Let’s face it: I like college-based shows. Maybe because I’m in college and I enjoy a satirical outtake on that sort of life. Greek had finished a while ago and I felt like I needed to watch a show with a similar premise.

So, I decided to watch Community.

The show revolves around the (mis)adventures of a Spanish study group from Greendale Community College. In the beginning, this group is formed out of a shameful plan. You see, Jeff, a has-been lawyer who cheated his way to the top, wants to sleep with Britta from his Spanish class. He learns that she is afraid of flunking tomorrow’s test and so, he tells her of his non-existent study group.

Britta agrees to meet Jeff later in the library. However, she invites Abed – who, in turn, invites other people to join them – and thus, the Study Group is formed. The pilot episode does a great job of introducing the characters and we get a glimpse of who they really are. The characters are one of the best things about Community and the show features a wide range of them. And, unlike most of other shows where there’s an array of wildly different people, Community does it right.

Jeff is a former lawyer and used to getting his way. Britta is an idealist hippie. Shirley is the middle aged mother of two who just got divorced. Abed is a strange, strange person and he is obsessed with TV and movies. Troy is a dumb jock who lost his scholarship to a better college, Pierce a racist old man and Annie an insecure young girl who had a pill addiction and dropped out of high school. The characters are, however, much more than this. They’re all three-dimensional, their relationships with each other are well-built and their quirks funny. There is never a time in which they are out of character and you have to give the writers credit for making such a diverse, wacky cast so consistent.

There are times in which Community is borderline genius. There are times in which it’s just plain funny. Also, the variety of the cast in every sense (at one point, we learn that there are not two people in the study group who share the same religion) is endearing and it shows that friendship has nothing to do with race or beliefs.

Community does a lot of pop-culture references and perhaps that’s why it’s so easy to identify with it. Whether it be movies or TV or comics, they’re constantly being referenced, and always in funny, smart ways. I don’t think there’s a show out there who does pop-culture referencing as well as Community.

But to me, it’s the characters that make the show. They’re constantly involved in shenanigans, whether it be building a blanket fort, watching Kickpuncher, setting up a chicken-fingers mafia ring or a Día de los Muertos party, there’s always something funny happening, and the characters’ dealing with the events make everything even better. There is even an episode that’s shot entirely in clay-motion (Abed has a supposed meltdown and sees everything that way) and it’s genius.

Another great thing about Community are the short scenes at the end of each episode—most of them featuring Troy and Abed and their budding friendship. And they’re funny, like the rest of the show and absolutely not to miss.

So, Community. It’s a show that is funny, smart and has one of the most talented casts ever. It’s a show about friendship and all the good and bad things that happen when you have such a different group of crazy people together. Give it a chance and you’ll soon be adding it to your list of favorite TV series. I know I have.

What if you knew exactly when you would die?

It seems I’ve lucked in with book covers in my reading choices. In my previous review, I commented on how Jodi Meadows’s Incarnate had a beautiful cover. Well, it’s the same for Lauren DeStafano’s Wither. It has a gorgeous cover that perfectly matches the book.

But let’s get on with the review, shall we?

Wither is yet another dystopian Young Adult book set in US. Sometime in the future, a generation of perfect human beings—strong people without diseases—has been genetically engineered by scientists. However, once that generation reproduced, the people realized there was a big price for such perfection: their offspring had a virus that invariably caused them to die young. Women can only reach the age of twenty, while men can get to twenty five.

Sixteen-year-old Rhine lived in New York until one day, when she gets captured and sold to a 21-year-old House Governor to be his wife in a polygamous marriage. Sold along with her is 19-year-old Jenna, who is quiet and graceful, and 13-year-old Cecily, who seems to believe she’s the luckiest girl alive for having found a rich husband. But Rhine, unlike the other two brides, doesn’t want to be in captivity. She wants to escape the beautiful mansion where she’s been kept prisoner (albeit with every luxury available) and find her twin brother Rowan.

Rhine’s character is finely crafted in almost every aspect and you do root for her to escape. While at first, you hate Linden, as Rhine gets to know him, he slowly creeps into your heart as he did with Rhine. Jenna is beautiful and reserved and hides a very dark past and Gabriel is a sweet, caring boy. Even Linden’s father Vaughn, the villain of the book, is well thought-out in his cruelty and you do understand why he does the experiments he does. The only character I did not care about was Cecily, who’s an annoyingly bratty 13-year-old with a big fondness for playing house.

I have to admit, I found the premise to be quite captivating, especially the part where people know their time is ticking away. There’s an urgency to everything Rhine does, all because she knows she only has four years left to live. Of course, there are people trying to find an antidote through some grueling methods and while they’re depicted as awful, both the character of Rhine and the reader understand the motive behind such cruelty: despair. I don’t know if it was Lauren’s intention or not, but despair seems to be the main focus of this book: Rhine’s despair to escape, the people’s despair to find a cure and the despair felt when a girl is close to twenty.

