Outside in

Hi this is my reveiw on Outside In.

Plot

This story is about a girl named Lynn who meets a strange girl named Blossom and after some struggle to find her again quickly become friends. Lynn then discovers that there is a family that is illegelly living in an ingenious bunker beneath the city reservoir that has a strange way of living. All the children in the family ran away or were abandoned. She folllows them around and does various things like posting notes random places around town, planting bulbs and selling toilet paper tube images makers while they change her ideas about materialism and beauty. During all this she has choir practices, schoolwork, dealing with her mother and trying to keep the underlanders a secret.

Characters

The main two characters in this book are Lynn and Blossom. Lynn is a responsable person that is kind but doesn't like her mother all that much. She doesn't have much character development but was a well made character and was one of my favorites. Blossom is a bit of an odd character and is very intelligent despite having next to no education. She is one of the abandoned children and is a well defined character

Voice

The voice in this book is a narrorator tellng the story from Lynn's point of veiw. They do a very good job at describing Lynns thoughts and emotions and it somtimes seems as if Lynn is the one talking. The voice seems like an actual person telling it instead of someoen justsaying the plot

Setting

The story takes place in many different streets and homes but mainly in Lynn's home and in the streets they sell things and do projects. They go to many different places throughout the novel which are usually places that a common citizen wouldn't know about such as parachuting off a tall building. The other setting are the mall, Lynn's house and school

(It's the setting icon)

That's the end I hope you enjoyed my blog!

Red Maple Review: The Boundless



The Boundless Book Critique

By: Ankit

Hello everyone! I am Ankit and welcome to my blogs. Today, (or whenever you bother to read this) I will be giving a summary of a novel I read (no spoilers so you can exhale) as well as critique it by talking about its strengths and weaknesses. As you could probably tell by the blog title, the book I read was called The Boundless.



The Book Cover

Now I will give you a summary so you know the gist of what the book is about.

Background

This thrilling historical fiction/mystery novel by Kenneth Oppel takes place on a train and is about a young boy, William Everett, who is a first class passenger on the longest train ever built. Called the Boundless, this train is travelling across the vast landscape of pioneer era Canada. This action packed story takes place in the late 19th century when the Canadian Pacific Railway was just recently built. As the story unfolds the main antagonist, Brogan is trying to kill Will because Will has a key to the funeral car. Dedicated to CPR project manager Cornelius Van Horne, the funeral car obviously contains something of value that Brogan wants. Driven by 100% greed, Brogan sets off to get the key and Will becomes the mouse in this key hunt.

I'm getting old! Let's move!

Characters

Now that I have given some background to the story, I will talk about the main characters of this novel. Will, the main character is a boy who is shy and has recently become very wealthy. His father was an engineer for the Canadian Pacific Railway, and was Cornelius Van Horne's most trusted man. He is now the manager of the Boundless and is a strong, smart, well-built man. Maren is a girl Will's age who accompanies him on his adventures and is also a performer on the train circus. She is strong-willed and becomes attached to Will as the story progresses. Brogan is the antagonist of this story and is also a strong smart man who feels dire need to get access to the funeral car. He has an army of brakemen who come up with plots to kill Will. Last but not least, Mr. Dorian, who is not particularly crucial to the plot but is the ringmaster of the circus and also seems to want something from the funeral car (DUN DUN DUN!) No, I will not spoil it. Don't worry...... take a deep breath.......

Ok, back to the point. Sorry about that. Sometimes I kind of go out of subject. Anyway, the main characters in this story are well rounded. They were not just "thought of in the shower", so to speak. The only issue I have in terms of characters is that the author should have made Mr. Dorian's personality consistent. I felt that in some aspects of the book he seemed like an intelligent man, and at the end he seemed like a person who could be easily fooled. Also, the only person in Brogan's army who has a unique personality is Brogan. The other people are not described in detail at all. All we know about them is they are men. Very specific.
My rating in terms of characters would be a four out of five.

  

Setting

This book takes place on a train (as you are probably aware by now) called The Boundless. This setting is original and interesting. This setting could have gone wrong and been extremely dry, but Oppel did a good job in not making it boring for the reader. He describes the train and the landscape it passes through vividly and in-detail to keep the reader from dosing off. I believe that setting of this story is the most thought out and unique. I salute the author for his creativity. 

I have never read a book that has a setting anything like this. I admire the way that it is described. I like original ideas that include thinking outside the box. It provides readers a glimpse of the hardships the engineers and workers faced while building the Canadian Pacific Railway. My rating for the setting is a 5 out of 5. What more can I say?



Plot

The plot is inadequate in my opinion. Some areas are extremely predictable if you have experience with reading similar stories. This is a book with Brogan and his army constantly coming to try to kill Will. The plot would have been EXTREMELY boring but thanks to Kenneth Oppel's marvelous writing it did not end up being too boring. His description kept the reader enticed and gave a vivid image of what was happening consistently throughout the plot. Towards the middle/end, the book got so repetitive I could almost exactly predict the ending (with a few specifics missing of course, but the general idea). The plot was not too well done compared to Oppel's other stories (very well done terms of plot)......

