The gorgeous cover, highly original premise, and dramatic climax can’t make up for tedious pacing and a muddled message.
“Watch out for the blanks.”
Sixteen-year-old Leora takes her father’s dying words as a warning against those who refuse the sacred obligation to record every deed as observable tattoos, eventually to be bound and reverently preserved by their descendants. So the discrepancies between her father’s own “skin book” and her memories shake all of Leora’s comfortable assumptions. Broadway presents an intriguing dystopian conceit: an apparently benevolent society, completely transparent, valuing persons of every color equally (although it’s considered “lucky” and “refined” to be “pale” like Leora)—yet also riddled with bigotry, paranoia, and hypocrisy. Still, some of the ambiguities are just confusing: are the “blanks” individuals who are exercising free choice or an entirely separate race? Is Leora responsible for her own decisions, or is she a special, predestined savior? Leora’s present-tense narration slowly dribbles out trickles of plot amid torrents of mind-numbing exposition, studded with portentous dreams and twists on traditional folk tales. While her voice—naïve, vacillating, and constantly self-deprecating—can be irritating, it’s far less frustrating than the overused device in which characters inexcusably conceal vital information in order to drive events. As these deceptions finally crumble, Leora is provoked into a series of rash choices, culminating in a flamboyant gesture rejecting her entire social order…and neatly setting up a sequel.
The gorgeous cover, highly original premise, and dramatic climax can’t make up for tedious pacing and a muddled message. (Fantasy. 11-17)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-338-19699-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Intertwined spectral and real worlds deliver double the thrills.
Leaving his actual body behind in prison, Smoke can move through the world as a ghost in this fantastic yet real portrait of a survivor seeking answers.
John “Smoke” Conlan has survived a brutal beating from his father, a murder conviction, and prison life. His uncanny ability evidently triggered by the beating, Smoke exists inside and outside the fictional Greater Denver Youth Offender Rehabilitation Center (unrealistically represented as a maximum security prison). Smoke keeps his physical body protected on the inside thanks to the balance of favors earned outside his body. On one such errand, he discovers that a young waitress at a seedy dive can actually see him. Smoke’s vivid present-tense narration is filtered according to his concerns. He insists that he is innocent of killing his favorite teacher but guilty of killing a fellow student in self-defense, keeping readers teetering between a belief that the punishment is justified and cheering Smoke on to fight for freedom. The narrative’s romance is chaste, and it tempers the intensity brought to the story by the threats of guards, fellow inmates, and outside criminals. Though the complex plot is based on an impossible premise, readers will be flipping the pages, watching the diverse cast (Smoke is white) race toward the climax.
Intertwined spectral and real worlds deliver double the thrills. (Paranormal suspense. 11-16)Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4847-2597-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A trilogy opener both rich and strange, if heavy at the front end.
Riggs spins a gothic tale of strangely gifted children and the monsters that pursue them from a set of eerie, old trick photographs.
The brutal murder of his grandfather and a glimpse of a man with a mouth full of tentacles prompts months of nightmares and psychotherapy for 15-year-old Jacob, followed by a visit to a remote Welsh island where, his grandfather had always claimed, there lived children who could fly, lift boulders and display like weird abilities. The stories turn out to be true—but Jacob discovers that he has unwittingly exposed the sheltered “peculiar spirits” (of which he turns out to be one) and their werefalcon protector to a murderous hollowgast and its shape-changing servant wight. The interspersed photographs—gathered at flea markets and from collectors—nearly all seem to have been created in the late 19th or early 20th centuries and generally feature stone-faced figures, mostly children, in inscrutable costumes and situations. They are seen floating in the air, posing with a disreputable-looking Santa, covered in bees, dressed in rags and kneeling on a bomb, among other surreal images. Though Jacob’s overdeveloped back story gives the tale a slow start, the pictures add an eldritch element from the early going, and along with creepy bad guys, the author tucks in suspenseful chases and splashes of gore as he goes. He also whirls a major storm, flying bullets and a time loop into a wild climax that leaves Jacob poised for the sequel.
A trilogy opener both rich and strange, if heavy at the front end. (Horror/fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59474-476-1
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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