I found the weakest part of the book to be the romance. Rhine is being held captive and she resents her husband Linden for it, but she soon realizes things are not what they seem and begins falling a little bit in love with him. Then, there’s Gabriel, one of the house’s many attendants, for whom Rhine risks a lot despite not knowing him very well. Both relationships are not very deep and I found them to be somewhat awkwardly handled. It’s a shame, because it’s what keeps this book from being stellar instead of merely good.

Lauren’s writing is very competent and she manages to capture the struggle that goes on in Rhine’s head, well—should she just give up and live the remnants of her life away from her brother in such a lascivious place or should she run and be free? Often, the prose has a creepy quality and it fitted perfectly with the book’s theme.

Overall, Wither is a capable debut whose premise is intriguing, with an aura of anguish, and an ending that will make you want to read the sequels.

Paperback: 320 pages

Publisher: Harper Voyager (4 Aug 2011)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0007425473

In a world where the same souls are reincarnated over and over again, Ana is a new soul, someone who’s never lived before.

First of all, I have to comment on this book’s cover. I know a book shouldn’t be judged that way, but honestly, Incarnate’s cover, which depicts a particular part of the novel, is beautiful. Really, really beautiful. Congratulations to the artist for creating such a mesmerizing image.

Incarnate’s universe is a fantasy one, with dragons and sylph and other mythical creatures, and yet, there’s electricity and other amenities we have ourselves. It’s not typical of a world to have both, but this mix makes things interesting and imaginative.

Ana, the main character, is a newsoul—or a nosoul, as her biological mother, Li, calls her. She was born in someone else’s place, someone named Ciana, who was supposed to reincarnate when Ana was born, and the main character often feels as though she’s taken someone else’s place in the world. At eighteen, she sets out for the city of Heart to look for clues as to why she’s been born—but her mother gives her a bad compass and she gets lost, is attacked by Sylph and is rescued by a man named Sam.

The story revolves mainly around Sam and Ana but it’s intriguing enough and the mystery behind Ana’s existence is ever-present and only explained towards the end. The explanation makes sense, as far as that universe goes.

There’s also some theological debate around the story, about whether or not a god—Janan—exists, and what was his purpose in creating a world where people reincarnate over and over again. Another aspect I appreciated about the book is that, at one point, there’s a dance where people whose souls are partnered (for the lack of a better term) try to find each other among a crowd of disguised individuals. In this particular event, the two souls inhabit the bodies of two women.

I don’t know if it was the author’s intention to relay a message or not, but I enjoyed that, no matter what gender they were, those two individuals always kept going back to each other. The physical aspect of their relationship was unimportant. What really mattered to them was that they loved one another, nothing else. This is one of the truest, most endearing portrayals of love I’ve seen in a novel and I commend Jodi for doing it.

As far as character development goes, we see Ana’s growth throughout the book as she struggles to find out why she exists. Compared to all other characters, Ana is an infant, and it often shows. Everyone knows everyone else, except for Ana. In the world of Incarnate, she’s an unknown element, the only one there is. While some people like that about her, some are apprehensive and downright fearful and hostile. It’s this particular trait, coupled with the mystery behind her birth, that makes Ana so interesting: she’s a new possibility in the midst of a sea of certainty. The cast of supporting characters is also remarkable, especially because they’ve been around for so long. Through various lifetimes, they have been reincarnated in different genders, have been lovers and friends all through their past lives.

The romance—which, from the beginning, we know it’s going to happen—is sweet and, at the same time, lustful. There’s a need going on between Ana and her suitor and when they finally give in to it, it’s all you’ve been expecting, but leaves you wanting more all the same.

Writing-wise… there’s something beautiful about the way Jodi Meadows writes. Her prose is often lyrical, riddled with emotions and sensations that, as a reader, are easy to channel. I especially liked the way Ana felt about music and Jodi’s descriptions of the feeling a song evokes made it all even more believable.

If you’re looking for a romantic, haunting tale, and beautiful writing, then Incarnate is definitely for you.

Hardcover: 384 pages

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books (31 Jan 2012)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0062060759

ISBN-13: 978-0062060754

There will be spoilers for the previous two books in this review, so if you haven’t read them yet, do it. They’re amazing and two highly recommended reads.

Time for the final choice…

Specials is the third and final instalment of Tally’s story. It starts with Tally, now a Special, searching for members of the New Smoke in an Uglies party. With her are her new clique of Specials, the Cutters. They were founded by Shay, who devised a ritual of cutting in order to sharpen their senses and make things icier. Bubbly is no longer enough.

