Daughter's of the Moon by Lynne Ewing

The Daughter’s of the Moon series is an awesome series by Lynne Ewing.  This series has 13 books in it, so I am not going to right about every individual book. Instead I will just write about the whole series.

The Daughter’s of the Moon series is a series about 5 teenage girls who are actually goddesses, and each one has an extraordinary power. The series starts out with only 4 of the girls. Their names are Vanessa, who has the power of invisibility, Catty, who has the power of time travel, Serena, who has the power mind reading, and Jimena, who has the power of premonitions. The fifth girl doesn’t come into the series until the 6^th book, her name is Tianna and she has the power of telekinesis. They were all sent by Selene, goddess of the moon, when Pandora opened the box and let all of the evils out into the world and closed the box with only one thing left inside. That thing was hope. Selene felt sorry for the humans so she sent the Daughter’s of the Moon. But the Atrox, who persuaded Pandora into opening the box, wanted the evils to be unleashed.

You may think that it would be awesome to be a goddess and have a power just like them. But the truth is it isn’t all that awesome. Along with having to deal with homework, they have enemies who are out to destroy them. Those people are called Followers sent by the Atrox. The Followers possess a power too. They can read minds just like Serena, trap people in their memories, turn into shadows, and they are immortal. But they are only immortal if they go into what they call the Cold Fire. One of the most powerful Followers is Stanton, later on in the series he becomes Prince of the Night. Stanton is madly in love with Serena but their love is forbidden since they come from opposite sides of good and evil. There is another setback too. All of the goddess are mortal, and when they turn seventeen they have to two options. One option is if they want to stay on earth and loose all of their memories from being a goddess and their powers will be lost as well. Option two is if they want to keep their powers and become something different. No one knows what they will become because they disappear forever. Some people think that they become guardians among the stars. Since Serena is a daughter of Selene and Hekate resulting her to have a third option. She can become the Goddess of the Night.

With all of that going on in the goddess’s lives this make a perfect series. I totally recommend this series to anyone who would like a good series.

Lies and Plague by Micheal Grant

I had blogged about the 1^st and 2^nd book of the GONE series last time. So this time I am going to write about the 3^rd and 4^th books.

The third book in this series is Lies. In this book Orsay, a girl that can see into other people’s dreams, has a friend. No one has ever seen this friend; the friend calls herself Nerezza. Nerezza is not someone that you would typically forget. Nerezza tricks Mary, head of the daycare, into letting Jill, who sings like a siren, to live with Orsay. They had found Jill in Brittney’s grave. Brittney has been dead for awhile, ever-since-the-battle-at-the-power-plant awhile. Orsay is claiming that she can even see people’s dreams that live outside of the FAYZ. One night Orsay gets a dream from Sam’s mother. His mother had told Orsay that she needs to tell Sam “There's a time when the world no longer needs heroes. And then the true hero knows to walk away.” They find Brittney sitting on Howard and Orc’s couch. Brittney has been granted immortality so she doesn’t need food or water to love on like everyone else. Sam orders Brianna, she has enhanced speed, to keep Brittney in her house. Down on the beach someone had reported seeing Drake Merwin, the person who has a whip like arm. When Sam gets down to the beach they find a dead person with whip marks all over their body. Meanwhile the HC is making a deal with Caine. Bug, power of camouflage, says that there is an island off the shore of Perdido Beach that they can go. Caine tells Zil, leader of the HC, to set Perdido Beach on fire so they can get through the town, steal some boats, and make it to the islands. Caine never believed Zil would be brave enough to actually do it, but Zil did come through. While people are trying to put the fires out Caine, Diana, Bug, and Penny (makes people see horrible hallucinations). On that island the little group from Coates finds Sanjint and his siblings. Sanjint can tell that Caine and his friends aren’t very good people so when he slips them something in their food. Then while Caine and his friends are still asleep Sanjint and his siblings sneak out and escape using the helicopter and crash land in Perdido Beach. Mary, one of the most important people in the FAYZ, 15th birthday is coming up. Nerezza convinces Mary that is she “steps out” of the FAYZ she will be home again, but there is a catch. Mary has to be at the cliff overlooking the beach. Mary takes all of the children in the daycare with her; of course they are little kids so they are all holding hands. When Mary “steps out” she walks off of the cliff and takes the children with her! Thanks to Dekka, power of antigravity, and Brianna they save the kids in the neck of time. Drake is revealed to share the same body as Brittney. Sometimes it is Brittney sometimes it is Drake. After that is all over Pete finds his game boy smashed on the ground. Pete totally flips out and starts screaming, in that little bit of time the FAYZ wall disappears and everyone sees what is going on outside.

