The Six Sacred Stones by Matthew Reilly (2.5 stars)

Matthew Reilly is always good for a laugh, I've read all his books and generally love the completely shallow, one-dimensional characters, and non-stop ridiculous action. Of course Jack Wests' house is full of booby traps and hidden explosives, and of course a mag-hook is used to get him out of more than one tight spot.

I found it much harder to suspend disbelief for this book, perhaps it was the stupid callsigns for every single character. Vulture? Scimitar? Astro? Really? Or maybe it was the exponentially increasing size of each underground cavern - by the time we get to the final stone the cave will need to be the size of a continent. Or maybe it was the needless product placement - Sony Aibo, Asus laptop, Google Earth etc.

The 'to be continued...' is annoying, but I know I'll be reading the next one anyway.

2.5 stars

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (4.5 stars)

Yet another from the young adult section of the bookstore :) This book was awesome, with kids fighting for their lives in a compulsory competition designed by the state to simultaneously oppress and entertain the population of a somewhat 1984-esque world.

Katniss reminded me a bit of Ender (from Ender's Game), in that she was totally underrated by her opponents, but ends up kicking some arse. Although she is an excellent fighter, survialist, and strategist, she wasn't particularly heroic. She always complied with whatever was expected of her by the establishment, including playing up the love show with Peeta. I suspect she will grow some backbone in the next book.

Interestingly some people on amazon are whinging about this being a ripoff of Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. Battle Royale has been made into a movie and a manga series, and sounds awesome, I'll read it once I can get my hands on a copy.

4.5 stars.

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (2.5 stars)

Bella may be the most annoying heroine I have ever encountered. The first few hundred pages are her obsessing about whether Edward will be in the cafeteria, will he look at her, will he smile at her? When it isn't about Edward we're hearing about how uncoordinated Bella is, Gym is completely beyond her, and normal activities like walking and getting out of the car require intense concentration, often resulting in falls and scrapes.

Granted, I'm not an adolescent girl (ie. the target audience), who can probably empathise strongly with the "gorgeous guy in school doesn't notice me" situation, but being inside Bella's boring, insipid head is tedious.

So what does Edward see in her? Bella herself wonders this on many occasions. Would a 100+ year-old vampire with a fairly ridiculous array of superpowers really be interested in a whiny, uncoordinated 17 year-old? Sure, maybe her blood smells good, but a few minutes of talking to her should have cured him of any attraction (conveniently he can't read her thoughts, or he would have been turned off instantly).

The characters quickly declare their undying love, so the story can move on, and things actually get interesting 300+ pages in when other vampires arrive on the scene. Edward's control of his vampire urges seems to be a thinly veiled metaphor for a very conservative Christian 'no sex before marriage' vibe running through the book.

One final thing I found funny, at one point Bella uses cold medicine to drug herself to sleep. Meyer was obviously worried about giving teenagers this idea so she qualified it as below, but I think she could have left it out and avoided this weird 'say no to drugs' passage:

...so I did something I'd never done before. I deliberately took unnecessary cold medicine - the kind that knocked me out for a good eight hours. I normally wouldn't condone that kind of behavior in myself, but...

Maybe the next books in the series are better?

2.5 stars

Update: Saw the movie, and thought it was better than the book, which pretty much never happens. Slightly clumsy cameo for Stephenie Meyer was funny.

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan (3.5 stars)

I'm not even sure where I heard about this book, but I had it on request at the library and it was something fun I knocked over in a couple of days. It followed in a vein somewhat familiar, see if you can pick it:

• Boy discovers he has 'powers'.
  
• He travels to a school where he meets others like him and begins indoctrination into a secret society and learns how to make use of his powers.
  
• He faces great dangers, and fights battles with loyal friends against against an ancient evil that is growing in strength.
  
• etc...
  

Basically take Harry Potter and replace wizards with greek gods and their demigod offspring. Despite the fairly obvious formula-stealing (published in 2005, well after HP kicked off) the book is entertaining and a fun read. It is probably aimed at slightly younger kids, the story moves quicker and is shorter overall. Left wide open for a long series of books - there are five so far. At least kids learn a bit about Greek mythology along the way!

3.5 stars.

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts (4.5 stars)

This seems to be my year for reading epic novels. I have to admit that the 933 small-font pages of Shantaram were fairly intimidating, and I was reluctant to begin reading. The feeling dissolved almost immediately when I picked it up, this book is amazing.

Roberts has led a phenomenal life: heroin addict, escaped convict and Australia's most wanted man, mumbai (bombay) slum doctor, mumbai mafia 'goonda' counterfeiter/smuggler/dealer, and Mujahideen fighter in Afganistan.

I don't think I will look at any slum anywhere in the world in quite the same way after reading this novel. Roberts' slum is an amazing community where everyone works together, taking turns at the dirty cleaning jobs, and pulling together to fight fire, cholera, and the monsoon rains. All slums might not be as loving and carefully cared for as the community presented by Roberts, but it is a very different perspective to the horror with which most Westerners view slums.

I loved the description of the Indian head wiggle, and how Roberts gained instant smiles when he adopted it on the train to Prabaker's village. In conversation the side-to-side wiggle means 'yes' or 'I agree with you' or 'yes, I would like that', but it can also be used as a greeting to show you are friendly.

Roberts is a deeply philosophical man, and much of the book is devoted to philosophical discussions he has. I found some of these passages a bit boring, like the one on the nature of suffering:

...is it not true that some of our strength comes from suffering? That suffering hardship makes us stronger? That those of us who have never known a real hardship, and true suffering cannot have the same strength as others, who have suffered...

I also got a bit sick of the fawning descriptions of pretty much every woman he was ever friends with - I get it, your friends are good looking:

Her eyes were large and spectacularly green. it was the green that trees are, in vivid dreams. It was the green that the sea would be, if the sea were perfect.

A final thing I will never forget is the descriptions of the Colaba lockup where Lin (Roberts) spends three weeks and the infamous Arthur Road prison where he spends four months. In Colaba there were three overcrowded rooms and a corridor - Lin ends up breaking a man's nose and bites a chunk out of his attacker's cheek just to secure a place to stand:

...even at the foul end of the corridor, where shit and piss flowed onto the floor in a repulsive, reeking sludge, men fought each other for an inch of space that was slightly shallower in the muck.

In Arthur road Lin weathers systematic brutal beatings, starvation, and the constant attack of thousands of body lice.

Amazing book. The movie is supposedly coming out in 2011, although it has been delayed a number of times already. Looking forward to it.

4.5 stars.