Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Numbers: The Chaos ~ Rachel Ward review & giveaway

The Chaos (Numbers #2)
The Chicken House
March 1, 2011
352 pages
Amazon

(Both the book and this post contain spoilers for Numbers -review- the first book in this trilogy.)

Jem's son Adam has definitely inherited his mother's ability to look into people's eyes and see their death date, their number.

It is now 2026 and Adam's mother has been dead for several years, but Adam and Nan have continued to live by the coast in the same house. Now, however, rising tides are flooding the coast and forcing them to evacuate. Against Adam's protests, Nan returns them to London, a place both vastly different from what Adam's used to and the London of today.

Already troubled by being in London, Adam becomes more troubled when he sees an increasing number of people with the same numbers, who are going to die on the same day: January 1, 2027.


While The Chaos is like Numbers in that it has one main characters who can see when people are going to die, another main character of the opposite sex who cannot, and one main date where a lot of people die, that's close to all it has in common.

In Numbers the big, one day event took place closer to the beginning with the suspense happening afterwards whereas here the whole book leads up to the big event and you don't even get to know what it is. The Chaos is a much more suspense filled, nail biting book.

I loved that The Chaos stayed true to Numbers while still becoming a sort of dystopian novel and being its own unique story that was very different. Being sixteen-ish years in the future it makes sense that things will have changed and I loved the way Rachel Ward did that.

I really appreciate that Rachel Ward's characters aren't all upper class or those with an easy life. Her characters have an edge, a toughness to them that no only helps them in dealing with things that come up in the story but also makes their reactions and the plot line itself more believable. That, and she introduces situations that I think should be used in YA fiction more often when they're not the main plot of the book but are the character's stories only.

I will admit that I did keep expecting The Doctor and Rose (what? I like her best and the beauty of DW is that anything/anytime can happen anytime) to pop in and help out. But maybe that's just because I watch that too much and it was London. . . Still, I wouldn't have complained.

The Chaos is a book that almost immediately grabs hold of you and refuses to let go. I know I'll be ordering Infinity the conclusion to this trilogy (the UK version at least comes out in June!).

9/10




(Thank you Chelsy and Scholastic for my review copy)


Giveaway

I also have a fantastic giveaway for you all! Scholastic will mail out two copies to winners with a US mailing address.

2 winners will each receive 1 copy of Numbers: The Chaos from Scholastic!!

Starts: today March 15 - Ends March 24 at 11:59 pm Eastern

to enter: fill out the form below (here if it doesn't show up)

want more about the book? Book website and YouTube trailer (also embeded with synopsis and links here)


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