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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
Extremely unique, heartbreaking, and thought-provoking. I loved the fairy tale undertone and the familiar yet alien future world. Reminded me of a mix of Cinder and Across the Universe. I thought the emotions felt so real, they reminded me of first crushes and all those high school confusing times, plus Rose was such a great heroine- she grows and changes and I like how she developed. She felt real. I found the flashbacks really wonderful and effective too, they didn't rip me out of the story like some books do. It was well written and interesting, glad I read it!
So when I started this book, I wasn't expecting to like it too much. It jumped right into a world that I was completely unfamiliar with and I felt unsettled because of that. Halfway through, I determined I was going to give it a 4. By the time I finished, I knew I had to give it a 5. And that it's totally okay to love escapist fiction (just ask Neil Gaiman).
I loved the connection between science fiction and fairy tales. I loved that this story started where a normal fairy tale would end. I loved the weaving between past and present and how well it was done. I was worried Rose was just going to be another poorly written YA lit heroine who needs a boy to save her, but she ended up being someone who survived a very traumatizing event. We watched her transform from victim to hero and that's amazing. And the end nearly had me crying but I wouldn't have had it any other way. And even though I totally guessed a major plot point it didn't take away from the rest of the book. Actually, it felt nice to be reading something again with a fast-paced plot that had me thinking about what was going to happen next and why it was happening etc. All in all, I'm very glad that this was on my list for my Children's Lit class.
I loved the connection between science fiction and fairy tales. I loved that this story started where a normal fairy tale would end. I loved the weaving between past and present and how well it was done. I was worried Rose was just going to be another poorly written YA lit heroine who needs a boy to save her, but she ended up being someone who survived a very traumatizing event. We watched her transform from victim to hero and that's amazing. And the end nearly had me crying but I wouldn't have had it any other way. And even though I totally guessed a major plot point it didn't take away from the rest of the book. Actually, it felt nice to be reading something again with a fast-paced plot that had me thinking about what was going to happen next and why it was happening etc. All in all, I'm very glad that this was on my list for my Children's Lit class.
This caught my interest with its promise of being a twist on Sleeping Beauty. The book opens with the main character Rose being awakened from stasis by a handsome young man and later there are references to a briar patch. But while I liked picking out references, I enjoyed it most when we looked at Rose's pre-stasis life and her relationship with an alien lifeform.
While in her original life, she was the precious daughter of a wealthy family, her new life reveals cracks in the perfection. She has slept through years of her life, which has strengthened her artistic eye but made her lose out on important childhood moments. One of those is a youthful romance.
Rose met Xavier when she was 7 and he was only a baby but due to her stasis experiences, he soon outpaced her. And due to her final sleep that lasted 62 years, she missed his lifespan and she mourns the loss of him as her brother, best friend, true love. In addition, she is acclimatizing herself to the new world, which underwent a devastating plague that decimated the world population while adding to her family's coffers. All of these revelations make her life difficult BUT they're not the only reasons as she faces external threats, a new crush, and remembrances of her earlier life.
One way she copes is with her art; she sounds like an amazing artist and I liked imagining what she was sketching. Another way she copes is with a friend Otto, basically an experiment who has developed certain human thought processes although he struggles with human speech and has watched most of his family die. The moment they first started e-chatting was when the story really took off for me so I suggest you give it a chance if it doesn't immediately click for you.
I also described this as science-fiction but I would characterize that element as very light. It is sent in the future with some new technologies but the themes of child abuse and loss were more strongly present, leaving me some powerful feelings. The true horrors come out slowly and kept me intrigued and turning the pages.
Another element is that Rose is ghostly with little personality at the start; this is due to her parents' abuse but I am happy to report that she develops more of a backbone and her confidence levels increase as she begins to gain some measure of control over her life.
Overall: I really enjoyed this; it was very unique and well-written. Although sometimes I felt it was a bit on the slow side, I loved the unfolding of the revelations and trying to figure out what was happening next.
While in her original life, she was the precious daughter of a wealthy family, her new life reveals cracks in the perfection. She has slept through years of her life, which has strengthened her artistic eye but made her lose out on important childhood moments. One of those is a youthful romance.
Rose met Xavier when she was 7 and he was only a baby but due to her stasis experiences, he soon outpaced her. And due to her final sleep that lasted 62 years, she missed his lifespan and she mourns the loss of him as her brother, best friend, true love. In addition, she is acclimatizing herself to the new world, which underwent a devastating plague that decimated the world population while adding to her family's coffers. All of these revelations make her life difficult BUT they're not the only reasons as she faces external threats, a new crush, and remembrances of her earlier life.