"It is always good to have a

                        story of your own"

       -Cornelius Van Horne, The Boundless



Some other Kenneth Oppel novels



Kenneth Oppel also used foreshadowing in his novel as shown in the quote above: at the beginning of the story, Van Horne said "It is always good to have a story of your own". That got me thinking about how Will was going to have an adventure and got me "hooked". To be honest, I have not read many Kenneth Oppel books; in fact only 2 or 3. But from what I know about Oppel, his plots are well thought out. I found this plot to be quite disappointing. I will give the plot a 3.5 out of five.

 

 

 

LINKS' CORNER

 

Every blog, I will provide at

least one link to enhance your knowledge,

to get you into books of the same

type, or see books by the same author.

 

Today, the link(s) is(are) (drumroll please)

 

KENNETH OPPEL'S OFFICIAL WEBSITE! 

Press Ctrl and click link

 

WIKIPEDIA LINK TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE RAILWAY

Press Ctrl and click link

 

Themes

 

Rating 4.5/5

 I will change things up a bit now just for you. I will give you my rating and then state the reasons. There are a few themes that stood out to me in this book. One of them is independence and courage. Will is trying to become more independent. His character grows from being a shy, awkward teen to a courageous and more independent hero who fights evil. Through his portrayal of social classes, Oppel also addresses the theme of social injustice prevalent in pioneer-era Canada many times in the novel consistently. Oppel expressed a variety of themes throughout the book creatively. Understanding this book requires basic knowledge of Canadian Pacific Railway history. The reader can learn a lot from this book and also have fun. As I briefly mentioned before, another main aspect to the novel that I figured out quite early is good vs. evil. Mostly, in this book the rules are laid in stone. A person is either rigidly good or rigidly evil. But there are one or two confused characters that roam around good and bad and are able to fool people for a while.

 

 

A couple examples of my last sentence


 



 





 

I'm just going to continue now.


Voice

Rating: 4/5

This book is in the author's point of view. Switching between minds, the author mostly stays on Will's mind and sometimes moves. My favourite parts were when the author sometimes moved to the villain's thoughts. (Remember his name? Started with a B, right?)
Brogan. Anyhow, it talks about Brogan's plans and sometimes (not enough in my opinion) leaves his plans and switches back to the protagonist, leaving the reader in suspense.




Not the most suspenseful; his face does not add to it much

If Oppel wanted real feedback, I would tell him to trail off in the villain's thoughts more because sometimes he finished the thought of the antagonist and ruined all the....

I think that is my new symbol for suspense now. Ok, now I just feel like one of those guys that is sarcastic to everything (no names).

Final Thoughts

I sincerely enjoyed this book. I strongly recommend it to anybody who likes trains, historical fiction novels, or fast-pace and repetitive plots. This book may teach you a lesson. Maybe it will teach you about the CPR. Maybe you will learn something about what social division was like in the late 1800's. Maybe you will learn about pioneer era Canada or about what CP Rail workers had to face. With an extremely creative setting, my overall rating for this novel (drumroll) is a 4.5 out of 5.

 

 

Zomboy

Zomboy

Plot

Zomboy is a novel about a boy named Imre who survived a nucular blast that killed his friends and family. Imre then goes to Canada and attends school with the two other main characters, Bob and Evil-O, Bob becomes suspisious of Imre wereas Evil-O Quickly become good freinds with him. Bob's suspisions are confirmed when a fast moving piano it's Imre and is split in half, the school nurse is cheking his pulse but doesn't find one. He is sent to multiple doctors and is comfirmed legally dead due to a desease called "Walking dead syndrom". Imre is officialy named a Zomboy because he is not a normal mindless zombie that eats humans. The news about Imre gets around the world fast and the responses are mostly negative with protesters against Imre and news channels filming around Imre allmost all the time only Evil-O and Bob are his freinds for a while until Imre becomes more popular by doing things like lifting the school bus, becoming class president and playing on the football team he even gets his only reality TV show. One day when over at Imre's house Bob discovers that there are strange things going on in there and is determined to find out what they are. The plot was pretty good but had a disapointing ending.

Characters
The main characters are Imre, Evil-O and Bob. Imre is a zomboy and the main protagonist  that has a very board expression all the time but can be kind and fun. He doesn't change throughout most of the book but his friendship with Bob grows towards the end. Evil-O is another main character that instantly becomes friends with Imre. She is caring, welcoming but tuff at the same time, she doesn't change that much during the book. Bob is the last main protagonist he didn't like Imre for a while but becomes freinds with him later in the book. Bob also seems to have a small crush on Evil-O and usually takes her friendieness towards Imre for affection.


Voice
The voice in zomboy is Bob's. This is important because his point of veiw doesn't give away the ending and is the most interesting to read. The author described Bob's thoughts and emotions very well and did a good job making it seem like an actuall boy's point of veiw.

Setting
Zomboy takes place in mostly in Dresden public school in Dresden, Ontario or in one of the main protagonist's houses. The Author described Dresden as very flat with pretty nice weather. The school is just like any other school except as soon as the media finds out about Imre protesers fill the streets holding sings and yelling along with news channels trying to film everything. Evil-o and Bob's houses are normal but Imre's house is dark with military officers and a large fence circling the house.


Theme
I belive that the theme for Zomboy is discrimination. The reason I belive that is because of all the angry citizens that don't think Imre should be with humans because he is a zombie and is different. There are many other instances in this story with discrimanation or as Evil-O calls it: racism. For example the people saying "Go home zombie!".

That's all goodbye!