV show) here are a few books that I think are perfect for fans of the programme.

The Sunday Post (#33) and Showcase Sunday (#19)

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer, and Showcase Sunday is hosted by Books, Biscuits and Tea and inspired by Pop Culture Junkie and the Story Siren. They're a chance to share news, a post to recap the past week on your blog, highlight our newest books and see what everyone else received for review, borrowed from libraries, or bought.

I haven't done one of these posts in a couple of weeks, so there's been a bit going on.

On the blog
Book review: Cress by Marissa Meyer
Book review: It Felt Like a Kiss by Sarra Manning
Book review: Inferno by Dan Brown
Film review: The Wolf of Wall Street
Book review: The Arab Uprisings by Jeremy Bowen
Book review: A Hundred Pieces of Me by Lucy Dillon
Top 10 Tuesday (#17) - top 10 bookish resolutions
Reading challenge 2014 - I lay out the rules for myself

Added to my shelves

I went to visit an agent this week, and he gave me a few books by authors he represents: Secrecy by Rupert Thomson, Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas, and Idiopathy by Sam Byers (not pictured).
I also got Cress by Marissa Mayer after sending a begging email to the publicist, while another publicist sent me Sue Monk Kidd's The Invention of Wings (she sent it before Christmas but it's only just arrived). I also met a PR for coffee and she brought along Matthew Reilly's The Tournament for me. And finally, I popped to the library and picked up a copy of The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan (not pictured),

What did you add to your shelves?

Review: Cress by Marissa Meyer

You know how books in a series tend to get progressively worse? How even when they're very good, the second book isn't better than the first, and the third isn't as good as the second and so on? Well, forget that when it comes to Marissa Meyer's The Lunar Chronicles, because somehow every book in the series just gets better and better.

Cress, the third book in The Lunar Chronicles (following Cinder and Scarlet), was one of the books I was most anticipating this year, and I'm so glad I didn't have to wait too long to get my hands on it.

While Cinder and her gang - Scarlet, Wolf, Thorne and Iko - float on their ship in space hiding from the many, many people chasing them, and while Emperor Kai prepares for his wedding to the evil Queen Levana, Cress sits aboard her spaceship dreaming of freedom.

When an opportunity to be rescued presents itself, Cress imagines being swept off her feet by Thorne and finding a great group of friends. What she gets is days of wondering through the desert, a hero who doesn't love her, and a group of allies who find themselves scattered and injured, all while trying to execute an audacious plan to stop the wedding of Kai and Levana.

I won't give too much away about the plot, but Cress is the most action-packed books of The Lunar Chronicles so far. Much of that action comes in the last quarter of the book, with the rest spent preparing for the battle to come, but it's all worth the wait.

Meyer is deft at bringing together the various storylines we've been following so far - the stories of Cinder, Scarlet, Wolf, Kai, Thorne, Cress and Dr Erland (and Iko, mustn't forget Iko) are all brought closer together even as the characters sometimes move physically far away from each other. Into this mix comes Jacin Clay - a Lunar who works for Queen Levana's right-hand woman Sybil - and Princess Winter, Queen Levana's stepdaughter and the central subject of the next book in The Lunar Chronicles series. Our glimpses of the latter are very brief, but Winter looks like one of the most intriguing characters we've been introduced to so far.

Cress is a dark novel - unsurprising since it deals with mass murder, good and evil, dictators and more - but it's not all doom and gloom. There are some very funny moments, mainly featuring Iko, who despite being a robot continues to be as human as anyone you might encounter in real life. And Thorne brings a sense of humour to the proceedings as well, despite everything that happens to him during the course of the book. He's definitely the hero I'd choose, so I can see why Cress loves him, even though she doesn't need him.

For me, Cress is the most fairytale like of The Lunar Chronicles books so far, with a princess in her tower waiting for a prince to rescue her. While Cress is very, very clever and self-sufficient, she holds on to the image of being liberated from her spaceship by Thorne, rather than doing the liberating herself.

Thankfully, Meyer twists the fairytale trope pretty deftly. While Cress may not realise it, and while she spends much of the book falling deeper for Thorne while he plays the just friends card, she's actually the real hero of this book. Cress is the one leading the way, fighting for survival and putting herself in real danger - in short, she takes on the traditional role of the prince in the fairytale. Thorne, meanwhile, has to spend much of the book dependent on others, after a fight leaves him injured.

Cress is about a book about heroes and heroines, and its strong female characters are the true stars of the novel, and that make this book worth reading. It's the women who stand head and shoulders above the men in The Lunar Chronicles (though not all of them good), and it's these types of women (the good ones, anyway) who should be at the centre of fairytales being told to children the world over.

How I got this book: From the publicist at Puffin (thanks!)

•Cress is out on February 4

Top 10 Tuesday (#16) - best books I read in 2013

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish, where the writers, like me, are particularly fond of lists. 

This week's topic is...top 10 books I read in 2013. This is a tough one, since I read a lot of great books, and this list will probably change right after I compile it!

Reviews:

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
The Siege, Three Days of Terror Inside the Taj by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark
The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
Noble Conflict by Malorie Blackman
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Fortunately, the Milk... by Neil Gaiman
Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas
Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
Lean In - Women, Work and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I'd love to do a honourable mentions list, but it would get ridiculously long, so I'll leave it with my top 10. What were your favourite reads of 2013?

My week in books (#11)

My week in books is a feature where I share things I've found interesting from the past week that concern books, literature and all things book blogging.

I did something a few weeks ago when Seamus Heaney passed away. Since then his publishers, Faber & Faber, have set up a website here, collecting tributes, memories and more.
 
