Mini Reviews: I Know What You Read Last Summer

Last summer was intense for me. I had so much stuff going on that I pretty much gave up on blogging. I didn’t give up on reading, though! I actually read some awesome stuff. Instead of ignoring all the books I finished in summer 2019, I thought I’d do rapid-fire reviews. I’m not going to include summaries of the books because that would make this post colossal, so click the titles to open Goodreads.

Review: The Unwind Dystology Series Wrap-Up

The Unwind Dystology - Neal Shusterman

After the Second Civil War, the Bill of Life states that human life may not be touched from the moment of conception until a child reaches the age of thirteen. However, a loophole allows parents to retroactively get rid of a teenager through a process called “unwinding.” Three teens defy the system and run away from their unwinding: Connor, a rebel whose parents have ordered his unwinding; Risa, a ward of the state who is to be unwound due to cost-cutting; and Lev, his parents’ tenth child whose unwinding has been planned since birth as a religious tithing. As their paths intersect and lives hang in the balance, Connor, Risa, and Lev must work together to survive—and they may change the fate of America in the process.

I recently finished this series and thought I’d put all of my opinions in one place. You can see my reviews of the individual books here: Unwind, UnStrung, UnWholly, UnSouled, UnDivided, UnBound. This wrap-up review is as spoiler-free as I can make it.

The Unwind Dystology Wrap-Up

The Good

Books 1 and 4: The series starts and ends strongly. A lot of series start out well and then fizzle at the end. That isn’t the case with these books. The last book has just as much danger and intensity as the first book. Not all of the characters get a happily ever after.

Thought-provoking: The series asks a lot of questions but leaves the answers up to the reader. The books examine issues surrounding abortion, terrorism, failing schools, the business of medicine, the rights of children, and the ethics of certain scientific advancements.

It keeps getting creepier: Let’s just say that a lot of messed-up stuff can be done with human body parts.

Unpredictable and fast-paced: These books are rarely slow. The reader gets the sense that anything can happen and no character is safe.

Lev: If you’ve spent a lot of time on this blog, you’ll know that I like books about characters who struggle with their religious beliefs. Lev is one of those characters. He undergoes a massive transformation over the course of the series. It’s interesting to see him lose his sense of purpose, flounder, and then find a new purpose. He’s a relatable character because a lot of real people go through a less-extreme version of feeling lost in life.

 

Cam and the Rewinds: Cam is my favorite character in the series. He’s kinda creepy, kinda snarky, kinda morally gray. His existence raises a lot of interesting ethical questions. It was satisfying for me to watch him take control of his life and go from a piece of property to a leader. I desperately want a spin-off novel about Cam and the Rewinds.

Connor: People on Goodreads seem to be obsessed with him. I’m not a rabid Connor fan, but he does have some hilarious dialogue and is an easy character to root for.

Intensely readable: There are some books that you want to read and some that you have to force yourself to read. This series definitely fell into the “want to read” category for me. I spent a lot of time thinking about these books and neglected life in order to marathon them.

The Not-So-Good

“Middle book syndrome” and bridge books: The books in the middle of the series aren’t quite as good as the first and last books. The middle ones are slightly less intense.

Unwinding is tough to swallow: I had a very hard time buying unwinding in the first book. In the Unwind universe, unwinding is seen as a solution to the abortion debate. This didn’t make sense to me. How does depriving a teenager of his/her body satisfy a pro-life or pro-choice person? Luckily, the Unwind world becomes more developed as the series progresses. Unwinding becomes easier to believe.

UnStrung: This #1.5 novelette disappointed me. The synopsis makes it sound like it will explain how a thirteen-year-old got involved with a terrorist organization. It doesn’t explain that. Actually, it doesn’t explain anything. It mostly just got me irritated at the illogical behavior of some of the characters.

The covers and lack of editing: After I posted my reviews, I discovered that I’m not the only one who thinks that the original covers are hideous. The new covers (the ones at the top of the post) aren't wonderful, but I like them more than the originals. Also, my editions of the books (all hardcover) aren’t published very well. I found many typos. The binding of the books made a lot of crackly noises while I was reading. I was worried that the pages would fall out.

Head-hopping and murky perspectives: These books are written in third-person limited perspective with alternating points-of-view. The author occasionally breaks out of the limited perspective in order to build suspense. This isn’t confusing, but it did distract me.

Risa: Sorry Risa lovers, I don’t like her. She barely does anything in the series. She serves as motivation for Connor and Cam, and that’s about it. I don’t know how she can motivate them because I honestly don’t know what they see in her. To me, she’s a generic YA love interest character.

The thing that happens to Connor on the plane in book #4: In book #4, Connor is trapped in a room on a plane with a bunch of sleeping kids. He’s awake because he pulled out his IV. Instead of trying to escape from the room, he just sits there until he’s re-captured. Why didn’t he yank the IVs out of the other kids? They could have helped him escape, or he could have created enough chaos to maybe get away. He still would have been trapped on a plane, but he would have had more options (plane hijacking?) to potentially save himself. I think the author really wanted a certain thing to happen, but I think Connor would have fought harder to avoid that thing.

