Tuesday is the release of the Mockingjay, the incredibly super highly anticipated conclusion of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy. (But I don’t have to tell you that: let’s face it, if you like YA enough to read this blog, you already know that.) So here, have an open thread for discussing whatever you care to about the series. Who will live and who will die? Will Katniss have to go through a third round of games? Does Katniss end up with Gale or Peeta (and do you care who she ends up with)?

The only thing we ask is that, while spoilers for The Hunger Games and Catching Fire are fair game, no one spoils Mockingjay for 48 hours after its release (so all day Tuesday and Wednesday) so people will have a chance to read it for themselves. (I know I’m taking Tuesday off work to do so…)

Okay? Have at it!

All Vincent wants to do is invent toys, but it’s hard to do that with his family moving, his stepmother and stepsisters picking on him, and his inventions falling flat. When the chance to enter a toy inventing contest arises, though, Vincent knows that this may be just what he needs to make his dreams come true.

Nyaaaaargh.

I’m sorry, did you think I was leaving something out of that plot summary up there? Nope. I sat down to write this review, drew a complete blank on what to put as the summary, and resorted to checking the back cover blurb, which is just as vague and useless. I can’t really blame the blurb writer, though – the fault is with the book, which goes nowhere, ends nowhere, and accomplishes nothing along the way.

Basically we’ve got this Vincent kid, who lives in New York and wants to be a toy inventor. Then his mean old stepmother moves them to Minnesota. Then he hears about a world famous toy contest (What do you mean, a kid who cares about nothing but toy inventing should already know about a contest like this? Pshaw.) in New York. So he goes back to New York and enters the toy contest. That’s…pretty much it. There’s a subplot about a bunch of Nicola Tesla inventions that have just been found in a hotel, and how no one can figure out what one of them is, but a) the mystery was so poorly written that it took me hours after finishing the book to figure out why I had a vague sense of something being unfinished in the book, and b) it’s resolved so anticlimactically and off-the-cuff-ly that I, you know, had a vague sense of something being unfinished in the book. Also the villains aren’t introduced until halfway through the book, and don’t really do anything. Well plotted, sir.

Then there’s Vincent himself, who is incredibly unlikable. Aside from the fact that he’s thunderously boring, he clearly believes that the entire world should revolve around himself and his inventions. At one point he steals his six-year-old stepsister’s stuffed animals, cuts them up, and rearranges them into “Mixablez,” stuffed animals made up of two different kinds of animals. First off, it’s been done. Many times. (Don’t worry, I’ll get to the idiocy of the inventions in a minute.) Second, stealing your little sister’s toys and mutilating them? Kid, you aren’t an inventor. You’re Sid from Toy Story. You’re a monster. He also takes a fan from the hairdryer for an invention, causing it to almost electrocute his teenage stepsister the next morning. Not only does he not confess to or apologize for almost killing his sister, he feels absolutely no guilt about it. This turns into a “wacky” running gag where he takes parts from all of the household appliances and doesn’t tell anyone about it, thus inconveniencing his entire family, because, you know, he’s a genius.

And then we have the inventions. For starters, they all end with a Z: Mixablez, Windless Kitez, Pop Tunz. There is no explanation for this. Look, kids know that’s not cool. It’s what uncool grownups do to look cool. More importantly, though, there is nothing whimsical or fun about the toys. There’s one featured invention from Howard G. Whiz, the eccentric toymaker hosting the contest, who Kehoe clearly thinks is a new Willy Wonka (he’s not). It’s…a skateboard. WOO TASTE THE EXCITEMENT.

Vincent’s toys, meanwhile, are not only dull, they miss the entire point. He’s got a basketball that you can aim with a targeting system so you never miss, and a baseball bat that expands when you swing so that, again, you never miss. Way to completely ruin the game, dude. Then there’s his Windless Kitez (arrrrrgh), which are made of metal and work by running high voltage up them, so they don’t need wind and you can fly them inside. Not only are they, you know, lethal, but people don’t not fly kites inside because there’s no wind. They don’t fly kites inside because there’s no room. The point of a kite is to run outside, into the wind, to let it unspool from your hand and watch it dance on the breeze, a tiny point of color in a field of blue. It’s not to stand alone in your bedroom staring at something that doesn’t move. All of the inventions are like this. It’s like Vincent’s childhood is so depressing he wants to force the children of the world to buy his toys and be equally depressed.

I wracked my brain, but I couldn’t think of one positive thing about this book except that it’s kind of short. So The Unusual Mind of Vincent Shadow gets zero cupcakes, and is getting kicked out of book collection posthaste.

Title: Nancy Drew and the Secret of the Old Clock
Author: Carolyn Keene
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 180
Summary: Nancy investigates a lost will that will benefit various virtuous spinsters and orphans, and eats several slices of cake.
Thoughts: Oh, Nancy. With only 50 minutes left I went for an easy reread, and Nancy’s super-polite badassery was as charmingly ridiculous as always.

Three and a half cupcakes

Final book/page count/hours tally coming soon, plus payment info for sponsors.

