By Jiewei Li

In honor of the recent release of Sarah J. Maas’s newest installment in the Throne of Glass series, Empire of Storms, this edition’s book recommendation is the novel that started it all. Throne of Glass is the riveting first volume of a best-selling young-adult fantasy series.
 
The series follows Celeana Sardothien, the most infamous assassin. At the start of Throne of Glass, Celaena is a captive in the salt mines. She gets a chance at freedom when Dorian Havilliard, the prince of Adarlan, chooses her to be his champion in the king’s competition. This competition is meant to find the best assassin to work for the royal court.
Along the way, Celeana meets allies and foes while uncovering an ancient adversary, but her journey has just begun. Sarah J. Maas beautifully blends impactful writing, strong world-building, progressive character development, and a fantastic plot in Throne of Glass, making it a stellar novel worth the read.

The series only improves with each new release. The books are as follows: Throne of Glass, Crown of Midnight, Heir of Fire, Queen of Shadows, Empire of Storms, and an untitled sixth book due to be released in fall of 2017. If there is any book you find time to read this month, ensure that it is Throne of Glass.

By Samantha Gougher

On September 10th, 2016, Council Rock High School North faced off with Coatesville High School in its very first football game of the season. What you may not have heard, however, is that the athletes weren’t the only people battling that night—they were in fact joined by the living dead in a spooky, ooky turn of events.

Most logical people would be quick to disbelieve this completely, one-hundred-percent accurate report of events, but luckily I was present for this monumental moment in our high school’s history. The game started off as normally as possible, with the marching band standing up to provide their take on pop songs during pivotal plays and two-dozen eighth graders running around frantically in the stands like chickens without their heads.

Things began to go awry during the halftime show, directly after the marching band’s rousing performance of Echoes. The music was so enchanting, so unbelievably attention-grabbing, that the literal walking dead burst out of the turf and finally met with the glowing light of the moon. Obviously there was initial panic; Nathan Burns, this year’s Homecoming King, claims that “[O]ne tried asking me what my MySpace profile was… and then I skedaddled away as fast as I could!”

Don’t worry, Council Rock North—there is an explanation for this undead phenomenon. I actually had the honor of interviewing a few of the zombified students, who all were more than happy to tell me their stories.
As we all know, the Council Rock School District built a second high school, South, in 2002, and then dubbed our school North. But what we didn’t know before this game was that during the remodeling of our turf so many years ago, a whole gym class of students was trapped underneath the field.

Apparently the gorgeous music of the marching band and the valiant performance of the athletes are what motivated the early-2000s students to finally break out of their grassy underground prison. But here’s the good news: although disheveled, undesirably denim-clad, and obviously deceased, these kids are pretty much exactly like us. Only instead of iPhones and Twitter, they use Motorola flip phones and MySpace. I’m sure they’ll catch up eventually.

Which brings up to a pivotal question: if this actually happened, why haven’t you seen any zombies hobbling through the Newtown borough lately, riding Razr Scooters and eating civilian’s brains? Well, thanks to our school’s amazing Diversity Committee, these lost students have been found again, finishing up their educations at North and fitting in perfectly with the sleep-deprived, indoor-dwelling students of our school. These zombies, it seems, are fitting in just fine (unless they start talking about AIM).

However, safety is, as always, still a priority to our school. You may have noticed upon returning this September that North has installed cages onto all of its main stairways. This was actually in anticipation of a feral zombie/goblin/overly-bloated tick invasion that just may plague our school sooner than we think.

Please be sure to greet any zombies you see with a smile on your face and the friendly reminder that no, George Bush is not our president anymore. As a reporter I must say that it is amazing how our students have been able to welcome these quirky corpses since that momentous September evening in our very own Walt Snyder Stadium.

Oh, and about the football game: we lost to Coatesville. But we got zombies, so who’s the real winner here? I think you can answer that question for yourself.  Happy Halloween, Council Rock North!

By Amanda Stone

If you look at the news, social media platforms, and YouTube channels, you’ll know that one thing is taking over our generation. And no, it’s not those creepy clowns. I’m talking about virtual reality (or VR for short). From Samsung to ViewMaster and Oculus, these companies are changing the way we look at the world forever. Some of the most popular models of VR tech include the Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and the updated ViewMaster.  These devices may be different in appearance, but they are bring a whole new way to see things.
           
You may be asking: “how do I use one of these virtual reality thingys?” Well, it’s quite simple.  Simply add your phone into the device and let the experience begin. The problem at hand is for iPhone users as the VR headsets are mainly for Android phones, and some IPhone users aren’t happy. But social media platform Facebook is trying to bring the experience to both iPhone and Android users.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has called VR the next frontier for “great software experiences.” “More than a million people actively use virtual reality products every month,” Zuckerberg said.  “The first step is getting the basic hardware out there.”

“This is happening at a faster rate than any of us had expected. The next phase of virtual reality is building great software.”

The latest major use of VR equipment is at Six Flags parks (United States) that have transformed their most famous coasters such as Skull Mountain and SUPERMAN: Ultimate Flight into the first-ever VR coaster experiences. Fans of the park have called the experiences “truly stunning” and “a work of technological art.”

An employee of Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey, said that “this is bringing a whole new way to ride Skull Mountain, and I think that shouldn’t be only a seasonal thing, but a year round attraction because the amount of people we have gotten on the ride has been truly remarkable.”  

Now we wonder how will virtual reality impact our future lives, but only time tells.