The fourth book in that series is Plague. In this book Michael Grant describes what life is like from Pete’s point of view. He has the Darkness on one side of him and everyone else is on the other side. And he is balancing in the middle on a sheet of glass. Then the book goes back to the normal point of view. Three girls all named Jennifer have the flu or what everyone thinks is the flu. It is actually a fever that starts out like the flu but ends up making you literally cough your lungs out! Even Lana’s healing powers are useless to fix the disease. Then Hunter, microwave-like heat powers, is out hunting a lion when he discovers that the growth on his shoulder is eating him from the inside out. Sam, Dekka, and Jack meet up with Hunter and Sam, out of pity incinerates Hunter. But those insects in him were completely unharmed. So after they kill those insects they continue on their journey to find water at the lake, since water is so scarce in Perdido Beach. Drake/Brittney is locked up in Orc and Howard’s basement, but Orc when drunk let it out and it starts to use the insects, which were created by the Darkness, to try and kill Sam and his crew for revenge, either the Darkness or Drake I don’t remember. There is to much bad blood between Sam and Drake so there has to be a battle between them. Once done with Sam Drake goes out to murder Astrid and capture Pete. As that battle goes on Quinn was sent to go get Caine off of the island that he is on to come and help Perdido Beach. Caine agrees because he believes it will be a good chance to take over the town. At the end of the book Astrid throws Pete to the insects and Pete makes them disappear along with himself! Will they all be trapped in the FAYZ forever? Also Caine and Sam agree that Caine will rule Perdido Beach as a king and Sam will control the lake but not be a king. Whoever wants to can live with Sam or live with Caine. Surprisingly Diana chooses to live in Sam’s territory. Will Caine be okay with this?

This book series has a fifth book out as well but I have no read it yet. The fifth book is called FEAR.

GONE, HUNGER by Michael Grant

The GONE series by Michael Grant is a science fiction series that is impossible to put down. These are 400-500 almost 600 page books, so know that it’s going to be good. Since this series is 4 books and are long books I will break this series up into two blogs, so it won’t be so long for you to read it.

The first book in this series is GONE. The main character is Sam Temple, a 14 year old. You may be wondering why I told you Sam’s age. Well in this series age is almost as important as food and water. If you are confused I will explain what had happened in the small town of Perdido Beach.

Sam isn’t exactly a normal kid. He has an unbelievable power. He can have light come out of his hands, but that very light can melt and kill almost anything. This power can come in handy because everyone 15 and older disappeared. They were gone. No one knows what had happened; all that they know is that the oldest people are 14 year old kids and that a big dome is trapping them inside and trapping everyone else out. They all turn to school bus Sam (a name that he had gotten when a bus driver had a heart attack and he a first grader was the one who pulled the bus over) for help. Little does everyone know Sam isn’t the one with the most power in the FAYZ (Fallout Alley Youth Zone), but rather an autistic little kid named Pete (Little Pete). Little Pete is Astrid’s (Sam’s crush/girlfriend) younger brother. Since Pete is autistic he doesn’t actually know what is going on, or that he created the FAYZ, with the help of what people call the Darkness. Only two people know about Pete’s powers; those two people are Astrid (of course) and surprisingly Sam. The Coates Academy has actually taken over Perdido Beach, with Sam’s twin brother (Caine, who has the power to move things with his mind) in charge. Caine is not the best person for the job, because he wants to be treated like a king. Will he get full control over Perdido Beach, or will the kids with developing powers like Sam and Caine be able to over throw him?

