a poor imitation of Hunger Games
925369
can't believe this author hasn't been challenged by Suzanne Collins. poorly written and story line is stilted. wasn't sure what had happened at the end of the second book. I didn't hate it but was disappointed,
833976
I bought this book from an amazon recommendation because I like Psalms of Herod, Sword of Mary and the Hunger Games trilogy.  However, those books had something that this book lacked.  They had meat, emotions as well as action.  This read like the love child of the Hunger Games and Lord of the Flies without the depth.  The plot is simple - Thomas wakes up with no memories except how to speak and basicaly get along.  The little commune where he wakes up has a Maze that must be solved in order for the Thomas and the other boys to escape thier idyllic life.  But the emotions get lost, the depth that should be there is forgotten in exchange for gross outs and rote action.  For those looking for a dystopian fiction, there are so many other options ... This should be way down on your list.  I will not be reading the sequels.
2367853
Dull and anti-climactic. Sorry :o(  Think I'll stick to Zombie Apocalypse books, and the Hunger Games and Divergent - type series.
706665
With the way this book was tagged as being "If you liked Hunger Games, you will like this!" I was excited to read it and thought it would be interesting. I have to say I was sadly disappointed. The first 75 pages really grabbed me and I wanted to know where the story would go from there but the remainder of the story was annoyingly on and off long periods of boredom and short bursts of "exciting, tell me more!" moments. For an almost 400 page book this was saddening to me.

I felt the story had potential but I got bogged down in the battle scenes which seemed to feel endless and gradually became very boring. In between these periods of seemingly endless story I did find a few "Aha!" moments and those I did enjoy. At these twist-like moments, I was waiting for the story to grab me and really take off but it never really did.

I liked the characters of Mustang and Darrow but I felt that the story felt short of my expectations. 2/5 stars.
2354943
If this review were for the original Selection trilogy, (Selection, Elite, and One,) this would be a five star review. The Selection is a cross between the Hunger Games, (my favorite YA series,) and the Bachelor, (something I have little to no interest in.) In a post-North American world the continent is divided into the thirty-five states of Illea, and every generation the heir to the throne holds a Bachelor-type selection between one girl from each state. There's also the caste system, which ranks every citizen of Illea from one to eight, with the royal family being ones, and the poorest people being eights. And then the whole country is also in rebellion. But it works well. There is the typical girl meets two boys scenario that plagues most YA novels, but this one stays unpredictable and engaging. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the sequels. While the Heir is enjoyable, the Crown felt like a cheap throwaway and was just too rushed. The Crown was also too predicatble and the very end ridiculous.
506499
A pedestrian hodgepodge of hackneyed cliches and prose that somehow manages to be both needlessly convoluted yet beyond simple-minded.

The plot, of which is expounded upon in painful detail (multiple times), does not feel restrained to the confines of time and space, as the tense seems to change for no real reason. Even if you have read the Hunger Games, however, there are still surprises to be had, in the same sense that opening a treasure chest and being eaten as a mimic can be "surprising." The "surprises" came in the form of strange plot twists that are so detached from basic logic that you couldn't possibly see them coming.

The eponymous "doge" barely qualifies as a side-character. The "lobster" and "cat" described on the back are mentioned in approximately one sentence and promptly forgotten. Dialogue is literally copy-pasted, just in case you've managed for forget the plot points detailed just paragraphs ago. Punctuation is sparsely used and in some places entirely absent. Characters drop in and out like a game of Goldeneye where you have five friends and four controllers. The conflicts are handled similarly, such as in the case of a vicious snake (An excerpt: "Really!" Oh no it's a snake!"Says Craig "I hate snakes" I said.) that is forgotten in the very next sentence.

It is the 49th Annual Reaping Games, which take place in the year 102214, 95 years after the 33rd Annual Reaping Games. You wouldn't know that this series takes place 100,000 years in the future, as the characters are watching the Simpsons on television. It's plausible, however, that it hasn't really been 100,000 years, as Mr. Brown plays fast and loose with the concept of chronology.

In short, I believe I put more thought into writing this review than the author put into this book. And it shows. What's worse, it ends on a cliffhanger (sort of), with a dire warning to beware a dangerous new enemy that lurk in the shadows. Perhaps some of the many, many questions that were raised will be answered in the next installment of this series. Definitely looking forward to the sequel!
3360098
Like the first book in Tara Brown's "Born" series,  "Born to Fight" is both uneven and derivative. The protagonist, Emma ("Em") is drawn similar to Katniss in "The Hunger Games." There is even a similar torn-between-two-lovers theme as "The Hunger Games." The novel seems to be strongly influenced by a spate of zombie-themed books and television shows (think "The Walking Dead"). Despite its derivative nature, the dystopian storyline is, in many ways, interesting, and I can see that some of the tweens and young teens I teach might enjoy the book. However, the writing in this sequel is significantly less polished than the writing in its predecessor. There are lots of typos and misplaced commas, suggesting that the novelist was not working with an experienced editor. This feels like a very rough first draft of a book that could be decent with several more disciplined revisions on the part of the author and an editorial team. While reading the first few chapters of "Born," the first novel, I was enjoying it enough to order this second title and pre-order the third. I am cancelling my pre-order for the sequel, though, as I am not optimistic that it will be any more polished than this effort.
3077231
This book was very derivative. I felt as though I had read it before as so many of its concept seem to have been drawn from previous sci-fi stories, especially Hunger Games and Enders game. It's readable enough if you don't mind that feeling of dj vu. It's lack of originality was too frustrating and I won't be reading the remainder of the series.
4762271
Bluntly: This book aspires to be like "Patriots" by James Wesley Rawles, but falls far short.  Its characters are less developed, the survival ideas less explained, the real world situations presented are less believable, and the book itself is much shorter than Rawles' tome, thus having much less survival information and "how to" than "Patriots" does.  I knew exactly what type of book it was by reading some of the reviews, and then had that confirmed by the author's note that begins the book.  I was expecting something that was Patriots-esque; instead, I got something that appears to have shot for that but fell far, far short.  Simply, it's lacking in detail in every aspect, from character development, in battle scenes, and in descriptions of survival techniques and "how tos."