The abortion stuff: Okay, I promised I’d talk about this, so here we go.

A lot of readers seem to love or hate book #1 in the series because it discusses abortion. I’ve heard that book #1 is often sold in Christian bookstores because readers believe that it has a pro-life message. I can totally see a pro-life slant in Unwind, but I honestly don’t care about the message or whether I agree with it. My issue is that the message isn’t argued logically. The book sets up a strawman argument (unwinding = abortion) that completely ignores the majority of the issues surrounding abortion. The book then relies on emotional manipulation to back up its pro-life stance. The reader is made to feel bad for these poor teenagers who are running from their evil parents and retroactive abortions.

I actually like books that confront controversial topics. I want those topics to be discussed logically, though. I have no idea if the author intended for Unwind to be pro-life or if people just read it that way.

It was pretty easy for me to roll my eyes at the illogical/manipulative bits and enjoy the story. The next books in the series take the focus off abortion and examine other topics that are less hot-button but just as interesting. I only found the abortion stuff mildly irritating.

The Verdict

Overall, I liked this series a lot. It asks interesting questions and has all of the creepiness, action, death, and destruction that I want in a dystopia. For what it’s worth, I rated all of the books between 3 and 5 stars on Goodreads. Supposedly Unwind is becoming a movie, so I’m interested to see how the movie compares to the book.   

The Dark Tower Series Wrap-Up Review

The Dark Tower Series – Stephen King

Set in a world of ominous landscape and macabre menace, The Dark Tower features one of Stephen King’s most powerful creations—The Gunslinger, a haunting figure who embodies the qualities of the lone hero through the ages, from ancient myth to frontier Western legend. As Roland crosses a desert of damnation in a world that is a twisted image of our own, he moves ever closer to the Dark Tower of his dreams—and nightmares. 

I finished Stephen King’s Dark Tower series in June, and I thought I’d do a review of the whole thing. I’ve never attempted to review a series before. I divided the review into categories, but maybe you should reverse the categories because I seem to love the things that everybody else hates. *This review contains spoilers.* Proceed with caution if you plan to read this series.

If you want to see my spoiler-free opinions, check out my reviews of the individual books: book #1 (The Gunslinger), book #2 (The Drawing of the Three), book #3 (The Waste Lands), book #4 (Wizard and Glass), book #4.5 (The Wind Through the Keyhole), book #5 (Wolves of the Calla), book #6 (Song of Susannah), and book #7 (The Dark Tower). 

The Dark Tower Series Wrap-Up

The Amazing

World-building: The Dark Tower universe is one of my favorite fictional universes. It’s so vivid and believable. The characters have their own dialects, religions, cultures, values, etc. I am in awe of Stephen King’s world-building talent. Book #4.5 is pretty much nothing but world-building and I didn’t mind at all. In fact, I loved it.

Description and imagery: Stephen King is so good at writing description. I could clearly picture everything in this series. I love all the bizarre, unsettling details he includes in his stories.

The writing in The Gunslinger (Book #1): This book is more poetic and experimental than Stephen King’s usual style. I wish he would write like this more often.

The city of Lud: There are some moments in literature that you’ll never forget. The scenes that happen in Lud are something that I’ll never forget. In the city, weird, mutant humans murder each other whenever they hear music. Then, a computer malfunction causes the whole city to commit mass suicide. How screwed up is that? Even for Stephen King, that’s screwed up. 

Wizard and Glass (Book #4): I know that a lot of people hate this book, but it’s my favorite in the series. I think I like it so much because I first heard this series described as a “Sci-fi/fantasy/western.” This book came closest to what I was expecting from a sci-fi/fantasy/western. It has all the cowboys and magic I wanted.

Mutant creatures and “Roont” twins: The creatures in this series are slightly off-kilter. There are giant white wasps, deer with extra legs, bears with satellite dishes sticking out of their heads, and towns where people only give birth to twins. I love how familiar creatures are a little strange in this world.

The Good

Cuthbert and Alain: I like both of these characters. This is another unpopular opinion, but I like them more than Eddie and Susannah. I think I’m just really interested in Gilead and want to know more about the people who grew up there. I wish King would write another book set in Gilead. Also, (this is going to sound weird and random), but I like that Alain died from friendly fire. That happens all the time in real life, but fictional heroes usually don’t mess up that badly. I like that the heroes accidently kill their friend. It’s realistic.

The overlap with King’s other books: I have read a lot of Stephen King books. I love that this series references some of King’s other books.

The end: A lot of reviews say that the end of the series is anticlimactic—and it is—but the anticlimax makes perfect sense to me. Roland has sacrificed everything to reach the tower. Is anything worth sacrificing the people you love? It makes sense to me that the villains wouldn’t be as great as Roland (or the reader) expects. Roland has built up the tower so much in his mind that nothing can possibly live up to his expectations. Even the room at the top is a letdown. Getting to the top of the tower may not have been worth the sacrifices. The ending gives Roland another chance to learn that lesson.

