Wednesday, July 10, 2013

The Teen Menu

It's time to talk young adult books again. Yay, one of my favorite subjects!

YA News

One movie I'm really looking forward to is the adaptation of Cassandra Clare's The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, due out Aug. 21. There have been several trailers, posters and pictures from the set released. And Hot Topic now has several clothing and accessory items inspired by the movie. I might have bought the temporary rune tattoos for Dragon*Con. :)

There is talk that Julianne Moore may be tapped to play President Alma Coin in the final two Hunger Games movies based on the third novel, Mockingjay.

The movie version of Veronica Roth's Divergent is getting a lot of press, including a cover story in Entertainment Weekly. I haven't read this book yet, but it's next up and I'm already looking forward to the movie. It sounds cool and, well, I like Theo James. :)

YA Review

My friend Gretchen is a huge zombie fan, and I've learned to trust her judgment when it comes to zombie fiction. After all, she's the one who told me to read World War Z, which is a great book. We went to see the movie version together, which was great fun. But let's talk YA and zombies. Another book she recommended that I just finished reading was Rot and Ruin by Jonathan Maberry. The book, the first in a series, is set 14 years after the zombie apocalypse. The main character is 15-year-old Benny Imura, who lives with his older brother Tom in an enclosed town called Mountainside along with other survivors of First Night, when the zombies started killing. Outside of the town's walls is the expanse of the Ruin, where zombies wander by the thousands.

Since Benny has just recently turned 15, he has to find a job or have his rations cut in half. He tries a few different things with not much success. It's when he goes out into the Ruin with his brother that he begins to see life, his brother, the world and the rest of the people in Mountainside in a different way. He's always seen zombies as, well, zombies. But Tom's job is basically to go out and not kill whatever zombie he comes across but rather specific zombies. Their families are finally ready to let them go for good, so Tom ends them as peacefully as he can. Benny begins to see the zombies as what they used to be, someone's wife, mother, sister, brother, father, etc. Benny also learns that zombies are not the biggest threat to what's left of humanity.

I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to reading the second, Dust & Decay. Two more books are set to follow.

5 comments:

  1. I do like Julianne Moore....

    but zombies not so much.

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  2. My boyfriend read Divergent and loved it! He bought me a copy so I'll read it soon. :) The movie has lots of great actors/actresses. I love Maggie Q from Nikita.

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  3. This book sounds interesting. I heard Jonathan Maberry speak at DragonCon, and he was terrific.

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  4. Rot & Ruin sounds like it has some similarities to the Walking Dead, and since I love TWD, I'll probably like R&R. Thanks for the YA report, Trish!

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  5. Mary, luckily no zombies in The Hunger Games. :)

    Trisha, I like Maggie Q too, though I'm woefully behind on watching Nikita. I have a scary amount of episodes sitting on my TiVo from last season.

    Nancy, I didn't make it to the Maberry panel. I had a conflict, probably something like getting a photo taken. :)

    Andrea, I like both, so that's probably a good sign. :)

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