Two of the best books I've read this year have been Cinder and Scarlett by Marissa Meyer, and I'm hugely excited about Cress, which comes out early next year. Here's an interview with Meyer, where she talks a little bit about what we should expect in Cress, as well as other things.

Also speaking this week was Andy Serkis, who talked about The Bone Season film. TheOneRing.net have an interview here.

As well as being a lover of books, I'm also a bit of a spelling, grammar and punctuation nerd, so I loved these mugs, which are both funny and helpful. For those who prefer their literary gifts to have a bit more flair, here is a gorgeous book-inspired Kate Spade scarf (there's more available in this range).

And finally, if you're hungry, don't look at this Tumblr post, which is a collection of images of meals from literature (think Heidi's cheese on toast).

Have you found anything interesting this week to share?

My week in books (#9)

My week in books is a feature where I share things I've found interesting from the past week that concern books, literature and all things book blogging.

Roald Dahl Day was this week, celebrating the work of one of the best children's authors ever. Here, Huffington Post put together a list of 10 fantastic quotes from his work (and you can read my favourite moment from Dahl's work here). And you can test your Roald Dahl knowledge in this quiz from The Guardian. Let me know how many you get (I got nine out of 10).

Another one from the Huffington Post, here's a list of the nine most sympathetic villains from literature.

This collection of images by Simon and Schuester on Buzzfeed is one of the cutest things I've seen recently. It's 15 types of reader, as told by cats and dogs.

To celebrate the end of New York Fashion Week, Flavorwire compiled a list of the most stylish people in literature, which you can find here.

Geek Girl by Holly Smale is on my list to read. For those of you who have already read it, here's an extract from the next novel, Model Misfit.

The League of Extraordinary Writers had a post from Marissa Meyer this week on her top 10 cyborg upgrades, which you can find here.

What have you seen this week that's caught your attention? Let me know in the comments.

Book review: Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD FOR CINDER

The sequel to Cinder, Marissa Meyer's Scarlet carries on the retelling of fairytale tradition by introducing us to some non-familiar familiar characters, and upping the stakes for the ones we already know.

The titular Scarlet is, of course, based on Red Riding Hood. Only transported to France, working in her grandmother's grocery business and fiercely independent.

When we meet Scarlet, her grandmother has been missing for almost two weeks, and the police aren't bothered enough to try and find her.

Scarlet takes matters in her own hands, and joins up with Wolf, a lean, mean street fighter who tells Scarlet her grandmother is in Paris. So off they go.

Running alongside Scarlet's narrative is the continuation of Cinder's story. When readers left Cinder, she wasn't exactly in the best place. In Scarlet she breaks out of jail and goes on the run, accompanied by Carswell Thorne, a soldier in the American military who's wanted all over the place for various crimes.

As a tertiary story, we see how Emperor Kai is coping with Cinder on the run and Lunar Queen Levana seriously hacked off. Hacked off enough to start an offensive against Earth.

As in Cinder, Meyer creates brilliant characters. I already liked Kai and Cinder, and I like them even more in this book as the pair struggle against forces in their lives they have no control over. Kai was slightly sidelined, so it was a little harder to relate to him in this book, as his appearances are few and far between.

Iko is also back, in a slightly different form, and continuing to be the human friend and confidant Cinder needs, despite not being human at all.

But it's with the new characters that Meyer truly shines. Thorne is a perfect sidekick - funny, witty and someone who really grounds Cinder. The pair have a great love-hate relationship, and despite his criminal background, you know from the moment Cinder and Thorne meet that he's going to be a loyal friend.

Scarlet is instantly someone you want to be - she's tough, she stands up for what she believes in, and she shows no fear. But there's more to her than the fighter, and Meyer shows that in the way Scarlet's relationship with and feelings for Wolf develop.

Ah, Wolf. What can I say about him? Not a lot, without spoiling the heck out of everything. Needless to say, he is and isn't the wolf from the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale.

I could easily picture everything from Scarlet's home to the mean streets of Paris to Thorne's ship in my mind because of Meyer's talent for building worlds. This helps, because the action of Scarlet takes place over just a few short days, so there's a lot crammed in. 

Meyer's good at balancing out the louder moments with quieter ones, and although Cinder and Scarlet are brought together in an explosive way, it's the quiet finale that really grabs at you.

Book review: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Some books are so hyped that you're afraid they're never going to live up to expectations, and that was definitely something I thought was going to happen with Marissa Meyer's Cinder.

Thankfully, my fears didn't materialise.

Cinder is a retelling of the classic fairytale Cinderella, but it's not a retelling you'll recognise. Yes, there are stepsisters, a stepmum and a prince, but Cinder is a cyborg, she's living in New Beijing, there's a mysterious disease that's been killing people for years, and there's a colony on the moon (Lunars) ruled by an evil queen call Levana.

Meyer has created a tightly formed novel, the first in a series, following the trials and tribulations of Cinder. Where Cinderella in the original story was a damsel waiting to be rescued, there's nothing helpless about Cinder. Sure, she's locked in a situation she doesn't want to be in, but she fights at every step to make her life better - something made all the more admirable considering the miserable existence she lives.

The strong prince role still exists in Cinder, but Prince Kai is far more complex and far more human than the floppy haired fairytale princes that adorned stories from childhood. The world within Cinder is not idealised in any way, there's no redemption for uglier characters, no forgiveness or looking past bad deeds, and certainly no happy ending.

Cinder is an engaging, thought-provoking novel and it made me wonder whether society (and the gender balance within it) would be different at all if children were told stories where it was okay to be different and where people pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps, rather than told saccharine-filled, idealistic, unrealistic fairytales. That's a discussion for another time though.