Rated YA-MA discussion

The group read for May is now open.

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I got my copy of the book and hope to start soon!

Chapters 1-3
The story has a good opening. The main character isn't likable per se, but he is easy to understand and get to know his background. The crazy family is always enjoyable, and I am looking forward to finding out out how real his grandfather's stories are or are not.

I can't tell if this will be a horror story or not. It does have a dark background [Nazi regime during WWII, crazy remote island, etc.], but I'm not getting a fear vibe from it.

Awesome Quotes:
(view spoiler)[ "We cling to our fairy tales until the price for believing them becomes too high."

"But these weren't the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around--they they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don't recognize them for what they are until it's too late." [referring to Nazis]

"The peculiarity for which they'd been hunted was simply their Jewishness...What made them amazing wasn't that they had miraculous powers; that they had escaped the ghettos and gas chambers was miracle enough."

"All I could think of was that grandfathers were supposed to die in beds...not in heaps on sodden reeking ground with ants marching over them." (hide spoiler)]

Chapter 4 Quote: "Sometimes you just need to go through a door."

The setting is still creepy, but the story is not scary.

Quote: "And that is how someone who is unusually susceptible to nightmares, night terrors, the Creeps, Willies, and Seeing Things That Aren't Really There talks himself into making one last trip to the abandoned, almost-certainly-haunted house where a dozen or more children met their untimely end."


Chapter 5-7
I wasn't expecting (view spoiler)[time travel, (hide spoiler)] but I am delighted to start meeting the children in context and learn how they use their talents.

Quotes:
(view spoiler)["If I couldn't make my dead grandfather give up his secrets, I would dam well pry the secrets out of this old trunk."

"I wondered that these children died every evening only to be resurrected by the loop, like some Sisyphean suicide cult." (hide spoiler)]

I'm not sure how I feel about Jacob (view spoiler)[ falling in "love" so fast...and to his grandfather's ex?! (hide spoiler)]

~I kind of got really into this book and stayed up late last night to finish it.~

Chapters 8-9
*It seems like I am quoting a lot, but the narration is really beautiful at times.
Quotes: (view spoiler)[
“She was heartbroken for someone else, and I was merely a stand-in for my grandfather. That’s enough to give anyone pause, I don’t care how horny you are.”

“It’s not that I didn’t want to—more than anything I did—but the idea of kissing her two feet from a box of obsessively well-preserved love letters from my grandfather made me feel weird and nervous.”

“Eventually we ran out of nothing to talk about.” (hide spoiler)]

This narrator is seriously naive! How is he not immediately suspicious (view spoiler)[of the fellow bird watcher his dad mentions (hide spoiler)]? He misses an awful lot of clues which is managing to frustrate me.
Prediction: (view spoiler)[The psychologist is either a wight or a peculiar. (hide spoiler)]

Chapters 10-11
I was right! But unfortunately (view spoiler)[the psychiatrist was evil, not good. (hide spoiler)] I did find it out of character that (view spoiler)[the first time Jacob shot a gun, he hit his mark dead on, but perhaps that is part of his peculiarity. (hide spoiler)]

Quotes:(view spoiler)[
“It became depressingly easy to lie about my comings and goings.”

“I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.”

“We answered with a cry of our own, both a victory yell and a lament, for everything lost.” (hide spoiler)]

I like the way this story maintains its thematic connection with the holocaust throughout the whole book. The overall plot sort of reminds me of the original X-Men saga. (view spoiler)[The good peculiars want to train, be safe, and help humanity. The bad peculiars want power at any cost, and view their talent as a right to dominate. (hide spoiler)]

It's definitely set up for a sequel. Fortunately I bought the trilogy as an e-book package. One can assume (view spoiler)[a rescue attempt will be made for the other ymbrynes, they will encounter new and different peculiars, and Jacob will become an accomplished hunter of wights and other creatures. (hide spoiler)] What are your thoughts? (It feels lonely being the only person to post…)

I'm loving the old photos and that they are actually tied to the story and not just pretty filler.

My copy has not come from the library yet - I will probably miss this discussion :(