One way she copes is with her art; she sounds like an amazing artist and I liked imagining what she was sketching. Another way she copes is with a friend Otto, basically an experiment who has developed certain human thought processes although he struggles with human speech and has watched most of his family die. The moment they first started e-chatting was when the story really took off for me so I suggest you give it a chance if it doesn't immediately click for you.
I also described this as science-fiction but I would characterize that element as very light. It is sent in the future with some new technologies but the themes of child abuse and loss were more strongly present, leaving me some powerful feelings. The true horrors come out slowly and kept me intrigued and turning the pages.
Another element is that Rose is ghostly with little personality at the start; this is due to her parents' abuse but I am happy to report that she develops more of a backbone and her confidence levels increase as she begins to gain some measure of control over her life.
Overall: I really enjoyed this; it was very unique and well-written. Although sometimes I felt it was a bit on the slow side, I loved the unfolding of the revelations and trying to figure out what was happening next.
Loved the premise. Great world building and characters. Can't wait for the second one.
Some really interesting ideas, undermined by a lackluster plot, half-baked worldbuilding, and an unconvincing main character. Would have been three stars, but the eye-roller of a romance (using that word generously) with Xavier dropped it down to two.
I read this ages ago, but I LOVED it! It was a page turner, plot twist, just all around amazing Sleeping Beauty retelling!
One of my favorite retellings and favorite books! The emotional (and somewhat dark) ending more than makes up for any frustration with Rose's passivity at the novel's start. She has an incredible character arc.
I definitely thought that this was going to be more like the many dystopian epics floating around. I was nicely surprised to find a story grounded in the personal experiences of one teen - instead of detailed descriptions of societal structure, this reads very much like a coming-of-age story that happens to be set in the future. The sci-fi elements are there, and there are hints that they may be exploited more in the rest of the series (of course there will be a sequel), but this volume centers entirely on Rose's struggles to come to terms with a world without the very insular and powerful family unit that governed every aspect of her life before. Rose's naivete about her parents strains credulity a bit at times, but overall, the plot is tightly woven and Rose's growth is believable. Teens waiting for their turn at Cinder will find a lot to like here.
Imagine Sleeping Beauty with a sci-fi/dystopian twist. That's the basic plot of A Long Long Sleep, with some extra elements added in, of course. When Rosalinda is awakened with what she thinks is a kiss, as far as she knows she's only been in a chemically induced stasis-sleep for maybe a few months. A year at most. But it's been sixty-two years. And things have changed dramatically from the world she knew.
As the daughter of the owner of the solar system's largest conglomerate, Rose is suddenly thrust into the lime-light and figuring out who she can trust is only one of her problems. Her body is a wreck from her long stint in the stasis tube and relationships with peers are just as tricky as ever. As she slowly falls for the boy who woke her up, she's terrorized by dangers, both real and in her nightmares, and the trouble of navigating this new life makes staying out of the peaceful stasis tube harder than ever.
I really liked the premise of this story. It was just enough Sleeping Beauty and the spiral of sci-fi technology and time-bending was really fun. I wasn't totally thrilled with the execution. Rose's self-depreciation felt overdone and her vacillation between completely helpless and fighter-chick didn't flow for me as well as I'd wanted it to. Sometimes conversations felt so dull and awkward - but other times, especially with a character named Otto, it felt more authentic.
In all, it was a good enough read, teens might appreciate it more than I did. There's certainly a great structure there, I just needed a little different dressing on it.
As the daughter of the owner of the solar system's largest conglomerate, Rose is suddenly thrust into the lime-light and figuring out who she can trust is only one of her problems. Her body is a wreck from her long stint in the stasis tube and relationships with peers are just as tricky as ever. As she slowly falls for the boy who woke her up, she's terrorized by dangers, both real and in her nightmares, and the trouble of navigating this new life makes staying out of the peaceful stasis tube harder than ever.
I really liked the premise of this story. It was just enough Sleeping Beauty and the spiral of sci-fi technology and time-bending was really fun. I wasn't totally thrilled with the execution. Rose's self-depreciation felt overdone and her vacillation between completely helpless and fighter-chick didn't flow for me as well as I'd wanted it to. Sometimes conversations felt so dull and awkward - but other times, especially with a character named Otto, it felt more authentic.
In all, it was a good enough read, teens might appreciate it more than I did. There's certainly a great structure there, I just needed a little different dressing on it.
The synopsis in one minute:
A girl wakes up from sleep for about 70 years, then she has hard time dealing with the real world. She's the heir to a gigantic monopolizing company that rules over the entire planet. A robot is trying to kill her. While she escapes and tries to figure out how she fits into the present day, she's haunted by memories of her parents and her boyfriend from 70 years ago.
