Thought Train to Pusan

Situated within the Marvel comics universe, comes a new young hero by the name of Lunella, or “Moon Girl”. And boy, is she cool in the nerdiest way possible. At least, I think so, despite the fact that all her classmates think she is a bit of a weirdo. Lunella is a young, genius inventor (not unlike Peter Parker in the “Amazing Spiderman”), but Lunella is terrified that one day she is going to become a mutant like the X-Men, which would make her a monster. You see, she carries a particular marker in her DNA that may later transform into a mutation, and she really really does not want that to happen. But how does she stop this? By harnessing the power from an ancient device that used to be owned by a group of Neanderthal-type creatures in the past. One of which owned a dinosaur that they called the Devil Dinosaur. In any case, Lunella is on a mission to get this device and use it’s power to help herself stop from changing form, and this involves locating the “ni...

Well, that certainly was not what I expected. And not in a good way, to be honest. This YA novel begins in a slow-burning fashion, focusing largely on the main character, Seth, and his memories: very character-driven. Yet about a third of the way in, there is quite a twist, that changes the whole tone of the novel, and ultimately leaves more questions and confusion at the end of everything. There is the sense that Patrick Ness is trying to create an ambiguous ending for the reader to fill in the gaps with whatever explanation and reality they desire, but I don’t feel like it was all that successful in the end. Sometimes uncertainty works, but here I feel like there were just too many questions and things that couldn’t be fully explained, and that leaving things ambiguous just felt like a bit of a cop out in some ways? That sounds harsh, but I was pretty disappointed by the ending, after some really solid emotional moments were created throughout the book that drew me in initially. I...