Blog Set 8

The Culling 

After being left off my seat from the ending of part one where Lucian’s family member Cassius sentenced him on stage and basically humiliated him I finally got to read how things turned out. A new character comes in which is their trainer named Slade, off the back she is an evil person. She hurts poor Ophelia the first day of training just to show the others that in the actual trails no one will help you. She also made it so that she could see who were in an alliance together. The five of them spent a lot of time together in the pre-trials, which were the three phases they did. They got to know more of each other and a lot of things that I thought wouldn’t happen actually happened. At the beginning I kind have hated Cypress but then I actually got to know why she is the way she is. My favorite part in part II of this book is when they are all around a campfire eating all telling scary stories. That’s when I started to get to know Cypress more. The Fallen Five was about five recruits that just disappeared and was nowhere to be found. Cypress made sure that everyone knew that they were real and not just some kind of myth. Everyone else didn’t agree but Cypress seemed like she knew what she was talking about. Then later on when I found out that she was one of the Fallen Five’s incentives I was shocked. It all made sense now and Lucian figured it out. When Cypress left them on the first trial with the raft I hated her because everyone else was all about teamwork but her. Now she’s one of my favorite characters, I guess we should never judge a person on how they are before you know their backstory. Her story was just so horrible, how he brother was part of the Fallen Five and disappeared. They ended up splitting the adults and children when all five recruits disappeared. Cypress never saw her mother again and hated her brother. I also like this part because this was when everyone opened up and actually bonded. Now Ophelia has such an amazing personality, she’s in the worse situation right now and she still has the ability to think positive and laugh all the time. One thing that Digory said caught me eye, he said, “Once you think something is impossible then I will become impossible”. Its actually try because you already started with a negative mindset and see yourself failing so now in your head you have the failing mindset. Having to get to know everyone of the recruits is probably one of the worse parts I say. If you all didn’t have to actually sleep, eat, and train together then you wouldn’t feel so attached to them. Now if they didn’t see each other till the trials then it would be way easier because you would barley know them and you wouldn’t care much about their loved ones and see each and every one of them fight for the people they care the most. Digory and Lucian got way closer but Lucian cut it off and they didn’t talk for weeks till the next phase. Now what I wasn’t expecting was that there’s another conflict rather than the trails and the establishment. “The Fleshers” which are creatures who also survived after the Ash War other than the establishment. These monsters even had Slade scared, which was shocking because she is so tough. When they reached land they had to find evidence to prove that the patrol group was either dead or alive.  Something in the bones grabbed Lucian and it was an old recruit named Orestes which was part of the Fallen Five aka CYRPESS’S BROTHER! Now the part where they were on the ladder, what happened to Orestes? I know he dies but how? I didn’t understand that part. The most horrible part was when Cassius came on Graduation day. He just loves hurting Lucian, which isn’t fair at all. First he didn’t even get to see Cole, he finds out Mrs. Bledsoe is dead and he also sees that Digory has a husband. Now that Digory and Lucian don’t have one other incentive they are now each other’s. Next… the trials begin.

Day Million

I love the tone and organization of the author on how he tells the story. He first introduces both of the main characters and the environment they live in. He predicts what happens in the future.

The future back home where she loves to be.

consists of people who live over hundred just like Don who is a hundred and eighty-seven years old. Also, people from other places besides earth like Dora who is from Day million who looks like a girl but is actually a boy genetically.  Dora was a dancer as good as the black swan. Don worked and traveled in interstellar spaceships. A line that stuck out to me was when the author referred to Don’s job as something that gives purpose and meaning to his life and to keep him from going off his nuts with boredom. The author really speaks for us readers like when he says, “But you guys don’t care about that, lets talk about what you really want to know”. Dora and Don are an example of love at first site. They got married after meeting each other and their relationship blossomed but Dora ended up going back to Day Million.

When It Changed

In the beginning the main character talks about his wife, but when I read it I felt the compassion he had for her because he knows her inside and out. They live in a place called whileaway where men haven’t existed in six hundred years. They finally meet some and Katy doesn’t trust them at all and tries to kill one of them. Later on we learn that Janet is a women and not a man since we find out no man lives there. Janet stopped Katy but she regrets it later because Katy’s instincts might have been right after all and the men are actually trying to control their world. I think it’s amazing how an all women society learned how to survive and reproduce without men.

Update: There were many different opinions and views that I didn’t notice when I read Day Million. When I read about Dora being a dancer I had more of a ballerina in mind. Others thought she could have been an exotic dancer. Since Dora has gills it also shows that many things might have changed in the world. People might have evolved and grew gills to be able to breath under water. Also Don was over a hundred years old, which isn’t even possible for humans to be that old. He also has body parts that were attached to him. It was like some type of robot who you just keep putting in different parts into to replace the old ones. Their love story was not a typical love story that we all have in mind. We have an automatic idea of an love story, they usually fall in love and blossom then they get married, have kids, and stay together forever. This love story is very different, Dora goes back home and when they miss each other, they just watch clips or holograms of one and other. Most people usually go see the person they miss in person rather than seeing nonrealistic things of that person. In when it changed the woman made it seem like the men were aliens. I think they saw the men like aliens because they have never seem them before. They made it seem like the actually needed these men but in reality they didn’t. If something isn’t broken then why try to fix it? They survived without them for many centuries and to me that seems like they don’t need them at all. Things should stay the same way because when the men did come they didn’t like them at all because they were so demanding.