Zomboy

My Review:

Overview:

Zomboy is a book by award-winning author Richard Scrimger about a zombie(duh). When Bob has a new odd student named Imre in his class, he thinks that he's hiding something. Bob's suspicions were confirmed when it was made public that Imre had no heart beat, and was a zombie. However, Imre isn't your average flesh eating monster. Imre is strong enough to carry a bus, has limbs that constantly fall off and most importantly, he is not interested in eating you for dinner. Bob's best friend Evil-O (Her real name is Olive but she likes it backwards) likes Imre very much, but Bob has trouble getting over the whole "undead" thing. After Imre saves Bob from a bully and an insane dog in one day, Bob begins to like Imre. Later, Bob discovers that Imre has a sister that's a regular, flesh eating zombie which is followed by her attempting  to eat Bob and Evil-O. Imre stops his sister before she manages to eat Bob and Evil-O and then decides to run away with his zombie sister. That's essentially the ending.

Characters:

The characters developed quite well, with the exception of Bob. Bob was an unintelligent germaphobe throughout the entire book, but out of the blue he solves this mystery and connects seemingly random things. This was completely out of his unintelligent characteristic and felt like the author was out of ideas to realistically progress the plot. The other main characters had consistent traits, but they didn't really change or develop. Also, each character had minimal physical features described, to the point that there's a secondary character with no plot importance whatsoever with more description than the main character. Speaking of secondary characters, they seemed like expressionless zombies (see what I did there?), and just seemed to be space fillers. 

Overall I give the characters a 2/5 for lack of logical development, description and unnecessary secondary characters. 

Voice:

The voice in this novel was Bob's, and it was was conveyed extremely well. Everything he said was awkward, which made the whole book funny. The dialogue of all of the main characters seemed to flow like a real conversation for the most part and was easy to understand. There were a few oddly worded sentences  here and there but other than that it was great.

I give this a 5/5 for realistic and humorous dialogue.

Setting:

This book took place in the town of Dresden, Ontario. The main characters go to many places in this town, including Bob's house, Imre's house, and primarily Their school. Out of these settings, only the location of Imre's house was explained with detail. The other settings were barely described at all, which made it harder to know what was going on. The settings themselves weren't confusing, but the poor portrayal of these places were. The setting did not play a particularly large part in the story, so I understand why there was such a lack of description. I like how this setting is a real place, but I dislike the lack of description.

I give this a 2/5 for good settings but poor detail.

Theme:

The theme of this book seemed to be acceptance and racism. The theme is acceptance in the way that people are trying to accept a zombie into society but certain people don't want a zombie near them. The theme is racism for the same reasons. These themes were apparent throughout the story, and were interestingly explored at unique angles throughout the book. The book was consistent with these themes for almost the entire story, and I quite liked it.

Overall I give it 5/5 for uniquely exploring an interesting and deep theme.

Plot:

The plot was creative and appealing. It was interesting to see the relationships between the 3 main characters change, and left you wanting to read more. The only down side of the plot was that it was somewhat uninteresting at times. The book was like this, until the ending. The end took everything great about the rest of the book, and ruined it. It went from an innocent book about a middle schooler fitting in to a gory slaughterfest in a matter of pages. Certain aspects of the book that you think would be explored at the end, like the hint of romance between characters were not even touched and left many loose ends. The ending ruined the entire message that the book delivered. The ending seemed rushed and much too unrealistic compared to the rest of the book. It seemed ridiculous, out of place, and ruined the entire book for me.

Overall I give it 2/5 for good plot that was ruined by the ending.

Final Mark:

I give Zomboy a 3.5/5, or B-. Certain aspects of this book were outstanding, but others were quite bad. My main problem with this book was the plot. I've already gone over this, but I think the ending was absolute garbage. The theme and voice were great, but that doesn't outweigh the mediocre characters, awful setting and bad plot. There's so much potential with this idea of a half-zombie, which makes this book even more disappointing. If the author fixed these unsatisfactory aspects of this book, it could easily be a 9/10, or even 10/10. Overall, this book has its pros and cons, and I wouldn't recommend this book.

That concludes my review on Zomboy. Hope you enjoyed!