Title: Exposure
Author: Mal Peet
Genre: Athletics sociopolitical crime drama? Also, Shakespeare fanfic again.
Pages: 430
Summary: When Otello, a black soccer player in a racially-divided unnamed South American country, and pop star Desmerelda meet, it’s love at first sight, but the machinations of Otello’s two-faced agent Diego may destroy them both.
Thoughts: Really interesting world, really interesting exploration of racial dynamics. I liked Paul Faustino, the sports journalist who apparently is the connecting thread in several of Peet’s books, and his subplot with a handful of doomed street kids. But the transition from Othello wasn’t quite as smooth. Diego’s complete lack of motivation for his evil is less acceptable in a modern book than Iago’s is, and, well, spoilers: show

Two and a half cupcakes

Title: California Diaries: Ducky, Diary 1
Author: Ann M. Martin
Genre: Teen drama llama
Pages: 180
Summary: One of Ducky’s best friends is turning into a bully, while the other is crawling into his own depressed shell.
Thoughts: After four books of Ducky ex machina, I was interested to see this guy’s internal landscape. And yes, I can see why he’s such a popular character – his neurosis and his concern for others is very likeable. (Also he’s probably gay, and that’s always a big hit in fandom.) One question, though: Why does Ann M. Martin (or her flock of ghostwriters) apparently think that boys don’t learn lowercase letters in school? Logan, Jeff, Ducky, and I’m pretty sure Jackie and…maybe David Michael?…all write in all caps.

Four cupcakes

Title: The Ear, the Eye and the Arm
Author: Nancy Farmer
Genre: Near-future sf/f
Pages: 301

Summary: Three wealthy children decide to sneak out of their safe home in Zimbabwe, and are promptly kidnapped. While they try to escape and find their way home, their mother hires the only detectives she can find: the Ear, the Eye and the Arm, whose exposure to nuclear waste has turned them into mutants — mutants with powers that may make them the only ones who can find the kids.

Thoughts: I picked this one up because I was looking for that rare unicorn of a book, a science fiction novel that’s not about white people. I definitely got that; the fact that this takes place in Africa is not window dressing. The book deals a lot with the struggle between traditional tribal beliefs and modern problems. I don’t know enough — let’s face it, anything — about Zimbabwean culture to judge if it handles it well and respectfully, but nothing really set off my BS radar. The characters were kind of flat, but the set pieces were fun, and I liked the redemption of the first villain the kids faced.

Four cupcakes.

Title: California Diaries: Amalia, Diary 1
Author: Ann M. Martin
Genre: Teen drama llama
Pages: 180
Summary: Amalia starts volunteering with her sister at a women’s shelter, while dealing with an abusive boyfriend of her own.
Thoughts: I like Amalia, and THANK GOD that for once someone in a BSC-universe series actually deals with a dangerous situation in an appropriate fashion. Amalia breaks up with James pretty much the moment he almost hits her, and doesn’t confuse “fighting her own battles” with “confronting him alone like a moron.” This is paralleled really well with the shelter story, which a) shows how hard it is for battered women to accept that they need to leave their abusive husbands/boyfriends, b) points out the importance of restraining orders, calling the police, and in general being prepared and safe, and c) makes the heartbreaking point that the law often doesn’t do enough to protect women. All very well done, and actually brought a couple of tears to my eyes. (Which was why the total bullshit ending made me throw the book across the room. YOU NEED TO TELL THE POLICE OR AT LEAST THE PRINCIPAL THAT YOUR EX-BOYFRIEND IS A SOCIOPATHIC STALKER.)

Four and a half cupcakes

Title: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume 1: The Pox Party
Author: M. T. Anderson
Genre: Historical fiction
Pages: 351
Summary: Octavian has been raised as a bizarre science experiment his entire life, but as the Revolutionary War explodes around him, he begins to question his place in the world – not as a specimen, but as a human being.
Thoughts: This is a brilliantly-written, deeply-disturbing book. Like, I went to bed in the middle of it and had to think really hard about ponies and sunshine in order to keep myself from having nightmares. It absolutely captures the style of late 18th-century American writings and delves deep into the horrible, hypocritical debates about slavery that cropped up during a war supposedly fought for liberty and equality. There’s not much plot and a whole lot more agonized philosophy, which isn’t really to my taste, but it is a very good book.

Four cupcakes

Title: California Diaries: Maggie, Diary 1
Author: Ann M. Martin
Genre: Teen drama llama
Pages: 180
Summary: Maggie is torn between auditioning to sing in a garage band, and being the perfect little daughter her movie producer father wants her to be.
Thoughts: Not bad. I tend to relate to school perfectionist stories. The poetry was dreadful, but that’s to be expected.

Three and a half cupcakes

Title: Alphas
Author: Lisi Harrison
Genre: Teen drama llama
Pages: 271
Summary: Backstabbing and boy-craziness at an ultra-high tech school for talented teenage girls, run by a Machiavellian bitch-goddess.
Thoughts: I want to stick a spoon into my ear canal and scoop this book out of my brain. Uggggh. I hate the “catty rich girls” subgenre of girls’ media out there, and this is a prime example (the author has also created The Clique series). Everyone in this book is vile and the prose is so aggressively trendy it will be dated next week, not to mention nonsensical. “Skye launched into a perfect pique turn, arms wide, hands clasped, as if hugging Kevin Fat-erline. ‘You want to be solid and liquid at the same time, like an unopened juice box on a whirling merry-go-round.’” NONSENSE. There’s rampant fat-hate, a mostly-white and definitely pro-blonde cast, and the whole thing is just a training manual for a future generation of materialistic sociopaths who view all other girls as competition and all boys as fresh meat. Also, “LIP-KISSING” IS NOT A THING. STOP SAYING IT. NOW LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE, MY EYES ARE BLEEDING.

Zero cupcakes