wake

Fade (Wake, Book 2)
$15.99
I loved the first book. I raved about it. I practically forced my friends to read it. I was breathless waiting for the second to arrive in the mail from Amazon.

Well, it was very good. But it is so different than the first book and has a lot more developmental problems than the first that it almost didn't feel like it belonged to WAKE.

WAKE was dreamy - an extraordinary world opening up amidst darkness and loneliness - exacerbated by a complicated and hungry teenage love. I read it twice. I was on pins and needles the whole time.

FADE isn't even a little bit like that. It is harder, darker, faster, rougher. The subject matter is shocking and doesn't make the reading fun at all...not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but it is so uncomfortable to read sometimes that it really sucks the dreaminess out of the book entirely. It is hard to fall in love with Cabel and Janie's wonderful romance while having to face the twisted, sick sexual predators Janie is helping the police track down at her school.

Positives: I think that Janie is maturing as a character, really coming into her own. The writing style, sparse and beautiful like a constant weaving of thoughts and moments, is even better this time around. It reads as easy as breathing. Most of the time Cabel remains a great character, and towards the end we get real insight into WHO he is now, and less about who he was THEN. I also like the relationship between Janie and the Captain. The sensual love scene between Janie and Cabel is so beautiful it left me with goosebumps. It was such a beautifully written scene. So many authors either pretend that teenagers don't do that, that it's not appropriate for teenagers to read about, or they write it so awkward and uncomfortable to read that no one can mistake it for sensuality. I think Lisa McMann really took a chance with that scene and the results were a stunning success.

Negatives: There is so much plot in this book, there is very little character development and interaction. Carrie is a nonentity, the mom is even MORE of a nonentity in this book than she was before, almost to the point of implausibility. Even Shay, the girl that we are informed at the beginning of the book is still hot for Cabel doesn't even make an appearance in the entire novel. Instead we are inundated with creepy ass teachers and a lot of in depth analysis of teenage police work. Which is another thing that bothers me- the assignment is almost too horrible to believe. It seems impossible for me to think that the Captain, who seems to care about Janie, would put her in the situation that she does, and even more impossible to accept Janie's reactions to Cabel's reactions. He freaks out, she gets mad at him for trying to control her. And as for Cabel? While he is a fantastic character most of the time, the end is a little too neat. He seems to understand himself in the way an adult would understand their teenage selves looking back fifteen years later. He didn't seem like much of a teenager. Which was too bad. In the first book his teenage habits actually give more life to him.

Like I said, not as great as the first book, but still very good. I am excited to see how she pulls it all together in GONE. It should be very, very exciting.

Wake: Fire & Ash
$9.95
I am great admirerer of French comic books. Much of my growing up was influenced with numerous French comics whose english titles I do not know and cannot state them here. Stating them doesn't mean much, it's just a figure of speech :)

I have first heard of Wake (or Sillage, which is original title) on a local web forum which deals with comic-books. From what I have read, it seemed to me that I should give it a try. After all, I't has been some time since I actually bought any comic book at all, and introductional story seemed interesting enough. So, I wen't to a local comic-book store and few moments later emerged form whithin with a brand new issue in my hand. That is all irrelevant...

What matters is that we're dealing with a classic 48-pages long french comic book whose main fault is that it comes first in the series. It wouldn't be a problem if we weren't dealing with an entire universe which nedeed to be presented. That caused scenario to be pretty irregular and shifty in highlighting various aspect in various time, making entire story rather shallow. Many of it's emptinesses are left to be filled in later books. What is shown in this one comes down to half-naked Navee (which is quite erotic so if you mind that kind of drawing, I suggest that you avoid this one) and interesting enough setting with cliffhanger which can be exploited in numerous ways in upcoming issues. (I am aware that nine of them are already out, but, since I don't read french, I am bound to croatian issues. That means this one.)

Story itself doesn't seems to be naive, and it looks like Morvan will be able to pull out few surprises form his sleeve. Looking at this album as an isolated incident it is quite bad. Unexplained, quick paced, lacks motivation. Looking at it as the beginnig of a series, one must admit that it hooks it's reader to await eagerly for other issues that follow.

What will ome next remains to be seen.

WWW: Wake
$24.95
WWW:Wake (2009) is the first SF novel in the WWW trilogy. It is set in the near future within Waterloo, a town near Toronto, Canada, with some scenes in Tokyo, Japan.

In this novel, Caitlin Decter is fifteen years old. She has been blind since birth. Her family has recently moved from Austin, Texas, to Waterloo.

Malcolm Decter is Caitlin's father. He is autistic, but is also a renown physicist. He moved to Canada for a position at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

Barbara Decter is Caitlin's mother. She has a Ph.D. in Economics, but quit her job to take care of her blind daughter.

Bashira is Caitlin's best friend at school. She attends most of the same classes as Caitlin and acts as her guide in the hallways.

Masayuki Kuroda is a neuroscientist at the University of Tokyo. He has a Ph.D. from Cambridge and specializes in signal processing within the primary visual cortex.

In this story, Caitlin receives an email from Kuroda suggesting that she might be cured of her blindness. He has messaged her because she has a rare condition -- Tomasevic's syndrome -- that indicates that her optic processing is not correctly interpreted by the visual cortex.

She and her parents decide to follow up on the message. Kuroda says that his team needs some MRIs to determine if she is a good candidate. After learning that the provincial healthcare plan will not allow MRIs for experimental purposes, they use a private clinic to get the data.

Kuroda sends her an email stating that all the results are positive. But he also says that she will have to pay her own way to Tokyo. Her parents agree that they will pay the fare.

Caitlin tells Bashira that she is going to Tokyo for an operation that might restore her vision. Bashira is excited over her being able to actually see Caitlin's favorite vocalist in concert. Caitlin is more excited at seeing her parents for the first time.

Caitlin and her mother fly to Tokyo and are met at the airport by Kuroda. Later, an optic surgeon slips the insert behind her left eyeball and then they put her to bed to sleep off the aftereffects. When they check her vision, however, she is still blind.

Caitlin wants to leave the insert in place for a while longer. At first, Kuroda prefers to remove it and try another candidate. Yet Caitlin finally persuades him and flies home with the insert and the auxiliary box, which she calls the eyePod.

Later, Kuroda sends her an update to the microprocessor and she starts seeing lines and circles during the download. Then she reverts to blindness after the download is completed. She restarts the download and she again sees the lines and circles. She is seeing the World Wide Web.

This tale also relates the thoughts of a primitive entity and a political situation in China. When the Chinese government raises a firewall against the outside world, the entity experiences a loss of capacity. Apparently the entity dwells within the internet.

This novel focuses on developing awareness of the outside world. The next volume in this trilogy is WWW:Watch. Read and enjoy!

Highly recommended for Sawyer fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of the World Wide Web, emerging sentience, and blind heroines.

-Arthur W. Jordin

Elmo's World - Wake up with Elmo!
$12.93
I absolutely love this dvd. It is one of my most favorite Elmo's World, very cute and entertaining. My favorite Elmo's World movies are: 1) Families, Mail and Bath time 2) Food, Water and Exercise 3) Wake Up With Elmo. Check them out, they're worth your time and money.