Tuesday 23 September 2014

Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw

We had a long discussion at this month's book group meeting, late into the night, unfortunately that discussion was not about this book. We didn't like this one and here's why ...

We found the first half of this book dragged, the characters were confusing and we didn't really care about them or the storyline. The second half was better but not much. We liked Phoebe when she worked for the spa and we liked Gary when he had the breakdown, after that we kind of lost interest.

It was quite a depressing book, the picture painted of Shanghai was that it was full of con men, it made you lose faith in humanity a little. We found the way all the characters finally crossed paths a little contrived and not really needed in all cases.

That's pretty much it. We then had a little experiment, instead of our usual scoring system we each gave the book an overall mark out of 10 and then saw if that matched what our scoring system found.

The average overall score was 5.5/10

Concept: 7/10
Plot: 3/10
Ending: 2.5/10
Cover - we've decided to scrap this category as it seems to affect our scores and not in the way we'd like. Sorry Rachel.
Page Turner: 0/10
Who to slap? Everyone
Where's the cheese? The self-help extracts.
Would we recommend? 0/5
Better as a ... fortune cookie (money doesn't equal happiness)
Add a twist: Justin and Yinghui get together.

Total: 3/10

Our next book will be 'The Rabbit Back Literature Society' by Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen which we'll read for our November meeting.. Next meeting is at Lisa's.

Sunday 7 September 2014

The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey


ATTENTION: SPOILER ALERT

If you have not read this book please don't read the review below, it contains massive spoilers. Be content with the knowledge that we rated this book as 7/10 (my personal opinion is that it's brilliant), so please read it and then come back to read this review.

Have they gone?

Phew.

I think we all enjoyed this book, some more than others. It starts off all benign and weird and then just erupts into a massive zombie battle. We loved the fast paced action, the characters were good and Melanie was the perfect character to help us discover the world as she discovers it.

We had a good old debate about the ethics of Dr Caldwell and her approach to scientific discovery. Was she being over-ambitious or truly working for the good of mankind?

There were a few niggling points:

  • What was the point of the junkers? Were they only there to cause the base breach and then provide a threat? They seemed a bit random.
  • The issue with Beacon was never answered, had it degenerated into a 'Lord of the Flies' environment?
  • We thought the sex scenes were unrealistic and unnecessary unless they resulted in a pregnancy, but that would interfere with the ending.
We all liked the ending, the progression of the infection was very logical and was the only way forwards long-term. We had another good discussion about how mutation and evolution sometimes goes backwards to go forwards.

Concept: 6/10
Plot: 7/10
Ending: 8/10
Cover: 6/10
Page Turner: 9/10
Who to slap? Dr Caldwell
Where's the cheese? Sex scenes
Would we recommend? 2/4
Better as a ... film
Add a twist: Pregnant by Parks

Total: 7/10

Our next book will be 'The Ocean At The End Of The Lane' by Neil Gaiman which we'll be reading for the October meeting. Next meeting is at Kate's.