A Web of Air by Philip Reeve

Set far in the future, the sequel to Fever Crumb brings us to when Fever is sixteen years old.  The highly rational Engineer is now working and living with a group of traveling performers.  When she arrives in the city of Mayda, she finds out that there is a man named Arlo Thursday working furiously to rediscover the lost secret of flight.  However, every person before him who dreamed of flight mysteriously died before they could real their goal.  Fever and Arlo race to finish a flying machine amongst deadly plots and skeptical religious fanatics.  There is only one thing they need to do: fly, when no one has left the ground for hundreds of years.

This book is slow to take off, but once it does, prepare for a wild ride.  Fever's cold and rational character and her background may come as a bit of a shock to those who haven't read the first book, but she is surprisingly relatable.  The plots takes unpredictable twists and turns, and no one that Fever meets can really be trusted.  Be prepared to become annoyed with several of the characters! A Web of Air is a great read for anyone, but be sure to read Fever Crumb first so as to understand the setting and Fever's background.

4 stars

So Yesterday by Scott Westerfield

Hunter Brauqe is the 17 year old you imagine in the streets on NYC: black tee-shirt, skinny jeans and a close cropped hair-line. However, there is more to him than just the average teen. He is involved in a extreme money-making underground operation known as "cool hunting". The concept is that they find people, known as Innovators, who break away from the mainstream of culture, develop new styles in language, clothing, hair, etc., and wear them (obviously). Hunter finds these people, reports them to his boss and then sells them to large corporations, who develop the next "cool" style. One day, Hunter finds his bosses phone in an abandoned building and goes on an insane quest to find out what exactly happened.

So Yesterday is a great novel. It provides this great writing sense in that you don't have all the pieces of the mystery until the end, making you continue to inhale the book as fast as you can. The plot is very new and is quite believable in almost all the parts. It moves very quickly and might inspire the hipster in you. There isn't much more to say than be new and find the "cool" in the world.

4.5 Stars

Jacob Aubrecht