This is a splendid take on the childhood favorite 'Choose Your Own Adventure' series. The 'A Date With Destiny' series only has one other title -  'Night of a Thousand Boyfriends'.

 

'Escape From Fire Island!' finds you and your narcissistic best friend Jose battling the weekend crowds to Fire Island only to have a zombie apocalypse break out almost as soon as you set out your towel.

 

First of all, let's get the bad stuff out of the way: some of the humor is dated. The jokes against drag queens and transsexuals can easily be taken the wrong way. There is a spirit of fun to the piece, but....urgh. On the other hand, the radioactive zombies' "tells" are a penchant for boas and calling you Mary as their press on nails slice open your throat, so some aggressive language against the queen zombies is to be expected.

 

The other problem I had was more mechanical, in several instances the exact page is duplicated: same text, same directions at the bottom, etc. Why not just have instructions go back to one page instead of wasting space? We could have fit in a couple more story threads with those pages.

 

Everything else about this book is amahzing. The cover design and interior illustrations call back to the original book series and it was a lot of fun seeing all the adventures to be had while saving Fire Island from Champagne Toast's zombie horde and/or President Bush's nukes. There were mermen, there were sexy secret agents, there were glory holes. It has everything.

 

I needed a good laugh, and you probably do too. This should do the trick.

The chapters of this book that are about the eruption of Laki, the effects on Iceland and continental Europe, and so forth—basically, the chapters that reflect the subtitle of the book—were good.

But too many chapters were volcanic history. Past eruptions and their effects on the planet and people. Possible past eruptions and possible future eruptions and possible effects.

Too much high school science class volcano info. Too much conjecture. But the core of the book is interesting.

Those of you who've been following me for some time might just know that I'm always looking for nice YA Dystopian stories, preferably in some original setting. The island of Lanai (in Hawaii) definitely makes for one.

 

I find this book a hard one to judge. I really wanted to like it, not just because of the setting but also because it has dragons. Spirit dragons, but dragons nevertheless. The premise is very good as well. As technology is destroyed, can a community survive? Especially one that is already isolated and dependent on the other Hawaiian island and the American mainland to provide for most of it's necessities. Though this of course isn't a problem that would only affect islands like Lanai, I think many places, including where I live, are heavily dependent on import of food, even though that we would have more means to find out what happened (at least to Europe).

 

But that's about it. It's never explained what this disaster is that's causing all these problems. And although it helps to connect to the characters (which was difficult by the way) as they don't know either, I like it when there's at least some kind of explanation given. The rest is less original. Main character with a dead mother and alcoholic/abusive father, a quest, and did I mention the plain crash?

 

All in all, it was quite enjoyable to read but it fell a bit short for me eventually. I'd expected more of it. Especially after reading a lot of very enthusiastic reviews. Very interesting premise, but the execution could have been better.

 

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Island Fire was an exceedingly well paced adventure with a light supernatural element and fully fleshed out main and supporting characters. The main points of view switch between Bea and her brother Sam, the teenage children of an alcoholic father on the island of Lanai, and Nick, a teenage pickpocket headed to Maui to live with his grandparents. Their worlds collide in a very LOST-y kind of way, with all the technology has been fried and they must rely on natural instincts and survival skills in order to set their lives right again. Toby Neal captures the essence of being a teenager in both Bea and Sam very well, as well as sibling relationships and the complicated and warring feelings toward an abusive father. This story seems more like their story, though, with Nick more so as a supporting character who gets some time to shine occasionally. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since Bea is the obvious protagonist in the novel.

My only real complaint would be not finding out why and how the technology ended up dying out on Lanai, as well as on surrounding islands. I would have liked to have had a series of these books, maybe, with Bea and Sam being apart of some kind of huge cover-up or being "chosen ones" that must save the world from a supernatural element bent on destroying it. That would have upped the adventure and supernatural/thriller/suspense element for me, but it's also okay without it. It's all in all a nice coming of age story in a survival setting.

Moonlight Reader started the TBR Thursday, and I think it's a good way to a) show what new books I've got and b) confront myself with my inability to lower my TBR. In fact, since I started recording it, it has risen significantly. I get the feeling I'm doing something wrong here...

 

I've got absolutely no time, so I've prepared this in advance and it's just the books I received this week. Hopefully, I'll be a bit less stressed next week.

 

TBR pile currently stands at 258. (+9)

(Netgalley ARCs at 90 (+5))