The world is also a dystopia, except the girl, Rose, is the princess of the people in charge, so unlike most dystopias, we see the perspective of the more fortunate. Right after Rose was put into stass, which is like an incubating long term sleep, terrible things happened to the world. such as tuberculosis and the bubonic plague returning, along with famines and other disasters that made lots of people die. The entire world in an attempt to survive shifted leadership and everything is run by the company that her parents were in charge of. Rose throughout the book is disoriented because there are too many things going on that's different, people have different slang, new technology and everyone alive when she was alive is now dead. She also is the heir to the conglomerate and she has to attend this super rich public school and befriends the super rich and powerful kids there.
At school, she meets Otto, an alien created by her company who is blue skinned and communicates through mind-speak, and is my favorite character, and Bran who's the grandson of the president and is hot, smexy and super talented at tennis.
It does tend to go off in a stereotypical ya journey, but there were several things I did like about this book.
1. the romance. or the lack of it.
Rose was in love with this guy named Xavier before she got put into stass and every few chapters the book shows a flashback of their relationship. Rose was put into stass repeatedly through childhood so when Xavier was born when she was eight, and then he caught up in age as she stayed asleep. Xavier is the person Rose misses the most in the future because she knows he has to be dead.
2. really good at getting emotions across
3. morality issues of many many shades
4. love. all sorts of love. every single love. friendship, parents, brother, family, friends. all the love. It wasn't a strictly romantic book, I would daresay that besides the flashbacks with Xavier, A Long, Long Sleep is not a romantic novel.
Things I was frustrated with.
A lot of ya has this fault, where the plot gets around by the female main character making mistakes, generally causing a ruckus and her own cause of demise. It always feels so calculated and put in on purpose, rather than a natural course of events eventually leading to an end.
Rose is a clumsy, soft-spoken heroine and generally another damsel of demise. At one part, she attempts to run away from the homicidal robot chasing after her and she trips and falls and at this point, the amount of coincidences that happens after that is just unbelievable.
But the ending made up for Rose's frustrating character development. I enjoyed this book, not as a sci-fi/ dystopia, but as a real self discovery as to what it means to be loved and to love.
3.5/5
A girl wakes up from sleep for about 70 years, then she has hard time dealing with the real world. She's the heir to a gigantic monopolizing company that rules over the entire planet. A robot is trying to kill her. While she escapes and tries to figure out how she fits into the present day, she's haunted by memories of her parents and her boyfriend from 70 years ago.
The world is also a dystopia, except the girl, Rose, is the princess of the people in charge, so unlike most dystopias, we see the perspective of the more fortunate. Right after Rose was put into stass, which is like an incubating long term sleep, terrible things happened to the world. such as tuberculosis and the bubonic plague returning, along with famines and other disasters that made lots of people die. The entire world in an attempt to survive shifted leadership and everything is run by the company that her parents were in charge of. Rose throughout the book is disoriented because there are too many things going on that's different, people have different slang, new technology and everyone alive when she was alive is now dead. She also is the heir to the conglomerate and she has to attend this super rich public school and befriends the super rich and powerful kids there.
At school, she meets Otto, an alien created by her company who is blue skinned and communicates through mind-speak, and is my favorite character, and Bran who's the grandson of the president and is hot, smexy and super talented at tennis.
It does tend to go off in a stereotypical ya journey, but there were several things I did like about this book.
1. the romance. or the lack of it.
Rose was in love with this guy named Xavier before she got put into stass and every few chapters the book shows a flashback of their relationship. Rose was put into stass repeatedly through childhood so when Xavier was born when she was eight, and then he caught up in age as she stayed asleep. Xavier is the person Rose misses the most in the future because she knows he has to be dead.
2. really good at getting emotions across
3. morality issues of many many shades
4. love. all sorts of love. every single love. friendship, parents, brother, family, friends. all the love. It wasn't a strictly romantic book, I would daresay that besides the flashbacks with Xavier, A Long, Long Sleep is not a romantic novel.
Things I was frustrated with.
A lot of ya has this fault, where the plot gets around by the female main character making mistakes, generally causing a ruckus and her own cause of demise. It always feels so calculated and put in on purpose, rather than a natural course of events eventually leading to an end.
Rose is a clumsy, soft-spoken heroine and generally another damsel of demise. At one part, she attempts to run away from the homicidal robot chasing after her and she trips and falls and at this point, the amount of coincidences that happens after that is just unbelievable.
But the ending made up for Rose's frustrating character development. I enjoyed this book, not as a sci-fi/ dystopia, but as a real self discovery as to what it means to be loved and to love.
3.5/5