Mostly fun for confirmed fantasy fans, and even their enthusiasm will be diluted by what feels less like narrative and more...
A hodgepodge quartet of Brooklyn teens joins forces to defend against the unraveling of time.
Edward prefers invisibility to eighth-grade social echelons. Feenix is a gangly queen bee who dishes up acidic insults and trickery. Painfully shy Brigit has been rendered mute by a familial tragedy. Athletic Danton is the goodwill ambassador and friend to all. When they each touch a peculiar stone, they become the only ones capable of preventing the destruction of time. The stone is a Time Fetch, containing time foragers who, under the right command, gather bits of unused time. In the wrong hands, they spell a fast-forward destruction of the world. With four starkly different eighth-grade archetypes, readers are likely to find themselves somewhere in the mix. Each character is interesting enough (though Edward’s pagan aunt is generally more intriguing than all four combined), and the book isn’t without quirky moments: three gruesome sister witches, panthers stalking in Prospect Park, a shape-shifting villain with backward thumbs. Hope for a fluid narrative is stalled by theorizing and philosophizing about time, and occasional choppy phrasing is equally off-putting.
Mostly fun for confirmed fantasy fans, and even their enthusiasm will be diluted by what feels less like narrative and more like lesson. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61620-220-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Though plainly crafted to spark and model book discussions, the tale is generously infused with animating elements of...
Fresh from their experiences with Quasimodo in the series opener (Facing the Hunchback of Notre Dame, 2012), three young people again use an elusive inventor’s magic, painted circle to bring a literary character to life.
Choosing to call up Captain Ahab because he’s “the only really interesting character in Moby-Dick,” teen twins Linus and Ophelia and their hunky British buddy Walter embark on a project to turn the sailor away from his obsession with killing the white whale. Though a silly, strung-out deception involving a live cougar and a big plush lion that ends with Walter almost drowning in the nearby river provides little more than comic relief, by the time Ahab has to sink back into his story, he’s come around to understanding that the real issue isn’t the whale but his own wounded pride. Along with a remarkable number of continuing side plots, Samson tucks in frequent commentary about the use of clichés, point of view and like writerly topics from a particularly unlikable intrusive narrator who dubs himself “Bartholomew Inkster, self-taught literary fussbudget.” He also includes short (spoiler-free) dialogues on character, values and motivation—both in Moby-Dick and in general. Next up: D’Artagnan!
Though plainly crafted to spark and model book discussions, the tale is generously infused with animating elements of mystery, romance and comedy—plus a particularly lively and diverse supporting cast of grown-ups. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-0310727972
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Zonderkidz
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
Clay is Everykid enough (“almost handsome, in a dried-snot-on-his-sleeve sort of way”) to keep readers hanging around to see...
Very little is as it seems at a survival camp for “troubled” teens in this trilogy opener.
Still deeply upset nearly two years after the disappearance of his stage-magician older brother, Clay writes “Magic sucks!” in a notebook after turning in a blank paper on Shakespeare’s Tempest. He’s astounded to find the sentiment painted on a wall at school the next day—with his signature. The resultant fallout lands him on a remote Pacific island, where he encounters peers named Leira (spell it backward) and Mira, a grotesque puppet dubbed “Caliban” and a llama with a sign on its neck reading “Hola. Cómo se llama? Yo me llamo Como C. Llama.” He also discovers not one but two libraries of rare books—one stocked with oddly behaving grimoires. After climbing a live volcano and sliding back down on a board, he discovers (as he had been suspecting for some time) that it’s all been a setup—further developments to come. “Bosch,” a confirmed Lemony Snicket bandwagoneer, repeatedly interrupts with authorial rants, pleas and footnotes. The Shakespearean parallels aren’t particularly integral to the plot, and the twists, Como’s sign apart, are more inscrutable than clever. The book comes complete with multiple appendices and Ford’s illustrations (not seen for review).
Clay is Everykid enough (“almost handsome, in a dried-snot-on-his-sleeve sort of way”) to keep readers hanging around to see what happens to him next. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-316-32038-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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