Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Alan Dean Foster, Greg Rucka

Much like everyone else who is a fan of Star Wars after seeing Episode 7 we were left with a lot of questions. I knew of their big marketing push on books called “The journey to Force Awakens” and had already bought one from that lineup “Aftermath” but the problem i faced was it didn’t answer anything from the movie since it was set 29 years before the movie. It was the ONLY novel in the initial release as well, The rest were children short stories, comics, graphic novels and young adult fiction. Nothing for adults so i was immensely disappointed. The Episode 7 novelization wasn’t due out for a few more weeks so i bit my pride and bought the young adult book “Before the Awakening” and it was rubbish!

The book explained nothing, we learnt nothing,  it was merely just a filler with no useful information so disappointing. I remember being a teenager when the prequels came out and even my teenage self wouldn’t of liked this “Before the Awakening” book.

So disappointed with this range of books, i seriously hope now that the movie is over we start getting some good adult books i know “Aftermath” has a release date for its 2 sequels but i’m worried if we will learn anything more from them too. It just seems Disney has abandoned the Adults that follow star wars in favour of children. Star Wars used to have a wide range of expanded universe fiction, plenty of reading for adults. Now its all just comics, kids books and a few young adult novels. They really are abandoning their key demographic

With that said as soon as the next Adult novel was available i jumped for it. I have only ever had one Star Wars Movie Novelization before and that was of Episode 3. It was good as there was a lot of extra stuff in there so i had high hopes for the Episode 7 novel.

Considering my issues with the rest of the Force Awakens range i was surprised by the Episode 7 novel, as it was quite good at giving us new info and expanding on scenes from the movie, dropped new info and explained a few plot problems away as well. Quite happy with this book and it has made me once again keen for more books from this range

Found by Harlan Coben

I was never really a big crime/mystery novel fan, I don’t really like watching the crime TV shows either. but a good mate of mine raved about this author (Harlan Coben) and she kept at. Eventually i cracked and started asking her about the author and then Google told me he has a serious of books (Myron Bolitar) and does  stand alone novels. I hate starting in the middle of a series, and i didn’t want to commit to reading the first novel in the series. I might hate the author but still feel compelled to finish the series (i’m weird like that) so i told her to pick me her favorite stand alone novel. She chose for me the novel The Innocent.

The story follows Matt Hunter, when he was young he made some mistakes and a fight landed him in jail for 4 years once out tries to put his life back together gets engaged, but then something from his past stirs. He is being followed and threatened. Soon the life he worked hard to build starts to unravel and he realizes he cant trust anyone even the ones he love. Not sure whether it was the fact it was  her suggestion, the novel itself or the fact the protagonist had the same name as me but i really liked it. So i started buying his books.

I started with a few more stand alones, then started on his myron series. I flew through that series quite quickly and was quite sad to read the final book. The book really tied up loose ends and broke up the group and everyone went their separate ways. Reading that you come to realize that it was sadly the end of the series there probably wont be anymore. But then at the same time i saw that he (harlan) was releasing a new series of books based around the son of the main character from the series i liked.

At first i was excited having a chance to revisit the character i really liked but then i found out it was young adult book. Which basically means double spaced writing, pretty much ten lines per page and a simple story over in a few chapters – i exaggerate of course but since i am not the target audience this type of novel might not satisfy my attention and hunger. The first novel in the new young adult series (mickey bolitar) was called shelter The story and characters were great but sadly it was over far too soon. The second novel was Seconds away and while it was over just as quick as its previous volume, i did still really enjoy the story. I think mainly because the character from the previous series appears so regularly. So even though i hate the style (young adult novel) i still bought this third book.

Found, pretty much continues with the story line from the previous 2 books as the main character mickey searches for his father. Its a great story that has many turns along the way which kind of has become a calling card of this author. While this story does go on to tie up loose ends from the previous two it does of course unravel some new threads to pursue as well. So i’m sure he will be writing a fourth book. I have over 25 of his books now and will continue to follow this author and buy his new works.

To be honest this author and more precisely this series of young adult novels has made me change my opinion of the young adult genre. In the past i normally would of just written off anything in the genre as too simple and brief to be worth my time and not even consider buying it. However while the fact the stories are too brief and over too soon. The stories themselves can be quite good at capturing my attention. While i will still be hesitant to buy a young adult novel (mainly because i am not a young adult) i wont just completely write them off anymore. I pretty much will buy the fourth book in this series. If he ever writes one.

Sometimes its funny how we first come across our favorite authors. Have to definitely thank my mate Rachel for introducing me to the works of Harlan. He is definitely in my top 5 Favorite Authors. His other works all of which are not Young adult novels, are fantastic reads filed with twists and turns and just when you think you have it figured out he throws a spanner in the works and throws you off track. i simply love these stories and am always pre-ordering his new releases. After reading this series i think i might have to change a time old quote. perhaps it should be,  Dont judge a book by its genre?