Fear by Michael Grant - Chapter 2

On to chapter two. This chapter starts off with narrator telling us that it is Friday Fun Fest at Lake Tramonto. Every Friday, the kids reward themselves with evening entertainment. Tonight two kids are entertaining the kids around them by recreating an episode of Spongebob. The stage is on the top deck of the big houseboat that had been pushed into the water so it would be a few dozen feet away from the dock. Sam Temple watched from the marina office where he always resides. It's a two-story tower that gave Sam a clear view of the heads of the children below. The house boat is where he usually works and sleeps and spends most of his time, but on night when they have Fun Fridays, he hands it over to the kids so they can put on a show. Audience ranged from kids at the age of 1 to 15 and everyone over the age of five carried a weapon with them at all times. None wore anything fancy anymore. They ranged from jeans and t-shirts to ponchos made of blankets and no shoes. But at least they were all clean, and much cleaner than they were back at the little town they used to live in almost a year ago. Perdido Beach.

When the majority of the kids moved to the lake, they were given a seemingly endless supply of fresh-water provided by the lake. Now it was possible for kids to be together without gagging from each others stench.  And things were better here than they were when they were living in Perdido Beach. They had more food that they are now able to catch in the lake and no on was starving. And there was the Sinder project, that had amazing potential. But still Sam had a feeling that something was wrong or something would eventually go wrong. But he shook his head and and tried to stay in a good mood. It's just that he wasn't used to so much peace and four months of it and trust me, for them, four months of peace is a big amount of time.

Sam hears footsteps on the stairs and the door opens as he glances back where he sees Diana.  He immediately offers Diana his chair but she declines saying that she pregnant, not crippled. Diana then discusses with Sam that she shouldn't be as big as she is just yet. She's only four months along and she's already huge. She just doesn't understand. Then  the baby starts to move, which it isn't supposed to be doing in such an early stage in pregnancy so she takes Sam's hand to feel her stomach. He feels it move and is slightly freaked out.  The fact that everything is happening so quickly in Diana's pregnancy is just another problem that is added to Sam's load. Their are distant problem: down in the dessert Sam had discovered a container full of missiles. He just hopes that his brother, Caine, never discovers that they are there as well. If Caine finds out about it then it can either mean nothing will happen but knowing Caine it will probably mean some huge problems. And Sam has problems more close to home: Brianna, the girl who can outrun a bullet, literally, had found a set up camp in Stephano Ray National Park that could be a sign to where Astrid is. He was positive that she was still alive. Brianna had discovered many signs to Astrid's whereabouts but that isn't Brianna's main mission. Her main mission is to find the creature who is Drake-Brittney. Nobody had seen or heard from him in months but nobody would ever believe he was truly dead. Drake is the creature in the FAYZ that everyone feared. The creature that couldn't die.

Sam reluctantly comes back to reality and focuses at the problem at hand. Diana the proceeds to telling him that the baby she is holding is a three bar mutant already and it hasn't even been born yet.

 Diana has the power to be able to read the power level of an individuals power level by physical contact with the person. Since she is carrying the baby, she is always having physical contact with the fetus always allowing her to read it's power level. She has a very bad feeling about this baby.

Sam felt his stomach churn. He is worried about this. They have had four straight months of peace and he would like to keep it that way. They have also had an amazing winning streak. The have had food, shelter and most importantly fresh water for months. Before they were always on a search for all those things none stop. They had found a precious stash of Nutella, Ramon Noddles and Pepsi.  They had begun to plant vegetables and they are growing just nicely under Sinder's care and they have sea food sent to them from Perdido Beach like fish, mussels, and clams by Quinn's crew of people who fish for all the food.

Sam begun to think to himself. Since day one of the FAYZ, the kids have looked up to him with authority. But since he has this responsibility, he always has a giant weight upon his shoulders. He has also had these fantasies about how he will have a personal judgement day and he will be responsible for ever failure, every mistake, and every body that has been buried in the town square. But the last few months he has been having those fantasies less and less often. Maybe he was finally redeeming himself.

Sam tells Diana not to tell anyone about how quick the baby is developing. They are also worried about what kind of power the baby will have. Will it be able to shoot beams of light out of it's hands and burn through things with those beams like Sam, or have telekinetic powers like it's father Caine or worse, if it's powers are deadly, if it decides it's having a bad day will it burn a hole straight through her body. These are question that are yet to be answered.


Back in the town of Perdido Beach, we begin to focus on Caine, Sam's twin brother or eh hem I'm sorry, "King Caine." He wore a purple polo shirt, jeans and a pair of black cowboy boots. He sat upon his "throne" that really just a really heavy dark wooden chair. On his left stood Penny, the girl who had once had the bones in her legs completely shattered but they were eventually healed by Lana who can heal any injury with just the touch of her hands.Penny wore a sundress and no shoes. She also has a power. She is able to make you see anything you want to see. Sweet wonderful things as well as, horrible mind scarring things. On his right stood a boy named Turk who was supposedly his security but honestly, Caine really didn't need security. If someone or something were to threaten him, he could just pick them up 20 feet into the air and just drop them, killing them but in Caine's mind, a king needed to have people who followed you.

