Honestly, this was just a matter of poor timing for me to read it. I just read Loki's Wolves, I've been discussing the Percy Jackson series a lot, and then I embarked on another book about kids being the descendants of something and going on a mission to save the world.
Clearly a premise that has done relatively well for me in the past.
So, I'm going out on a limb and will assume that this was an alright book even though I couldn't get through it. I'll talk about the bit I read and maybe return to it one day.
An amazon summary to get everyone in the same boat, "Just one boy . . .
Jack McKinley is an ordinary kid with an extraordinary problem. In six months, Jack is going to die.
Just one mission . . .
After Jack collapses in the middle of a busy street, he's whisked off to a strange hospital in a strange place.
There are armed guards and weird kids and fantastic creatures, not to mention no parents, no phones, and no possibility of escape. The place is run by an odd professor named Bhegad, who tells Jack that what's killing him is a genetic trait inherited from the prince of a long-lost civilization. It's destroying Jack by making him too strong too fast. He'll need to stay strong, though—because it's up to him to save the world.
Just one problem . . .
That long-lost civilization sank when seven magic Loculi were stolen and hidden around the world. Now Jack and his friends must find the Loculi before they fall into the wrong hands. If they don't, they'll never be cured, that lost world will rise, oceans will be displaced, and life as we know it will pretty much end.
Seven wonders
No one ever asked Jack if he wanted to be a hero. He just has to be one. One kid. One mission. One big problem. The thrills begin in The Colossus Rises, the first installment in the newest adventure from master storyteller Peter Lerangis." AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE
Honestly, this book was just poor timing on my part. Sometimes I tend to forget that I need to read books with almost entirely different premises to kind of keep my book 'palate' if you will fresh. It's easy to get bogged down trying to read the same general idea with a different environment with different characters but the same idea. It gets harder for me personally to not constantly compare them.
So with that, I tried to read The Colossus Rises and failed miserably.
I couldn't get with the voice of the main character who seemed to be a bit of scamp in the sense of was a messy monster with a hesitant will to do the right thing.
I couldn't get into the premise of the book because I'm getting sad that so many books are using the scary notion that 'CHILDREN ARE DYING' and not treating it like it's some horrible thing. Not really working on the quality of life for them but rather what can be done with them before they die.
Somewhere I fear that the young adult book world has stopped valuing the life of the characters after a certain age because there's a misconception that they don't care about the rest of their life, they care about the now.
Freaking YOLO.
This is a big thing about how I feel. If you don't care, you can just quit now. I'll get back to the book eventually, but it might take me a little speech to do so.
Life is built of moments that create memories, but it shouldn't be traveled with the notion that 'it won't be me that dies'. It shouldn't be tempered by the notion that 'it could be you that dies, so we'll slaughter other people that are any age, but usually young, so that you might get the notion that you're not immortal'.
I acknowledge there is this notion that we should grab everything that we can out of life, we should take every opportunity that we can and just do what we want. ...but does that always have to involve extreme life endangering situations? Is it trying to play that any moment in our life we could just die and be fine with that because we've already managed to do so much?
Are books trying to portray how others are qualifying their lives, or is it working more towards building the notion of fearless behavior since it will probably end will. There will be set backs, but whatever the outcome is it'll be worth it.
I don't know.
But I'm trying to figure it out.
I think this book was a bit of my breaking point of constantly trying to throw kids in danger to get a good story.
But I've been writing a paper about Star Girl because I became infuriated with how high of a pedestal it seems to rest on when the foundations of the book are overlooked. So maybe I'm just angry at books in general right now. (I should note that I'm not doing it for a class or even for this blog, I'm just doing it to portray how much the notion of the character 'Star Girl' is idealized because she was just trying to be herself. I'm writing a paper with the argument that Star Girl didn't have the concept of peer pressure in the beginning because she was home schooled, she didn't have the concept that she should try to be like everyone else and just fit in. She was already doing whatever she wanted because she wasn't operating under any sort of pressure. We started to lose Star Girl when she fell prey to peer pressure, and the villains of the story weren't villains, they were just as confused by what she was doing as she was. ITS COMPLICATED ALRIGHT.)
I don't know.
So back to the book.
