Book Review: Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

All the best books are about everything. You know what I mean?

Grasshopper Jungle is no exception. This book is about smoking cigarettes with your best friend, finding condoms and bibles in dresser drawers, grimacing lemur masks, plastic pink flamingos, shrinking balls, little blue kayaks, unstoppable corn, horny teenage boys, giant praying mantises and the end of the world.

And they all cross under our feet.

What this book is really about is connections. How the things we do and the decisions we make have an impact. How history tends to repeat itself no matter what. About how we keep doing the same sh*t over and over and why? Well, because we're human and that's what humans do because there are stupid among us. Because we don't look closely enough at those connections. We don't study the past to see where we went wrong and fix it. That's why.

Austin Szerba is your typical teenage boy. Sort of. He likes recording history, skateboarding and smoking cigarettes with his best friend Robby Brees. He's in love with his girlfriend Shann Collins. He's got both his parents, a brother fighting in Afghanistan, and a dog Ingrid, who lost her vocal cords when she was just a puppy. He's horny for Shann, but he also wonders if he might be gay for Robby and sh*t like that. He's not sure what to do about it.

Through a series of seemingly unconnected events, Unstoppable Soldiers, in the form of giant praying mantises, are unleashed on the unsuspecting town of Ealing, Iowa. All they want to do are eat and screw (not unlike teenage boys) and impregnate the female which will lead to the world being taken over by these Unstoppable Soldiers and the eventual end of the human race.

By digging through history, Austin connects the dots and finds that only he and Robby can stop the giant bugs and save the world. And nobody knows anything about it.

Grasshopper Jungle is weird, inappropriate, disgusting and one of the best books I've read in a long time. Its innovative, fresh and fun. Austin's voice is one of the most original I have read in YA, ever. Period.

Perfect book for boys, although, the appeal of this book is far reaching. Of course, I caution, not for those looking for a "clean" read. This book, like I said, talks about horny teens, masturbation, sex, etc. Typical teen stuff. If that's not your thing, stay away.

This is the truth. Andrew Smith has just become one of my favorite YA authors and I cannot wait to read more of his work.

Big thumbs up on this one. You know what I mean?

View all my reviews

Wednesday Wip: Revelation: Book One of the Divinity Chronicles

Here's a bit from the dystopian YA series I'm working on, The Divinity Chronicles. Let me know what you think.

The dirty white bus with the black bold letters that spell out INFIDELS, waits at the curb as it does every week day, to drive us across town to neighborhoods like the ones in which we used to live, to take us to school. You’d think the Deities would practice segregation to keep us away from their children and those of their precious Disciples and Priests, but with us all under the same roof, they think it easier to convert us. Brainwash, more like it. They’ve not had a great success rate yet.

We climb on the bus with all the other children of Infidels and head to W1-6 HS, which stands for the West Zone, Sector 1, Division 6, High School. Mary takes two packs of tin foil out of her messenger bag, more than likely leftovers from the previous night’s dinner. She opens the window as we cross the Incendia Bridge, and tosses the packages over.

 I peer down to watch the scrambling of the Radicals, those who not only oppose the Deities, but insist on continuing to worship their old gods, be them Christian, Hindu, Muslim, whatever. They’ve banded together to stay alive. Committing treason in the eyes of the Deities, if they’re caught it’s punishable by death. As citizens of the new theocracy, or theocrazy as I like to call it, we are bound to report any sighting of Radicals, but we don’t. The idea of being persecuted for believing in something is archaic. I don’t blame them for sticking to their ideologies, I’m sure it offers them some kind of hope for the future.

We pull up to the curb of the school and file out like lemmings to their death, which is what it feels like when you have physical education first period.  If anything should be outlawed, it should be forcing us to do jumping jacks and climb ropes at seven o’clock in the morning.

Inspired by Reading

I finally started reading Veronica Roth's, Divergent. I've been wanting to read it for a really long time, but I've been reading friends books, and writing, and you know, there's that thing called life, but on vacation, I finally had some time to actually sit down and relax.

So far, I love it. I'm a big fan of dystopian stuff anyway, so it's a no brainer for me really as a best seller. But the other thing about it is it's made me excited to work on my own dystopian books. I have one adult I started ages ago and one trilogy I'm writing based on the first novels I ever wrote. Last night I got up to 5k on the first book of the trilogy.

I love how reading inspires and I realize how much I miss it when I haven't done it in awhile.I miss the escape, and let me tell you, if anyone needs to escape from life it's me.

Are there any books that have inspired your writing? Tell me.