The second book in this series is Hunger. In this book everyone is starving, especially the darkness. T he darkness hungers for something totally different then what everybody else considers food. The darkness hungers for what runs the light and electricity in Perdido Beach. The darkness hungers for uranium. That’s right I said uranium the radioactive kind of stuff. While the food dwindles down in town and at Coates, the wars still wage. Now that Perdido Beach kicked Caine out of power and sent him back to Coates a war has begun between the two places. Now that if you don’t have a power you might just die, or the other way around. With the Human Crew (HC) out in the streets of Perdido Beach anything could happen. As I already said everyone in Perdido Beach is hungry, hungry doesn’t even describe what the kids in the FAYZ are feeling. The word ravenous describes what the kids are feeling now. For food Caine decides to take over the Power Plant the runs Perdido Beach’s power in exchange for food. Only the food isn’t for him it is for the darkness. Besides Sam and Caine another important character is Lana, otherwise known as the Healer. Lana has met the Darkness. Lana is what the Darkness wants to make it human. Lana always has the Darkness in her mind, and is always hearing the words that it had spoken to her. Well in this book Lana makes her mind up that she will kill the Darkness. Lana believes that she will try to blow it up and almost succeeds in doing so, but she got so close to doing so… then the Darkness had pulled her into the cave. Then it possesses her and she has no control over her body or actions. What will she do like this?

In my next blog I will tell you about the third and fourth books in the GONE series.

Heist Society by Ally Carter

                The Heist Society series by Ally Carter is an action packed series. At first I didn’t want to read this series, but I got it as a gift so read the first book. I am so glad that I had gotten them because they are mind-blowing books.

                The first book is called Heist Society. The main character’s name is Katrina Bishop or Kat as her friends call her. I guess that you could say that Kat’s family has a shady history. Yours would be too if you belonged to a family of thieves.  At first she tries to leave her old life behind and start a new life at the Colgan School. She does a fairly good job of leaving her old life behind, but when family needs help will she accept the job. A private collection has been stolen, by someone who uses the name Visily Romani. That isn’t his real name but actually a Chelovek Pseudonima. This means scared names. Kat’s dad was one of the only people who could have pulled off this job.  The owner of the private collection even has a list of people that could have done it. That list has only one name and that is Bobby Bishop, Kat’s dad. To clear her dads name Kat has to leave her boarding school life, which is easy since W.W. Hale the Fifth (Hale) has gotten her expelled. The owner of the private collection is Arturo Taccone who isn’t a bad person like Kat and her family, but an entirely different type of bad. He is even threatening to kill Kat’s dad if he doesn’t return the paintings. Taccone isn’t what you would call a normal bad guy. Kat and her family are normal bad guys, but Taccone wants his paintings back, so bad that he is having Kat do it for him. One thing that had crossed my mind was “Why doesn’t Taccone just go to the police for his paintings?” If he can’t does that mean that they aren’t his in the first place? He gives Kat two weeks to get the paintings back. Will her teenage crew be able to get them back in time?

                The second book is called Uncommon Criminals.  Again Kat and her teenage crew come together to get the Cleopatra Emerald back to its rightful owner; which is who exactly. At first the team got the Cleopatra Emerald back to who they thought was the right person. But people aren’t always who they seem to be. Realizing what they had done it is their job to get the Emerald back to the Auction House. Since that person had tricked them into giving her are Kat and her crew able to pull it off from one of the best thieves in the world? She had even tricked Kat’s Uncle Eddie and Uncle Charlie into hating one another. Will the brother’s fight stand in the way of Kat needing to have them both in the plan? Or will the plan fail completely? After all, the Cleopatra Emerald is cursed.

                If you want to read great books then I would recommend reading this series. You may learn something about art in Heist Society.

Kidnapped by Gordon Korman

The Kidnapped series by Gordon Korman is an exciting book filled with mystery. This series follow the On the Run series. When I had first read this series I had read it on a recommendation from a friend. I had read the Kidnapped series as soon as I could, but I hadn’t read the On the Run series. So once I figured that out I made sure I read that series.

                The first book in the Kidnapped series is Abduction. In this book Meg Falconer is kidnapped for not so mysterious reasons. Since her parents are had mistakenly help out a terrorist group, they had just been proven innocent. At first they had no idea why that should influence a kidnapping, but then the lights went on and they had figured out that the kidnappers would kidnap Meg for some kind of revenge, or ransom.  Now to try and get Meg back Aiden, Meg’s older brother, has to team up with the one person who had given the Falconers all of their bad reputation. He must team up with the FBI’s Agent Harris. He was the one who put their parents in jail. He was the one who turned Aiden and Meg into fugitives, and chased them 7,000 miles. Will Aiden be able to handle it, or will he go off on his own and follow the clues only he could know. Will Meg even live through this kidnapping, since she saw the kidnapper’s faces?