The book started with the character suddenly being overwhelmed by an illness after he noticed an odd V-pattern on the back of his neck and he's carted off with some scientist/doctor types that allegedly save his life. The twist is, he's starting to die because his body is becoming too powerful for itself.
Uh, what?
The farthest I got was the main character realized he was kidnapped to some weird place, tried to escape, was caught, met the other bizarre kids on the island, turns out the bizarre kids also have abilities, and then the quest was revealed.
That's when I checked out.
Maybe it's a good book, it might be something I return to when I'm in a better mood about reading that sort of story, but for right now I'm just letting out exasperated sighs when I read it and wandering off to do laundry.
Laundry. Not rage sleeping, not picking up something else interesting.
Laundry.
So I left the book.
The quality of writing seemed pretty alright, I just seem to be exhausted by the story type.
Happy reading!
Honestly, this book was just poor timing on my part. Sometimes I tend to forget that I need to read books with almost entirely different premises to kind of keep my book 'palate' if you will fresh. It's easy to get bogged down trying to read the same general idea with a different environment with different characters but the same idea. It gets harder for me personally to not constantly compare them.
So with that, I tried to read The Colossus Rises and failed miserably.
I couldn't get with the voice of the main character who seemed to be a bit of scamp in the sense of was a messy monster with a hesitant will to do the right thing.
I couldn't get into the premise of the book because I'm getting sad that so many books are using the scary notion that 'CHILDREN ARE DYING' and not treating it like it's some horrible thing. Not really working on the quality of life for them but rather what can be done with them before they die.
Somewhere I fear that the young adult book world has stopped valuing the life of the characters after a certain age because there's a misconception that they don't care about the rest of their life, they care about the now.
Freaking YOLO.
This is a big thing about how I feel. If you don't care, you can just quit now. I'll get back to the book eventually, but it might take me a little speech to do so.
Life is built of moments that create memories, but it shouldn't be traveled with the notion that 'it won't be me that dies'. It shouldn't be tempered by the notion that 'it could be you that dies, so we'll slaughter other people that are any age, but usually young, so that you might get the notion that you're not immortal'.
I acknowledge there is this notion that we should grab everything that we can out of life, we should take every opportunity that we can and just do what we want. ...but does that always have to involve extreme life endangering situations? Is it trying to play that any moment in our life we could just die and be fine with that because we've already managed to do so much?
Are books trying to portray how others are qualifying their lives, or is it working more towards building the notion of fearless behavior since it will probably end will. There will be set backs, but whatever the outcome is it'll be worth it.
I don't know.
But I'm trying to figure it out.
I think this book was a bit of my breaking point of constantly trying to throw kids in danger to get a good story.
But I've been writing a paper about Star Girl because I became infuriated with how high of a pedestal it seems to rest on when the foundations of the book are overlooked. So maybe I'm just angry at books in general right now. (I should note that I'm not doing it for a class or even for this blog, I'm just doing it to portray how much the notion of the character 'Star Girl' is idealized because she was just trying to be herself. I'm writing a paper with the argument that Star Girl didn't have the concept of peer pressure in the beginning because she was home schooled, she didn't have the concept that she should try to be like everyone else and just fit in. She was already doing whatever she wanted because she wasn't operating under any sort of pressure. We started to lose Star Girl when she fell prey to peer pressure, and the villains of the story weren't villains, they were just as confused by what she was doing as she was. ITS COMPLICATED ALRIGHT.)
I don't know.
So back to the book.
The book started with the character suddenly being overwhelmed by an illness after he noticed an odd V-pattern on the back of his neck and he's carted off with some scientist/doctor types that allegedly save his life. The twist is, he's starting to die because his body is becoming too powerful for itself.
Uh, what?
The farthest I got was the main character realized he was kidnapped to some weird place, tried to escape, was caught, met the other bizarre kids on the island, turns out the bizarre kids also have abilities, and then the quest was revealed.
That's when I checked out.
Maybe it's a good book, it might be something I return to when I'm in a better mood about reading that sort of story, but for right now I'm just letting out exasperated sighs when I read it and wandering off to do laundry.
Laundry. Not rage sleeping, not picking up something else interesting.
Laundry.
So I left the book.
The quality of writing seemed pretty alright, I just seem to be exhausted by the story type.
Happy reading!
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