The Mountains of Instead

Intelligent Life Neil Arksey GDP 2012 
It's not a good day for Jonathan Higgs Boson. Aside from the unfortunate name he's rather dead, albeit briefly and at the hands of a cashew nut (or was it a peanut?) and things are just going to get worse from here on out. Intelligent Life, the latest YA …

Graceling Kristin Cashore Gollancz 2009
In a continent dissected into seven Kingdoms, the Lady Katsa is an oddity in a world of such oddities.  The society in which she lives is separated into those Graced with particular skills and those not, yet those Graced are by no means favoured.  Those born wit…

The Peculiars
Maureen Doyle McQuerry
Abrams and Chronicle 2012

Lena Mattacascar is your average city girl with average city problems – her estranged father is still causing friction between her family years after his exit, she is beginning to think that her mother inviting her gran to live with them w…

Endure
Carrie Jones
Bloomsbury 2012

Endure is the fourth and final book in Carrie Jones’ Need series and this review contains spoilers for the initial three books.  If you’re OK with that then read on.
Things are ramping up in Maine – seriously, Stephen King has nothing on Zara’s world of Pixies, Norse…

Ready Player One
Ernest Cline
Arrow 2011

The year is 2044 and mankind is, well, a little broken. The last reserves of oil dried up long ago and society crumbled in their absence. Huge swathes of America's population now resides in trailer stacks; skyscrapers formed by literally stacking RVs one on…

It's true! The Mountains of Instead now contain more than just I, the erstwhile lone reviewer on these here hills. As The Mountains of Instead are largely made up of mountains of books, under which your studious Splendibird was being buried, a number of others have decided to climb up and lend …