                The second book is called The Search. Now that Agent Harris had been taken off of the case Agent Sorenson took his place. This could be good and bad. Good because the Falconers don’t like him. Bad because Agent Sorenson is a by-the-book kind of person.  So that really won’t help the clues that Meg is giving because only Aiden and Harris will go for them. Aiden is eventually forced to leave because nobody believes that Meg is sending clues. The only person who does isn’t on the case. Aiden has to go back to living like a fugitive if he doesn’t want to be returned to home. Will he be able to do it and succeed at finding Meg? Or will he find himself in to much trouble to handle it on his own?

                The third book is called The Rescue. In this book Meg has escaped from her captors. But she couldn’t have had worse weather to do it in. She ends up getting caught in a blizzard with two feet of snow on its way down. Meg’s parents have decided to get pay the ransom that the kidnappers want. When they go to pay they figure out that the person that they trusted may just be another person in the kidnapping? Will she get caught by the blizzard and get hypothermia? Will Meg get caught by her kidnappers again? Who could the fourth kidnapper be?

                   I totally recommend this book for anyone who wants to read a series filled with questions. It is an amazing series.

Gallagher Girl series by Ally Carter

The Gallagher Girl series by Ally Carter are thrilling books with an exciting turn in every chapter. This series consists of four books, which I recommend reading in order because it is way easier to understand what’s going on. Why I say that is because I read the books out of order because when I had started the series the library didn’t have the first so I had to read them out of order. I had ended up reading the series in this order: book #2, book #4, book #3, and then book #1. These books all take place in a top secret spy school called the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, but to everyone else in the world it is just a school for rich girls.

                The first book is called I’d Tell You I Love you, but then I’d have to Kill You. In this book Cameron Morgan (Cammie) is a sophomore in the Gallagher Academy, and even when you go to a school with and you almost never leave the walls of the school trouble always finds her. Until she gets a new Covert Operations (CoveOps) teacher. Now that she has a new teacher, she has to get use to his new rules and his teaching styles. This means that she will have to go outside and into a regular all-American town. During a CoveOps assignment she may just get to have a not-so-normal relationship with a normal boy. Will she be able to manage to keep it going? Or will sneaking out of one of the most secure places in the world be a problem.

                The second book in this series is called Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy. In this book Cammie is finally getting used to Mr. Solomon (new CoveOps teacher), but then he takes Cammie and her whole CoveOps class on a mission. The mission is something that is important to being a spy, losing a tail. The tail had actually turned out to be people that they never knew even existed. Those people were boys from a very questionable spy school for only boys, and that place is called Blackthorne. Cammie and her 3 best friends actually conducted an experiment to see what makes them seem so suspicious. One boy in particular is drawn to Cammie. That boy’s name is Zachary Goode (Zach), and just like Cammie he is a pavement artist.

                The third book is called Don’t Judge a Girl by Her Cover. In this book Cammie gets to go to Macey’s dad’s ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­campaign. Instead going to support her, she and Macey nearly escape a kidnapping attempt. It was a good thing that they were Gallagher Girls otherwise they would have been goners, or maybe if they weren’t Gallagher Girls would they have been almost kidnapped. So for Macey’s protection the CIA has assigned one of their best agents as her protector. When Cammie had found out that Aunt Abby was the protector she didn’t know what to think. So Cammie and her other 2 best friends decided to sneak out of their school and accompany her to the rest of the campaigns and rallies, but of course they aren’t allowed to so they have to do it in secret. At one of the rallies Cammie comes face to face with Zach who she hasn’t been trying to think about, but then she realizes that he was in Boston, which was where the kidnapping attempt had happened. Towards the end of the book she is with Zach again, and in a flash things turn from good to terrible. I won’t tell you how it ends because if you haven’t read the series I don’t want to give it away.

