Finding himself dead after a collision with a speedboat, Cooper Foley quickly realizes the afterlife is not as restful as people believe. A dead Macedonian strategist named Damon is engineering a return to the world of the living, and he murdered Cooper in an attempt to retrieve a poleax with mystical powers. While struggling with the quest Damon has imposed on him, Cooper must also be wary of the Watchers, shadowy beings that observe the dead and make final judgments on their progress out of limbo. Plagued by the same plot and pacing issues that afflicted The Light (2010), this second volume of the Morpheus Road series is nearly a retread of the first. MacHale uses this novel to explain the events of the first, from afterlife terminology to supernatural phenomena, rehashing much of the action. Cooper is saddled by the same scattered characterization issues that hampered his friend Marshall, the narrator of the first book, swinging from troublemaker to saint to rhetorician with little development apparent. From the blood crucibles of Alexander to the encounter with his best friend’s dead mother to the mysterious deaths at his grandfather’s farm, there are too many plot twists, too much explanation and too little motivation to keep readers journeying down this road. (Horror. 10-14)
Pub Date: April 19, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4169-6517-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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
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