There is a trial in process against a boy named Cigar. Cigar is sweet-faced 13 year old boy with rough hands, a strong back, and a tanned face from being one of the fishermen. Cigar was on trial because the night before he and another kid by the name of Jaden were extremely drunk and had gotten into a fight. Jaden swung a pipe at him and missed. Cigar swung a tree branch studded with nail at him but had not missed. No thought that Cigar meant to kill Jaden but Jaden's brains ended up on the sidewalk either way.

The were four punishment the accused could face: a fine, lock-up, Penny, or death. If you are sentenced to Penny then you would basically have to kept in a room with Penny while she made you see things. Like I said before, Penny can make you see sweet beautiful things but also gruesome things. Penny had a sick and disturbed imagination so there was no saying what horrible things she would make someone see.

Quinn, the lead fishermen, came to speak for Cigar, saying he was a good kid and had never done anything wrong before this incident. He didn't deserve the death penalty.

Caine listened to Quinn's argument and nodded thoughtfully. He decided that since he didn't purposely kill Jaden that he didn't deserve the death penalty but he still did kill someone. He decided to sentence him to Penny but not for an hour or two. Oh no, he sentenced him to Penny from sunrise to sunset the next day.  Quinn looked at Cigar, shook his head then shouted to Cigar that he would be able to do this but on the inside Quinn knew that a sentence to Penny wasn't even equivalent to death. It was worse. Cigar yelled back that he would be able to do it.

Penny just laughed.

And so we reach end of this chapter and I am just shocked because of how much the characters have changed ever since the beginning of this series. They have just gotten darker and more gruesome then ever before. The kids who were once harmless now all carry weapons on them at all times and the character who would never think of killing them for their own life would now probably push a kid in front a moving car if it meant that they would live. It's ridiculous.

I think the authors intent of this chapter is to show how much the character have changed and how much the world is so much different then the world the used to live in. One mistake in this world could possibly mean the difference between life and death in the FAYZ. There also seems to be a lot of cause and effect patterns in this book. Because someone made this choice, this happened and stuff like that.

Wow, that post was long.

Fear by Michael Grant - Chapter 1

The book starts off with a description of a girl named Astrid Ellison and describing how much she had changed since all the adults disappeared and her living hell began. She now always had a gun on her and is now always ready to kill if it means her survival. Her used to be long hair had been hacked off and she now wore many scars. She traveled the northern end in Stephano Ray National Park of the small world that they called the FAYZ (Fallout Alley Youth Zone) that was surrounded by a circular dome. She, like everyone else residing in the FAYZ, are always on a constant struggle for food and water. She had found a stream and a little black berry bush, so she was safe for starvation. For now.

She suddenly heard a sound and with a swift motion, swung her gun around her shoulder and aimed it. She listened for the direction of the sound and looked around for the cause of the sound. As she had hoped, it wasn't the person she feared most. The monster with a tentacle for an arm, the sociopath who cared for no one but himself and his precious darkness, the murderer of many kids in the FAYZ, the evil that could never die, the evil she feared would kill her sooner or later.

Drake Merwin.

She slowly relaxed and set up camp and started to read Heart of Darkness but she finds that she is unable to focus because something else is consuming her mind. The fact that she sacrificed her own brother to get rid of the creatures who burrowed in your body, ate you from the inside out and were nearly indestructible. She sacrificed him thinking that the lord would intervene and stop the killing like he did in the bible story where the Lord stopped Abraham from killing his son Issac. But that had not happened and that was when Astrid the Genius decided that the was no God to protect her form this world.

To try to forget, she produced a pipe and took to hits of the pot she had stashed and that's when she noticed something strange. A part of the barrier that surrounded the FAYZ was totally opaque. Black. The barrier was changing. She then began to giggle, thinking that she wasn't going to hell, but hell would come to her. And in the darkness, the demon would finally come. Drake Merwin would finally find her.

And that is the end of chapter one. My initial reaction from reading this passage is shocked. I have read every single book in this series before this one and Astrid had always been good, God fearing person. Someone who would never sacrifice another life for her own. But the experience with her little brother had changed her forever. It had hardened her soul. She had changed, and in the world that she is now living in, it seems that she has now changed for the better. You need to be hardened in the heart, mind, and soul  to survive in this new dog eat dog world that she now lives in.

If I were to pick a note taking style to do for this book, I would probably use the list strategy because I have always, if I had the choice of what note taking style I wanted to use, used the list taking style. It has always seemed to stick in my mind better than any other note taking strategy.