The Escape by Hannah Jayne Review

Can you say Deus ex machina?

In case you didn't know Deus ex machina means putting the hand of god into your story. Hannah Jayne utilizes this to a point that she shouldn't, making the ending too easy and the resolution of a 250 page book end in one page.

Let's start with the summary (from the back): Not everyone who goes into the woods come out... It was supposed to be a short hike, a way for Fletcher and Adam to kill time one boring afternoon. But when day turns into night and neither boy returns home, their town is thrown into turmoil. Search teams comb the forest. Then Avery, the police chief's daughter, stumbles on a body. It's Fletcher - disoriented, beaten, and covered in blood. He has no memory of the incident, and worse yet, he has no idea what happened to the still-missing Adam... As danger and suspicion grow, one thing becomes very clear: No one can escape the truth.

Plot: Like any good mystery it starts with someone disappearing, and another person being involved but not being able to remember anything. I believe the plot is believable until the end when she brings in deus ex machina (hand of god). It screws up the whole plot. It builds to a great climax and then there is no resolution just a quick some up in a couple paragraphs and some of the resolutions make absolutely no sense. I'll get into some of these resolutions in the character's portion.

Characters:
Avery: I have a few things to say about this character, annoying and over-dramatic. Your average teenage girl (I can say that, I was a teenage girl once). She is pushy and wants to know what happens which eventually almost gets her killed, a classic mystery thriller protagonist.

Fletcher: I loved him, you were struggling to understand things as he did, he creeped you out yet you sympathized with him. This character was really well written.

Chief Templeton: A concerned father and police chief. He was a classic do the right thing, straight arrow sort of character that worked in this story. No complaints or absolute praises for this character.

Mrs. Carroll (fletcher's mother): She was weird, and extremely overprotective. You understand the character more towards the end, but she was still a flat character and you definitely do not connect with the character. She is also involved in the deus ex machina at the end that makes the author's story completely unravel.

Secondary characters: There are so many characters that are brought in and only there for a page or two and then seem to disappear. I find it strange. I felt as if the author just threw the characters in at the right time to get Fletcher or Avery from point A to point B.

Genre: Mystery thriller. Definitely stuck in the genre and you could tell what the genre was instantly.


World Believability and Ending: The world was definitely believable. Even with the main character being overdramatic you definitely could picture the modern day world and no weird elements were thrown in that did not fit in the world. The ending, oh boy. The ending ruins this entire book. I mean come on. The climax was riveting, but the ending was disappointing. the resolution was a page and it seemed as if the author didn't know how to end it and didn't know how to tie in the loose ends and so she threw god's hand in to fix what she couldn't fix. Definitely not my favorite ending. The build up was great and then when I finished I was left disappointed.


Overall Grade: C, I'm giving this book such a generous grade because the climax was so well written.

An Ember in the Ashes Review

 An Ember in the Ashes
Sabaa Tahir

SUMMARY (from the back of book):
Laia is a slave.
Elias is a soldier.
Neither is free.
Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Laia and her family do not challenge the Empire. They've seen what happens to those who do. But when Laia's brother is arrested for treason, she is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promise to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire's greatest military academy. There, Laia meets Elias, the school's finest soldier - and secretly, its most unwilling. He and Laia will soon realize that their destinies are intertwined - and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.

I'm going to start off with things that didn't work and things that did work with each part of the book.

PLOT:
Should I say plot or so many plots sometimes it was hard to follow. Ok, so general plot Laia wants to save her brother so she goes undercover as a slave for the rebels. Two different motivations right there, spying and saving her brother who is in prison. So two different goals with just one character. This could be a book in itself, but you also follow Elias' perspective. He is fighting to become emperor but yet he wants to desert. So you have a whole bunch of different things happening with him as well. There are two main plots Elias' journey and Laia's and how they eventually come together. However, there are many small subplots that the author is going to have trouble resolving all of them throughout the series.

CHARACTERS:
Oh boy, so many characters! Why do people feel a book needs to be saturated with characters? NO! Simplify it, only have your core characters and secondary characters. Ok, first the core characters.

Laia: She lost her parents and sister to the martials and now her brother has been taken to prison, not only that, but her grandparents get murdered right in front of her eyes by a mask. You would think she would want to aid the resistance in taking down the empire right? Wrong. She doesn't care whatsoever. She only aids them because she wants them to get her brother out of prison because she doesn't have the courage to do it herself. The thing that kills me is she is spying for the resistance, this is a huge plot line by the way, and she discovers nothing! She is spying on the leader of the school and she gets nothing! All she manages to do is get beat up every five seconds! Come on, get something useful. She misses to many opportunities and all she is worried about the whole time is whether Keenan (a resistance fighter) likes her. Come on, seriously?

Elias: I love Elias, he basically saves the book, his internal conflict within himself with wanting to desert and also wanting to do what he has been trained to do is written phenomenally. He brings you in, you feel what he is feeling. He is definitely a well rounded, emotionally driven character.

Kitchen-Girl or Izzi: I like her, I wish I could know more, honestly she was much more interesting than the main girl Laia, and if she isn't back in the next book I am going to be extremely disappointed. She is a heroine and protagonist herself. She was written just to be a "side-kick" to Laia but I do not think that is fair to the character. She has been a slave since she was five and has a dark and twisted past. She wants to help the resistance and she truly is a fighter in her own right.

Keenan: Bleh. He is the most unbelievable character. This weird attraction between him and Laia is even more unbelievable. They barely speak to each other and the author basically takes a leap because they have this shared past of losing their families that they need to be together. No. I would have liked and believed the character better if he was just like the resistance leader Mazen.

Mazen: Resistance leader, total jerk, totally awesome. He is exactly what you would expect of a liar and a cheater only out for power and his own personal gain. But he is amazingly well written. I loved the character.

Commadant: Leader of Blackcliff. Total Sociopath. Terrifying yet amazing. This character is so violent and cruel you cannot imagine how a person could get that way, yet the character is completely believable. When in doubt always put a terrifying sociopath in your book.

Helene: Elias' friend and fellow Mask. She came across flat to me. She never really developed as a character, she just came across as a violent, lovesick puppy. I think she has a bigger role in the next book and may develop more.

Do you think that is enough characters? Believe me there are more. TOO MANY CHARACTERS!

GENRE: Dystopian? Post Apacolyptic? Fantasy? Yeah needless to say I was confused. When I first started the book it felt extremely dystopian, and it is. But there started to be these mythical creatures talked about that you would see in a fantasy novel. However, the characters kept saying these things weren't real, so I didn't think it was fantasy, but all of the sudden, wait these creatures are real. What?! I thought this was dystopian, now it's fantasy? I had to look at the reviews on the back and they all claimed it to be fantasy. I think it is a mix between the two genres, but until I learned that it was, it felt like themes in the book were clashing.

WORLD BELIEVABILITY: Similar to what I said above about mixing genres. It felt like the world was clashing with its different elements until I was able to understand what was truly going on that it was both fantasy and dystopian. However, the believability of the world was strong. You are thrown into it by these terrible acts of violence. You sympathize instantly with the characters and pray for them to succeed.

OVERALL GRADE: B+
There were a few things I really didn't like about this book and there were things I loved, definitely was a fun and interesting read. I liked it enough to get the sequel. I definitely would recommend it if you like mixed genre novels.

YA book of the week!

An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

Review will be posted next Sunday!