The Witness, James Jauncey

After seeing the Blackriggs massacre; an atrocious act of cruelty, 15 year old John is on the run from the government, with information which could save Scotland from the one acre act. All he has to do is get that information to the rebels. Only one problem. He is accompanied by Ninian, a Fragile-X kid who has no way of expressing his emotions. No way of telling John how close much he knows the rebel leader.

                John is a natural hero in any sort of book: traumatized by the death of his younger brother, he keeps to himself and is generally the loner type. So he has devoted himself to hunting and music: or, more specifically, hunting and violin. He plays the ‘fiddle’ to his brother all the time. Until his house is stormed. By the government. Looking for him.

                Halfway through the story, he meets Lila, a girl willing to help the 2 boys. But with the government risking a heavy price if the information John knows gets out, every decision John takes could play a crucial part to the threesome’s survival. Trusting a friend could mean trusting an enemy. And lying to a stranger could mean losing a vital ally.

                I really enjoyed this book, and if it wasn’t for difficult timing, reading it in a sitting would have been no problem. From the beginning of the book, questions are being formed, and your curiosity starts to grow. The book also keeps the action going, with little drag or boringness to the story.

                This came as a shock to me, but this is based on a true story. A true story well worth reading. 8/10.

The umbrella Killer

Miho wrote this, and i think its great. I’ve just put the first part of it.

Killing is like falling in love,

It’s always with someone special…

 

Him

 

It was a stormy afternoon. The clouds were grey, causing the sky to be dark as night.

He watched her struggle through the storm.

He waited.

He cleared his throat.

“Would you like an umbrella miss?”

She smiled not suspecting the things going through his mind.

“Yes please!”

Her last words

 

Mary Jane

 

She sat at her window observing the view, it was raining, the street outside was empty. There were no people except for the young woman getting soaked. Behind her an old man with a limp followed. Was he her father? No she showed no acknowledgment of knowing he existed, to her he must have been just another figure in the rain. Mary Jane wondered what he was doing, and froze.

 

Her body went rigid; her blood ran cold as ice making goose pimples stick out on her arms. That face, that horrible deranged face, the evil one that she had to see when she closed her eyes the one that brought back memories that Mary Jane wanted to forget forever, those cold, dead eyes that lit up with fire from the very depths of hell.

 

It was him. Mary Jane’s eye’s lit up with fear. Fear raw and fresh oozing all over her, wave upon wave of it hit her inside. Her brain began to pump, her blood pressure soared, her heart rate began rising rapidly up to such dangerous heights. All the monitoring machines began to beep excitedly. She twitched dangerously frothing at the mouth, screaming on the inside. Her eye’s rolled backward as she trembled and shook. A doctor and two nurses ran in, grabbing her arms. “Inject her!” the doctor roared. The syringe plunged, and the needle entered. Mary Jane stopped dead, her eyes closed alarmingly; her body went slack her face went blank and expressionless. She slid silently into a deep sleep. But still her fear was there, and you could tell she was dreaming about him. How awful were those dreams? Let me put it this way, nightmare is an understatement.

 

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The Pig Scrolls, By Paul Shipton

 
OK the world is going to chaos, so what do you do? Well you don’t recruit a talking smarty pants pig, a junior assistant, assistant pythia in training and well…bumscruff as your first choices for heroes do you? Well in The Pig Scrolls it comes down just to that. Yep the whole story is told from Gryllus’s point of view. Err did I mention Gryllus is the talking pig? Yeah you probably were expecting that but I’d definitely rate this book 8/10 because it’s told with good humour, accurate Greek history and is an original and interesting book and overall just really good. Oh yeah you might want to buy it to find out whether we are trapped forever in eternal chaos or not. Yeah that’s just one of those things I thought you might just want to know.
 

Why is Snot Green, Glenn Murphy

It’s rare to see both a funny yet factual science book, yet I witnessed this reading ‘Why is Snot Green’. ‘Why is Snot Green’, as the name suggests, is a question and answer book. It tackles general science; space, our planet, animals, the human body and the future, all named more amusingly than here.

                This book has many advantages, but the sense of humour makes it particularly attractive. Also, you can build on the voices; you can establish what kind of people they would be or what they would do. The questions are questions we would ask, and more complicated answers are aided with diagrams.

                But my friends didn’t seem to enjoy it so much – it wasn’t so much the style of writing as the lack of colour which made them back away from it; the other books were loaded with pictures and seemed to appeal more to the teens.

                Overall, I believe the writing in a book to be more important than the pictures displayed, rating ‘Why is Snot Green?’ high on my list of good books. And the lack of pictures was made up for by the injection of humour. What a great book. It definitely hits a 9/10

 

 

 

Ryans Brain, A Jiggy Mcue story by Micheal Lawrence

 

Jiggy barely just got out of his last mishap but he’s gone headfirst and landed himself into another one, taking his 2 best mates and fellow musketeers Angie and Pete with him. This time strange things are happening to Jiggy, like herds of horses stampeding after him and lemon meringue pie throwing itself mysteriously out of his hands and onto the head’s of his teachers. All after his arch nemesis Bry-Ry put himself into a coma trying to put Jiggy into a coma. Are all these strange happenings connected? Or is it coming from a source that the 3 musketeers hadn’t considered? Just go read it because you wont find out from this review.

 

This review was written by Miho. More of her reviews can soon be found in her category.