Also, I can suspend reality as much as the next guy and buy into whatever universe an author has created.  I think that's essential to any reader when they read a piece of fiction.  However, in this case, I found some of the proposed activities completely unbelievable.  For example, two desk jockeys, who for their entire lives basically ignored Roman, the main character, about prepping, stocking up, etc., somehow formulate a plan to dig out the crawl space below one of their homes, fortify it, and then live there for weeks on end?  With nary a complaint from anyone else involved?  And it only took four days of what had to be serious, hard, and draining digging and hauling?  While completely avoiding (and in at least one case annihilating) roving gangs of armed men?  It's one of those things that sounds good in theory, but once you think about it, would be impossible for those two guys to pull off.  It's completely unbelievable.

Also, it's fairly convenient for every character who touches a gun to be a crack shot, no?  This is indicative of the incredibly good fortune found by all "good" characters in the book.  Aside from the grid going down, you'd literally think that hardly anything bad ever happened (or even could happen) to these people once they make it to Roman's house.  (Let's just say that given the inherent dangers that such a catastrophe would bring, and the situations our merry band of survivors find themselves in, you'd expect MUCH more in the way of casualties.  This book makes the phrase "best case scenario" wholly inadequate to describe their situation.)

Aside from the fiction, the vast majority of the survival concepts found therein are logical and plausible (I have experience with some of them, and I don't disagree with how they're presented).  I didn't put the book down, as I wanted to see how it would end, so that counts for something (an extra star, in this case).

All that being said, I'm a fan of ficton-slash-how to books, so I'm glad the author at least attempted it.  Here's hoping the next book will be better.
3694595
This book seems to just be a patchwork of literary (and film) concepts that have made other works successful. What the reader ends up with is a sappy, Twilight-esque hybrid of Hunger Games and The Walking Dead... yet this book doesn't fully commit to any of those themes, prefering instead to sample them all. Nothing really unique or inspired here; skip it.
623956
Though it does mirror some plot elements of Hunger Games, it different. Better. The last 100 pages flew by. Phew.
1593205
My review maybe biased on the fact that I read Mara Dyer right after reading another YA debut novel. After engrossing myself in lilting lyrical prose, Myra Dyer felt incredibly bland and amateurish. It didn't help that the author failed to emphasize important facts and just filled the pages with descriptions of unnecessary things like, I turned on the tap, washed my face, took out a paper towel, wiped my face...etc. It was hard to read. The story is embedded somewhere in those 400-something pages.
Also, the characters are not that interesting. All except Mara and Noah are basically props. Noah, the male protagonist, is a rich guy with a heart of gold who earns his "bad boy" rep by smoking and littering. Their characters are so obvious you've seen them plenty in fanfics and bad YA romance novels there's really nothing to them.
Also noteworthy are the author's attempts to make sure the biracial Mara is very white on the outside. She's half Indian but it's emphasized very much, twice, that she, in fact, does not, repeat does not look brown. I'm so sick of authors trying really hard to let the readers know that their main characters are white. In "Hunger Games," olive skin not at all brown skin. In "Stolen" by Lucy Christopher, the male lead lives in a desert his skin is described brown, but he is no way non-white as very pointedly emphasized with his blue eyes. Of course, pretty much all male romantic leads have blue eyes (so blue like the ocean the girl lead can drown in) you'd think the authors are under the impression that their audiences are Nazis.
1212406
Not bad, but pretty juvenile. Not surprising since it's based on teen fiction, but likely not as engaging as the Hunger Games is for most adults.
291494
This is a poor book. I liked it better than Aftermath (which was really bad), but less than Life Debt (which was OK). The characters continue to develop in predictable ways--except for Gallius Rax. That character was built-up to be something significant, but he's not much of anything really. And the main plot--to destroy everything that was the Empire by activating the self destruct on a planet--is pretty lame. And then we have the 'child soldiers' bit to show just how evil the bad guys are becoming...
3060830
Mediocre teen fantasy.  Twilight without the originality.
4320709
Started out being interesting especially when describing how a Red (of the miner class) is physically changed into a Gold (the privileged class) in order to help the rebels finally overthrow the Golds.  Then, the rest of the book degraded into a lengthy (yawn!!!) several chapters of how the Golds are pitted against each other so that one will rise above the rest and be appointed a Primus; very much along the lines of The Hunger Games.  Unless you like people killing, raping, torturing each other, forget about reading this book.
2466148
I am having a hard time getting through this book. Its just not very good.
The main character is hard to like, the story line is silly, the events predictable and, overall, its totally corny.
The narrator doesn't help at all. The way she reads the book is just irritating.
No, it is not like Hunger Games. Its very obvious the author is trying to copy Hunger Games. This is just a really bad knock-off.