Cia Vale

Cia Vale, the main character in The Testing, is a very intriguing character.  She has so many different sides to her that it's hard not to think about her, even after you've turned the last page of the novel.  If she were a real person,  I think I'd really enjoy talking to her about some of the seemingly insane desicions she made throughout the testing process.  Before she went in for the testing, her father told her to trust no one, yet as soon as her journey began she found herself falling in love with another boy from her colony.  She blindly trusted people,  without even considering their possible motives.  She and the boy from  her colony, Tomas, grew to be friends with a boy from another colony, Will.  During that fourth and final phase of the testing, the candidates were dumped in post-apocalyptic Chicago and told to find their way back to  the original testing site in Tosu City, which we can infer is probably somewhere near or a little bit south of present day Kansas City, Missouri.  She and Tomas meet up at the beginning, in Chicago, and about halfway through find Will.  Tomas urges her not to let him come along, yet she does anyway.  This surprises me and is something I'd definitely like to ask her about.  She was so wary of traps Testing Officials set for them, and was careful not to trigger any, but easily trusted other people, when several candidates had already proven to be deadlier than the traps.   Also, she consistently ignored her father's warning not to trust people, but always thought carefully about his advice for other aspects of the Testing.  When Tomas and Will both proved themselves to be incredibly untrustworthy, she deserved it.  But then, she still couldn't bear to stop loving Tomas.  Instead, she fell into total denial, and blamed Will even though it obviously wasn't him.  Her quote on page 308 proves this.  It reads, "No.  My heart doesn't want to believe it.  Tomas wouldn't" -oops, spolier, can't give that away- "...unless he didn't have a choice.  I left Will and Tomas together.  Isn't it more likely that Will, a proven..." (spoiler) "was the one to do it?  Maybe there was some kind of altercation.  Maybe...."  Is she just too in love with Tomas to bear the possibility that he did something horribly wrong?  Why couldn't she even act slightly wary around him after her realization of what really happened?  Wasn't it enough to make her stop being so lovesick over him?  I really do want to know what she was thinking.

Your Time is Almost Up.

Recently, I've started reading The Testing.  It's a dystopian novel- like lots of more recent books, but that doesn't mean it isn't good- and it's about a girl, Cia, who gets chosen to test to try to get into the University.  I found it interesting that in the whole country, there is only one college to go to.  It's so different from what we know, where there are tons of colleges throughout the US and many of them aren't even that selective.  For example, a quote says, "Five of us from my grade were selected and tested.... I was the only one who made it to the University." (Charbonneau 6)  This quote shows that you have to be incredibly smart in order to even be selected for Testing, and even better to get into the University.  However, in Cia's world this makes sense, since society is coming out of a war and the land has been completely ruined, only the best and smartest minds will be very useful to putting things back in order.  The life we know is nothing like this.  Almost anyone can go to college, and most of the time there isn't a special test you have to pass.  Your application just has to look good to Admissions Officers.  But like I said before, for us this makes sense.  The US is not completely destroyed; we aren't in the process of rebuilding society from scratch.  Maybe the most intelligent minds will be more useful, but everyone can have their place in the country.

Ender in Exile

This book is plenty good, but the worst thing about it is just that it isn't on the same level as the others in the story.  The other stories used technical and scientific ideas and terms, yes, but they weren't overused to the point where they cluttered the story.  With all of this, the novel becomes less of an exciting and suspenseful read- it doesn't make me as anxious to get home, flop onto my bed, and read.  While I will say that it was a great book to be reading after I finished each final exam (and it was probably part of the reason that motivated me to focus on them so I could finish faster), there are some sentences that are completely overloaded with futuristic science that we can't possibly understand.  A quote on page 123 states, " 'The inertia supression on this ship is superb.  In fact, we are already accelerating at the rate of two gravities, and yet the only apparent gravity is imparted by the centrifugal force of the spin of the ship.' 'Which is odd,' said Valentine, 'since centrifugal force is alos inertial, and you'd thinkit would also be supressed.' 'The supression is highly directionalized, and affects only the forward movement of the ship.' " What does all that even mean?  Directional suppression of inertia?  Centrifugal movement?  They're spinning?  Don't you have to go through astronaut training for that?  (They didn't.)  It wouldn't be as noticeable if Orson Scott Card took some time to explain all of this, like he did in the previous books where there was less material like this anyway, but he doesn't.  All in all, the tone of the novel is just nore monotonous.  Here is a link to a reader who agrees with me:
http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=8063