Tally and her clique go after a girl who had been smuggling healing pills into the city. The girl, however, escapes with David’s help and the Cutters are ambushed by a group of Smokies who possess modern technology. Tally manages to save Shay, but the Smokies manage to take Fausto, another Cutter. That’s when Shay and Tally make up a plan to find the New Smoke, a plan that involves Tally’s still-burning flame, Zane.

Tally’s brainwashing is sublime. You can feel it, taste it even and it’s repulsive – even more so because you know she’s wrong and you can’t do anything against it. She is disgusted by Zane, someone she loves, and she can’t do anything about it. It’s revolting that they took something like that away from her. More than anything, Tally wants Zane to become Special so that she no longer feels sickened by him and that’s her motivation through most of the book: make Zane special.

Tally and Zane’s relationship reaches a new level of complexity in in this final installment and it’s absolutely delicious. The aforementioned disgust, coupled with the remnants of her feelings for Zane makes for a thrilling, complex chemistry. It makes you even angrier about what they’ve done to Tally because, while he clearly loves Zane and wants to be with him, her Special brain doesn’t let her do it.

Tally’s actions, her brainwashing, have consequences and, unlike in many other books, she pays a dear price. The plot twist regarding Zane at the end left me sad and speechless and thoroughly amazed at the same time. Not many writers have the guts to do what Scott Westerfeld did there and I commend him for that. And it wasn’t just the idea in itself that made that plot twist so great: it’s the way it was executed. It really was heart-wrenching and heart-breaking and yet another reason to hate Tally’s city regime and Dr. Cable.

His prose is, as always, flawless. The way Tally sees the world in Specials is completely different, but it’s so well done you can nearly taste it. The world is sharper, more detailed, not because Scott Westerfeld’s writing changed but because Tally did. The books change along with Tally in perfect symbiosis.

Like Pretties, Specials never stops being interesting. It’s action followed by more action, dilemmas followed by dilemmas, choices after choices. It’s amazing how Scott Westerfeld can make a book that never stops thrilling you.

A brilliant conclusion to Tally’s story, Specials is a nearly-flawless piece of literature. Much like Tally, it never stops, never rests and never ceases its surprises. The Uglies series is astounding and should be in everyone’s shelves.

Paperback: 400 pages

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children’s (4 Mar 2010)

Language English

ISBN-10: 1847389082

ISBN-13: 978-1847389084

Be mindful that this review contains spoilers for Uglies, the first book in the series.

What happens when perfection isn’t good enough?

In the first book we learned that when someone becomes Pretty their brain is damaged on purpose so that they’ll never be truly unhappy. There are no revolutions, no wars, no anything. An experimental cure has been devised to heal the brain and Tally volunteered to become Pretty and have that cure tested on her at a later time.

Pretties opens with a common day for Tally Youngblood, who has finally become Pretty. She has the life she’s always wished for – parties, alcohol and endless fun. Her biggest problems now are hangovers and figuring out what to wear to events. We get to see what her life has become but luckily, the book doesn’t dally on Tally’s life as a Pretty much. It jumps right into action at the right moment, answering all the questions we had before and more.

From there, the novel flows quite nicely. Like in Uglies, there is never a dull moment in Pretties. The plot is tight and intriguing and the way it ends is even more fantastic than its predecessor’s. You might even say I enjoyed Pretties’ plot even more than I did Uglies’. The first book was good, but the second one blows it out of the water.

The cliffhangers we were left with in Uglies are mostly resolved by the end of this second installment, but it gives us yet another one right at the end. I won’t lie, you do see it coming, but it’s delivered in such a fantastic way and it’s so well-tied with previous events it still surprises you. The change in some characters is quite brilliant as well and it borders almost on cruel.

As for Tally, she goes from being annoyingly Pretty, back to being a capable person once again. We see her fall in love and it’s quite different from David, which is a relief. She becomes more mature and it shows in her relationships.

Another aspect I loved, is how the Pretties talked to one another. They had a very proper way of speaking. They say bubbly and bogus to mean a sharper, exquisite reality and something that’s just dreadful, respectively. They are annoying, but the way Scott Westerfeld portrayed them was quite genuine. Also, while Tally was Pretty, I wanted to bash her head with a hammer – same for everyone else, but as the book progresses and she’s freed from pretty-mindedness and goes back to being the amazing Tally I’d fallen in love with in the first book.

The writing in this book is still pretty fluid and sharp, as it was on Uglies. We get more of a glimpse of New Pretty Town and it’s a flamboyant, dizzying experience; same for the new sections of the wild, particularly the reservation. As for the atmosphere around Tally, it oozes determination and survival instinct. It’s a book full of suspense and it delivers.

Pretties never gets boring. It keeps you on the edge, guessing what’s going to happen next and the ending is the best example of such a factor. I loved this book even more than I did Uglies and I absolutely can’t wait to read Specials and see Tally’s story come to an end.