Mordred: I hated him when Susannah was pregnant with him. I never want to hear the word “Chap” again. But, I liked him once he was born. His birth scene is terrifying. Reading it made me feel better about my decision not to have children. Also, I’m scared of spiders, so a werespider is my worst nightmare. But, by the end of the last book, I felt bad for him. Even though he’s part giant demon-spider, he’s still a child. It’s sad to see him wandering alone through a blizzard, slowly dying from food poisoning and hypothermia.

The Wind Through the Keyhole (Book #4.5): Even though this book doesn’t advance the plot of the series at all, I still like it. The world is so interesting that I didn’t mind reading a book that is just world-building and backstory. The book is entertaining and short (compared to the rest of the series).

Roland Deschain: I don’t like Roland as a person, but he’s fascinating to read about. Some of his mysteriousness does start to wear off by the end of the series. I liked reading about him more at the beginning, but he held my attention the whole way through. He’s an unusual character.

The Bad

 

Susannah: I hated her from the moment Roland dragged her through the door from her world to his. I hate the annoying way she speaks. I hate her multiple personalities. I hate that we get to learn so much about Odetta/Detta/Maya (her personalities) and nothing about Susannah herself. Susannah seems to be the complete absence of personality. Who is she? I think I was supposed to be sad when she left at the end of book #7, but I was ecstatic that I wouldn’t have to read about her anymore.

Confusion: These books are weird, especially at the beginning of the series. Not much is explained. The reader is expected to go along with the weirdness and confusion. I was fine with this for a while, but then I started wishing that someone would just tell me what the heck is going on.

Bloated books: These books are long. Some of them are over 800 pages. Almost all of them are unnecessarily bloated and needed editing. It’s obvious that Stephen King didn’t have a plan for the series when he started it. The story meanders a lot. There are dropped plot threads and dead ends. I would have liked the series more if some of this excess stuff had been edited out.

Stephen King as a fictional character: I have mixed feelings about King putting himself in his own books. It’s hilarious because Roland hates him, and King doesn’t paint a very flattering portrait of himself in the books. Fictional Stephen King is a whiny loser. It’s funny, but it also pulls the reader out of the story. When I’m reading fiction, I want to be immersed in the fictional world. Seeing the author as a character made me way too aware that I was reading a story. I couldn’t achieve the level of immersion that I wanted.

Wolves of the Calla (Book #5): I’m conflicted about this book. Some of the best world-building occurs in it, but it’s so boring. I spent hundreds of pages waiting for something to happen. The book is 700+ pages long, and all of the action happens in the last 50 pages. It was tedious to get through.

Deus ex machina: Stephen King relies a lot on deus ex machina, and he makes sure the reader knows that he’s using it. I wasn’t bothered by it at first, but I think he overdid it. It started to feel too meta for me. I was pulled out of the story. I don’t want to be that aware of an author’s writing process while I’m reading.

The Ugly

Insta-love: Eddie and Susannah fall in insta-love. The explanation for this is “Ka” or “Destiny.” They’re in love because they’re meant to be in love. There isn’t much of a romance. They meet, and then suddenly they’re calling each other “Husband” and “Wife.” Since I like Eddie and don’t like Susannah, I never understood their relationship. I don’t know what they see in each other.

Blaine the Mono: Blaine is a monorail that enjoys riddles. For some reason, I was supposed to find him scary. I just found him stupid. Stephen King is so good at writing villains. I’m not sure what he was thinking with this one. I couldn’t take Blaine seriously.

Cutesy rhymes and annoying dialect: There is a lot of dialect and simple repetitive rhymes (such as “Blaine is a pain”) in this series. The repetition of the rhymes got on my nerves immediately. The dialect is fine when the characters use it, but when the narrator also uses it, it becomes too much. It started to remind me of my undergrad lit classes when I had to slog through whole books written in dialect. I’m just not a fan.   

Song of Susannah (Book #6): Ug, this book. Nothing happens in it. At the end of book #5, Susannah goes into labor. I was so excited to finally see her demon baby. By the end of Song of Susannah, she still hasn’t had the baby! She doesn’t have the baby until book #7. Do you know what happens in book #6? Susannah takes a taxi from a hotel to a restaurant. That’s it. The book is 300+ pages of weirdness and nothing.

The Wizard of Oz references: There are a lot of them. I just don’t think they are necessary. Sometimes it feels as if King is trying too hard to cram a reference into a scene where it isn’t needed. I didn’t think the references added anything to the story. They’re just distracting.

The Verdict

Overall, I enjoyed this series. I’m glad that I finally had a chance to read it. I don’t think it’s Stephen King’s best work, but it’s worth reading. I had a lot of fun with it. The series is especially worth reading if you’re a fantasy author who wants to learn more about world-building. The Dark Tower universe is stunning.