Hello Blogging World!

Jonny

I’m Jonny, lover of all things undead and spooky. Team zombie, woohoo!

Misty

Hello again everyone. It’s Misty the romance loving bookworm.

This buddy read and rant is for The Burning World (Warm Bodies #2) by Isaac Marion.

Blurb:

R is recovering from death.

He’s learning how to breathe, how to speak, how to be human, one clumsy step at a time. He doesn’t remember his old life and he doesn’t want to. He’s building a new one with Julie.

But his old life remembers him. The plague has another host far more dangerous than the Dead. It’s coming to return the world to the good old days of stability and control and the strong eating the weak, and stopping it will require a frightening journey into the surreal wastelands of America—and the shadowy basement of R’s mind.

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Amazon

***Brief disclosure***

Jonny is an Amazon affiliate and earn a tiny commission for purchases made through the Amazon links in this post at no cost to you. It’s a great way to help him keep things running on his blog if you’re already intrigued enough to make a purchase. 

Buddy Read Book Rant:

Jonny

Hey Misty, so we’ve got a lot to talk about with this one, huh?

First and foremost, I wanted to say it sucked to not finish this one, but I put it down at 65% through. I just wasn’t feeling it, and it was starting to feel like a chore.

Like the last book, it did have some promising elements, but I just didn’t feel like I was going to get any answers that I was looking for. How’d you feel overall?

Misty

I was considering DNFing it the whole time while I was reading it but I ended up pushing through to the end. It helped that I opened my coloring app on my phone and listened to the book while I was coloring. I was able to just kind of zone out and get through it. I will say you didn’t miss a whole lot. We did get some answers to who R is and how he was turned but we still don’t actually know the whole story behind that and we are left with even more questions.

Jonny

Oh okay, glad I’m not crazy! I will say that for me things started out alright. I liked how they had their own place close to the city and how R was making moves towards becoming a human being again. I honestly would’ve liked to just see them rebuild society, but that definitely didn’t happen. I also thought those Axiom Group reps were super scary. Pretty much everything after that was on a downhill spiral for me.

Thanks for spilling in the answers department. At 65% I just went with my gut, which told me those answers weren’t coming.

Also, I miss coloring! That sounds like a perfect activity while listening to an audiobook. I have a couple coloring books, but seem to have misplaced my fancy colored pencils. Drat!

Misty

R was very whiny in this one to me. Plus he kept zoning out and passing out at the most inopportune times. It became repetitive. Yeah, I kind of think the Axiom Group people aren’t human or they are being mind controlled or something because they are just weird.

The answers we got were very vague so I am still left with so many questions and I am torn on whether or not I want to keep reading to find out. I was so confused while reading this book and even now that I’ve finished it I’m still confused.

I prefer the coloring app on my phone to actually coloring in a coloring book.

Jonny

I agree that the author overcompensated a bit in making him more human. Yeah, the people wearing ties in the Axiom Group were definitely something different, though exactly what wasn’t explained from what I read. Also, can I just say that the added ‘We’ mini-chapters were confusing too? I wasn’t sure what ‘We’ were, if they were controlling the Axiom Group people or not, or just in general what they wanted. Are they solid physical things or some weird intangible force? No idea.

I feel that the author just got really excited about all these cool ideas. I certainly get some while writing myself, but it’s super important to explain things to a certain extent so the reader isn’t super confused, and that’s all I really got from this read. I’m not going to finish this series. I just don’t feel like the author can turn things around at this point answer-wise. Even if he explained everything, that would be a helluva lot of answers for just one book.

Yeah, I bought a Game of Thrones and Marvel coloring book several years back and haven’t touched em. I’m so scared of messing it up! Oh, the woes of being a perfectionist!

Misty

I don’t think the Axiom Group was explained in this book at all. I agree the “We” and “I” chapters were so confusing. At first I thought I knew what it was referencing but the further I read into the book the more confused I got. I don’t know who the “We” and “I” are either and that’s after finishing the book. Like with the first book I was left with so many questions.

Yeah for this series we just been thrown in and expected to understand what is going on and it’s left me so confused and with so many questions. My guess is since there’s only one book left that everything is going to be answered there and for me personally I think it would have been better to have things answered all throughout. Leaving the answers to the end has done this series a disservice. The last book isn’t on Scribd so I guess that means I’m not finishing it either. At least not anytime soon.

I can’t remember the last time I bought an actual coloring book. I know the feeling. I’m not good at picking out the colors that will look good together so I feel like I mess them up no matter what which is why I love the app.

Jonny

From what I read, I totally agree on both the Axiom Group and the ‘We’ parts. If I remember correctly, we got something of a metaphorical explanation of what the ‘We’ are in the first passage at the beginning, but it wasn’t very clear and it got more and more muddled the longer I read.

Great point. Confusion has been a central theme for this series. Things just happen and we’re left guessing why without any real answers. I’m not sure what the author was thinking when writing the story this way, but readers are going to ask questions and want something back. For me it’s just a turn off, and pretty frustrating after a while. Just tell us what’s going on! *shakes fist*

Oh, if I mess anything up on a coloring page I get really bummed out and lose interest. Totally understand the appeal of the apps.

Alright, well thanks again for doing this with me. I’m sorry this one ended up being a bummer. One day we’ll find that perfect read for both of us! Maybe it’ll be next time!

Misty

I don’t remember the explanation in the beginning, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen my brain just hasn’t been working great lately lol. I’m sure one day we will find a book that we both love. Thank you for doing this with me and for being patient with me this time around. I look forward to our next one.

Jonny

Oh, that’s totally fine. The explanation of ‘We’ was very cryptic and didn’t truly explain what they were anyways. Of course! Fingers crossed next time we both love the book we pick out!

That’s A Wrap!

Thanks for joining us on our buddy read and rant of The Burning World! We had a lot of fun, and hope you did too! We will definitely be doing some more buddy reads in the future, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, why not check out Misty and Jonny’s other fun buddy reads?

Buddy Read: Warm Bodies

Buddy Read: The Wicked Deep

Buddy Read: The Locke & Key Series

Buddy Read: Dark Lover

Buddy Read: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m a Supervillain

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