Tag Archives: Emmy Laybourne

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Monument 14

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Monument 14 (Monument 14 #1)

 
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
 
I do love finding an author I have never read before who is able to get my attention with the first thing I read from them. The characters are a bit of a stereo type, such as jock, nerd, pretty girl, promiscuous girl, etc. but that can be overlooked for the most part. They are kids however and so you almost expect this but hope it will not be so pronounced. The dialogue is generally good, the only time it becomes a little stilted is with the introduction of adults into the main story. It also became predictable because I knew exactly where things were going as soon as in a natural progression.

It’s a normal morning in Monument, Colorado and the kids are on their way to school as the buses arrive at their homes for pick-up. But what happens after they are on the way is anything but normal. A massive hail storm starts and the hail starts to punch through the roof of the bus either killing or disorienting those on the high school bus. The driver for the elementary and middle school kids manages to get them to safety and rescue the high school kids too.

Soon the kids are left on their own with no adult supervision as the world outside the superstore they lucked into goes from bad to worse. They find themselves struggling to keep order for the younger children, who are as young as 5 years old, while trying to deal with each other and their different ways of viewing each other. They have everything they could hope for and enough to take care of them for a long time if they can keep the contaminants out. They are already living a precarious life when they allow two more into their haven, making a tense situation even worse.

This was even better than I had expected. It had a sense of tension and urgency with that feel of ‘how will they get out’. I liked enough of them to make it worth keeping up with and those I disliked was because the writing was good and gave me cause to do so. Definitely worth the time.

If you do not like the idea of children in peril and on their own I would pass it up.

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Fierce Reads

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The Fierce Reads Anthology by Anna Banks   The Fierce Reads Anthology
by Anna Banks , Leigh Bardugo, Jennifer Bosworth , Emmy Laybourne , Marissa Meyer

 

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

 

I was very pleasantly surprised when I started reading this. Not only do we have short stories but the added bonus of an excerpt of the book the short is based on. The stories vary in length as well as genre but all are from fairly new authors with a twist. While I enjoyed all the stories, I have to say that two were my favorites, though I will now be purchasing all the books the shorts were based on. Oh my straining budget!

I would love to lay out each story for you but that would be silly since you could simply purchase and read them for yourself. So instead I will give a brief synopsis of my two favorites.

Legacy Lost by Anna Banks is a story about mermaid people who reside under a thick ice cover. They have two kingdoms which in order to stay united pledge a child to marriage. In this case Grom, a prince of the Triton’s has been told he must marry Nalia, a princess of the Poseidon‘s. Since he knew he as a child and did not like her he is less than thrilled and she is not any happier since she does not like him either. This is a love story that holds the fate of an entire race in its hands.

In “Dress Your Marines in White” by Emmy Laybourne you have the equivalent of a mad scientist who is so intent on human testing of her killer substance that she sees nothing else. Her assistant is a family man who is so horrified by the results of their human testing (he is going to a hypnotist to forget) is asked to write a report. his report will be used to decide if they move forward or stop the research all together. This is like the beginning of any apocalyptic story, you have a vial of something deadly and the question is, will it get out.

 

Emmy Laybourne at Kevin Geeks Out About Genre ...

Emmy Laybourne at Kevin Geeks Out About Genre Busters (Photo credit: 92YTribeca)

In the past I have shied away from young adult fare but find that some of it is worth reading even for someone like me who is well past that particular phase.

 

 

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