The Comic Book War (dununun)

My Review!

     Overview

             The Comic Book War by Jacqueline Guest is a story about how a young boy lives at his home in Canada while his three brothers fight in World War II to defeat that Hitler (this is how Hitler is referred to throughout the story). This young man, named Robert Tourond, is worried sick about his brothers. Coincidentally, Robert is taking a walk when he sees a large flash a distance ahead of him. Instead of running away, Robert feels an internal urge to actually go into the area of danger. He finds out that the flash came from a falling meteorite. He picks up a piece of the meteorite and keeps walking.

         A few days later, he gets a letter from his brother saying that he saw a pretty shooting star a couple weeks ago. Robert thinks that this is some sort of cosmic connection between his brother, and that things will be fine. He also notices that the comic books he loves to read almost completely correspond with what his brothers tell him in their letters back home. Robert is convinced that the comic books and a sliver of meteorite can tell him the future (in my opinion, this is a little bit weak and unoriginal). Of course, things are working great for Robert. His cosmic connection seems to be in check and he knows what his brothers are up to. This is the case until he gets a telegram. The telegram says that his brother is dead. He decides, of course, that his "cosmic connection" is utterly wrong and finds it stupid. That's basically the end of the book.

   

   My Opinions:

         Setting: In my opinion, the setting here wasn't terribly well thought out. it's the obvious choice for the time period it was written in (1943). Canada being a peaceful place, it's a perfect area for brothers to be overseas in Italy fighting to defeat Hitler (sorry, that Hitler). The distance causes tension, fear and chaos among the family, presumably what Jacqueline Guest was aiming for. Even so, relatively weak. I think it would have been better for the brothers to be fighting on their home turf. This would make things a heck of a lot more chaotic. 

         Characters: The characters in this book were actually developed quite well. The character of Robert Tourond was made fairly well, with a distinctive personality and constant traits and thought patterns. All other characters were relatively distant, however, so there's not much to elaborate on other than this; maybe every other character in the book shouldn't have been completely distant.

       

         Plot: A creative, outside-of-the-box plot with a cliche, uninteresting feel to it. The plot is pretty creative; I myself have never seen a plot based on life-or-death situations via comic books and rocks, but nevertheless, it feels like Jacqueline Guest needed a couple cups of coffee to get her going before writing this. I was predominantly uninterested and bored while reading this book.

         

         Voice: The voice in this novel, the voice of Robert Tourond, was conveyed properly and very nicely. I don't have much to say about this because it was in fact very well done. It's not written in any sort of confusing ways, and every scene was consistent and concise. The flow of voice was articulate and easy to read, heightening my experience. Kudos to Jacqueline Guest for being able to portray the voice of a teenage boy (or any teenager, for that matter) so well.

         Theme: The theme of this book was of course the gigantic strain everyone in the world went through to defeat Hitler (oops, that Hitler) in World War II. The theme was nicely thought out, worked, and was very obvious, a quality I find pretty well essential in any book I read (it's good to know what the entire darn thing's about). The war efforts portrayed in the book completely followed the theme, and I couldn't ask for more.

         Overall: I'm going to base this off of what I've reviewed before this. The rating system will be an average of these ratings:

1. Setting: Meh. 6/10. Very mediocre and not particularly creative.
2. Characters: Nicely done, but only one was developed. 8/10.
3. Plot: Creativity turned boring and anticlimactic. 5/10.
4. Theme: Very nice! A flowing, sensible theme with thought put in. 9/10.
5. Voice: Again, great. A very nice job. 10/10.

         FINAL MARK (drumroll please)

7/10:

   

         Yes. I'm giving this book a 7/10, 70%, Level 3, whatever you want to call it. It was a nice book with a fantastic voice if I do say so myself, a great theme and a good character base. The pitfalls that lost this book three of my marks are the plot and the setting. Both of these were relatively sloppy and just not great. It's a shame, because if not for that, this book would have had my support in spades. There are some things I adore and admire about this book, and others that just make me shake my head. Overall, a slightly above average book that certainly caught my eye. I'd recommend this to a friend any day.

So concludes my blog post about The Comic Book War, hope you enjoyed and see you next time!