book review – Page 36 – as told by zaheerah

Books, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Young Adult/ Teen

Book Review: Initiate

November 20, 2016April 8, 2018by Zaheerah3 Comments

Rating: ★★★☆☆

* I received a proof of this book from the publisher. This in no way affected my opinion of the book.

Initiate is set in a world where humanity has retreated below the ice sheets of Antarctica as the land above is completely inhabitable. Riga Garrison is a mere member of this restricted society until she sees a whale. An animal once thought to be extinct. She begins to question the very institute that controls her life and realises that everything isn’t as it seems.

I think a tricky thing is with books with these hidden societies underground is that there’s so many of them. You’d have to sift through a lot to get to the ones you’ll truly enjoy. I’m not saying Initiate is a bad book. I actually quite liked this. The premise of this story reminds me of our current environmental situation, a bit of a cautionary tale, it would seem to us.

“We were the people who had polluted our own planet so much through our persistent, never-satiated greed that we had caused irreversible and extensive damage to our planet’s climate through global warming. We were the people who had allowed our own waste emissions to consume us, to poison the very air we breathed and the water we drank until we had to build bigger machines to purify the water needed by an out-of control world population hungry for an ever-increasing demand of clean water, energy, and fuel. We were the people who had had decades of research to warn us of environmental collapse, yet who ignored it in the noisy distraction of political bargaining..”

Initiate is quite inventive in the world it’s created in. While I thought it was very stereotypical at first, it had my interest, especially when Rigs encounters the whale which triggers off a reaction she could’ve never expected. She finds herself on the run and having to a make a life-changing decision which could change everything. She handles things quite maturely and her development was enjoyable.

Her love interest is … okay, I guess. While I never found myself swooning over them, they made sense to be together but I think it would’ve worked much better if they were already together before the start of the novel.

When the big plot twist and the secret is revealed about the world above I was very confused. I think it may be due to the fact I had a very different impression of how this book was going to go because it’s a complete 180 to what I had expected. And I think because of that, I’m quite intrigued with how this story will carry on. Because I actually have no idea what to expect!

The biggest issue I had was pacing. I think the events happened quite quickly which meant there wasn’t much suspense, in my opinion. And there could’ve been better development of what the Initiate actually is because they didn’t really come across as threatening as they could’ve been.

Overall, as I said before, Initiate is imaginative and in a world which has captured my attention. Around 3/4 of the way, my interest did drop but the ending and the preview of Book Two have certainly made me want to keep track of this series.

GOODREADS | AMAZON | THE BOOK DEPOSITORY | BARNES & NOBLE

Non Fiction

Book Review: Muslim Girl

October 12, 2016April 8, 2018by ZaheerahLeave a Comment

Rating: ★★★★

* I received an uncorrected proof of this book from the publisher. This in no way affected my opinion of the book.

“I hope she knows my pain is genuine, I thought. I hope she doesn’t doubt that a Muslim American can be impacted by 9/11, too. The truth is that 9/11 never ended for us.”

Muslim Girl is Amani’s memoir about growing up in a post-9/11 world and how her experiences in life, including moving back to her father’s homeland of Jordan, helped shape her voice as a Muslim woman which later aided her in the creation of MuslimGirl.com. Muslim Girl is a personal account of one of many voices. Amani’s voice is so necessary, so honest and so damn important

Simply put, I loved this. Amani’s journey and story is an important one, one that many Muslims in Western countries could relate to. I know I did. One moment I really enjoyed was how she was introduced to self-realised interpretations of Islam. While I’m across the ocean, my experience mirrored hers so perfectly, just a couple of years down the line and on a new form of social media. I loved that Muslim Girl is about no longer depending on the attention of mainstream media. A Coming of Age shows Amani turning inwards and throwing herself into the centre. She created an identity by seeing the sparse area in our mainstream news which rarely focuses on us positively. We follow her story of how she creates her own platform so Muslim women can talk back.

MuslimGirl.com is changing the way Islam is portrayed all over the world. Amani and this book is part of a new generation of Muslim women who are committed to combating stereotypical views. This book is merely a dip into the power and strength Amani has as she and the others alongside her are creating their own path as Muslim women living in today’s modern society. It’s been a year since I found MG.com and I love everything that Amani and the others alongside her have done to achieve to get where they all are now. Watch out for this October 18th

GOODREADS | AMAZON | THE BOOK DEPOSITORY | BARNES & NOBLE

Cultural, Historical Fiction

Book Review: A Golden Age

September 24, 2016April 8, 2018by Zaheerah2 Comments

Rating: ★★★★☆

While I was looking for non-fiction novels about the history of Bangladesh, I came across this. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for but, nonetheless, I enjoyed it just as much. A Golden Age tells the story of the Haque family’s experiences during the war from the perspective of Rehana. A Golden Age begins with a newly widowed Rehana who had been declared unfit by a judge and has had her children taken away. By the second chapter, 20 or s0 years have passed. It’s now 1971 and her children have returned, but the shame of what she had to do stays with her all these years. The novel follows Rehana’s life during Bangladesh’s war for independence. As her children become politically involved, Rehana finds herself drawn into the war as well. While her children are motivated politically, Rehana’s desire for her children’s safety drives her through the entire novel.

Through A Golden Age, Rehana is more of a witness than an active member, unlike her children. We never witness the full atrocities that the people suffered but we do encounter the result of them through her eyes as we follow her from her home to refugee camps. And not knowing fully what the Pakistan army was doing, we’re thrown into the same tense situation is Rehana in. We learn the real costs of war through the lives of this semi-real family. (I believe Rehana was based on Anam’s grandmother and her experiences) I loved the way she described Bangladesh, the culture, the food, the landscape. My favourite part was beginning of the novel and how Anam introduced the land and country. It was, at most times, so calming and beautiful before everything goes terribly wrong.

No one should really think of this as an actual account of what happened but an introduction that can incite further research. A Golden Age is more personal and human, and I felt plenty of emotion while reading Rehana’s story.

you can find the book at:
GoodReads | Author bio | Amazon | Barnes & Noble