                The fourth book is called Only the Good Spy Young. In this book Cammie is one of the most guarded girls in the world, so when Mr. Solomon shows up she trusts him. But that doesn’t mean that everyone else does. After that night it had seemed like Mr. Solomon had disappeared off the face of the earth. Cammie just can’t shake off what he had said that night to her. “Follow the pigeons” was exactly what he had said to her. Even though the teachers had blocked all of the secret passages that they knew about, but Cammie knew even more, so there are always ways to get out. In this book and the second Zach is one of the main characters. At the end of the third book we find out that the kidnapping attempt was done by the Circle of Cavan, and that they weren’t after Macey they were after Cammie. At the end of this book you get to learn one of Zach’s biggest secrets.

                This is a great series and I recommend it to anyone who wants to read an action packed book, filled with secrets.

The Hunger Game series by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Game series by Suzanne Collins is a great series that I recommend if you want to read an excellent book series. I was actually up at 1:00a.m to finish the first one.

The first book is called the Hunger Games. In this book North America is nothing what it is like today. For one thing there is no United States anymore. It is now called Panem and there is twelve districts all ruled by cruel capital. Each district has something that they make/produce. For example District Twelve has coal mines, District Eleven is agriculture, and District One is gems, so get what I am saying. Right away we learn that there was a time period that they call the Dark Days. The Dark Days was when there had been a rebellion against the capital. Because of the rebellion there is no more District Thirteen, and the hunger games had begun as punishment for the districts.

                The hunger games come around every year. There will be two tributes from each district, one boy and one girl, from the ages 12-18 and they get thrown into an arena and have to compete to the death. Since the capital citizens didn’t rebel they don’t have to send their children into the arena. To find out who has to go into the arena everyone must go to a thing that they call a reaping. Then they out all of the names into a bowl; you can sign up for a tesserae so you can have more food for the year, but there is a catch because for every tesserae that you sign up for your name goes in the bowl one more time. So Katniss (the main character) is in the bowl 20 times and Gale (her best friend) is in the bowl 42 times. Once a girl named Katniss volunteers for her sister and a boy named Peeta gets called at the reaping. After the reaping Madge (mayor of District Twelve’s daughter) gives her a mockingjay pin. That pin could just be exactly what the districts need as a “spark” to put things in motion. When Katniss the girl on fire volunteered at the reaping, she had also volunteered for something much, much bigger than what she knew.

                The second book of the Hunger Game series is called Catching Fire. In this book the Hunger games will be a Quarter Quell. A Quarter Quell happens every 25 years, and they put a twist on the regular Hunger Games, for example one year they put twice the number of tributes in the arena, but this Quarter Quell they will have two victors of the Hunger Games, so from District Twelve it will either be Haymitch (their mentor last year) and Katniss, or Peeta and Katniss. No matter which boy tribute gets called Katniss has to be the girl tribute from District Twelve. She will be the youngest girl there since she had just one the last Hunger Games. This could either be an advantage or a disadvantage. It could be a disadvantage because they might not be as good as competitors as the older tributes. It could be an advantage because they don’t know anyone so they won’t feel guilty about winning. Toward the end of this book I was not ever expecting what had happened, but I had LOVED the ending because it had made it impossible to not continue into the other book.

The third and final book of the Hunger Game series is called Mockingjay. In this book we learn that District Thirteen actually does exist. Katniss and Gale are kind of in a “special” group that deals with the rebellion that has been building up for years. Even though Katniss had made it out of the arena Peeta had not had the same luck. He was instead taken by the capital and had been what everyone in District Thirteen calls “hijacked.” Hijacked means that they inject trackerjacker (a mutation of a bee) venom and play images of a person then twist them so they aren’t the same. For Peeta they played images of Katniss and twisted them so bad that he would want to kill her.  It takes some time but they get Peeta back to normal. At the end of the book I couldn’t put it down.  I had to learn what happened next. They had all decided that they had to kill President Snow who “ruled” Panem, so President Coin from District Thirteen could take over. Katniss being herself had done the unexpected and I won’t give it all away but neither of them became president.

                These are all of the books in the Hunger Game series. After finishing this series I can’t wait for the movie to come out!

               The Hunger Games movie is in theaters now. I loved the books so naturally I went to the movie. Despite what people may say it isn’t that gross, well at least to me it wasn’t. As for my friend she wasn’t so thrilled at times. I was amazed how well Gary Ross, the director, had made it so much like the book. A lot of times the movies and the books are completely different from one another. But with the Hunger Games that simply isn’t the case.