Lots of fun for the right audience.
Six British kids save the world in this suspenseful, comic romp through Switzerland’s famed CERN laboratories.
Iago leads a pack of diverse and talented kids in his attempt to save the world from annihilation by a mad scientist, Katarina Kreng, an over-the-top villain who intends to create a black hole that will swallow the Earth. She’ll use subatomic particles called killer strangelets in the CERN Large Hadron Collider, where Iago’s Uncle Jonas works, to accomplish her dastardly deed. The group of young heroes hops a private plane to Switzerland and plots their attack using schematic drawings stolen from Uncle Jonas. While one wields his hacking skills to open doors and dig up information, Iago and his secret heartthrob Charlie, his pretty female friend, try to infiltrate the facility. Suspense ensues when they succeed. Furlong keeps the narrative brisk and full of light humor, although the preposterous tale remains a bit of a jumble. The kids appear to be middle-school age, and that seems to be the book’s natural audience, although some older readers may enjoy it. Reminiscent of the Alex Rider series for a younger set, this appears headed toward James Bond–style mayhem but with as much an emphasis on comedy as on suspense.
Lots of fun for the right audience. (Comic suspense. 9-13)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-9562315-6-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Inside Pocket
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
Ebulliently original.
Who can't love a story about a Nigerian-American 12-year-old with albinism who discovers latent magical abilities and saves the world?
Sunny lives in Nigeria after spending the first nine years of her life in New York. She can't play soccer with the boys because, as she says, "being albino made the sun my enemy," and she has only enemies at school. When a boy in her class, Orlu, rescues her from a beating, Sunny is drawn in to a magical world she's never known existed. Sunny, it seems, is a Leopard person, one of the magical folk who live in a world mostly populated by ignorant Lambs. Now she spends the day in mundane Lamb school and sneaks out at night to learn magic with her cadre of Leopard friends: a handsome American bad boy, an arrogant girl who is Orlu’s childhood friend and Orlu himself. Though Sunny's initiative is thin—she is pushed into most of her choices by her friends and by Leopard adults—the worldbuilding for Leopard society is stellar, packed with details that will enthrall readers bored with the same old magical worlds. Meanwhile, those looking for a touch of the familiar will find it in Sunny's biggest victories, which are entirely non-magical (the detailed dynamism of Sunny's soccer match is more thrilling than her magical world saving).
Ebulliently original. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: April 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-01196-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
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