by Amy K. Brown ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 15, 2017
An enjoyable, funny novel with a thoughtful ethical underpinning.
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After visiting the optometrist, a seventh-grader discovers that he can control people’s minds in this comic middle-grade novel.
It’s Ulysses Odysseus Featherton’s 12th birthday, but he doesn’t have much to celebrate. His overly conscientious parents give him unappetizing health food and annoying vocabulary tips in equal measure, and he isn’t exactly the most popular kid at Sunnyvale Middle School; that would be Brayden Flanagan, sports star and shoo-in for seventh-grade class president. No one else is even bothering to run—until Brayden nominates Ulysses as “the weakest, the least popular, the one he was guaranteed to crush in a landslide victory.” Ulysses accepts this, as he doesn’t mind losing so much, but the idea of speaking on stage in front of everyone terrifies him. Today, on his birthday, Ulysses must visit the optometrist, but a substitute is filling in for his usual doctor. Dr. Egnarts (spell it backwards) puts drops in Ulysses’ eyes that somehow allow the boy to make people do the opposite of whatever their intentions are. He uses this power to get junk food for dinner and get out of gym class, which is great—but even better, he can now defeat Brayden. Ulysses discovers, though, that his hunger to win makes him as much of a bully as Brayden ever was. He learns something about himself and gains an unexpected ally. Debut author Brown gives readers an appealing hero with an engaging moral dilemma. At first, Ulysses feels justified in manipulating others, but Brown shows how becomes troubled by his actions: “I had decided that it was somehow more honorable to talk my way into getting what I wanted rather than blink my way into it.” Just because he’s been bullied in the past, Ulysses isn’t portrayed as automatically being in the right, and by the same token, Brayden’s character—at first, a stereotypical middle school bully—is revealed to have surprising, hidden depths. It’s a nice twist, for example, that Brayden has better, more concrete ideas to improve the school than Ulysses does. And Ulysses’ comical, often rueful first-person voice is a big plus as well.
An enjoyable, funny novel with a thoughtful ethical underpinning.Pub Date: April 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5440-5876-4
Page Count: 126
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Rebecca Ross ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 26, 2023
The well-paced romantic tension is a highlight of this enjoyable duology closer.
Even a war driven by gods can’t sever communication between journalist lovers Iris and Roman in this steampunk-adjacent romantic adventure.
A prologue sets the scene: Dacre, a god strummed to sleep by magic in Divine Rivals (2023), will not slumber forever. His willingness to wage war to acquire more powerful magic leads him to lay waste to entire towns, and Inkridden Tribune journalist Iris Winnow and war correspondent Roman Kitt can no longer be assured the other is safe—or even still alive. In Iris’ world of cigarette smoke, copper pipes, and driving goggles, colleagues affectionately call each other by their last names, watch each other’s backs, and face danger on the front lines. Though Underling Correspondent Roman is traveling with Dacre’s army, he questions why he was healed of his grievous wounds, while at the same time, he gradually recovers memories of Iris and recalls that she was special to him. Their magically connected typewriters allow for the rediscovery of their love and for communicating potentially deadly information about the invasion of Hawk Shire. The story primarily unfolds from Iris’ and Roman’s viewpoints, and while the prose occasionally uses well-worn phrases, Anglophiles will particularly enjoy the worldbuilding, and returning readers will welcome appearances from Capt. Keegan Torres; her wife, Marisol; and Dacre’s archnemesis—and wife—the goddess Enva. Main characters present white.
The well-paced romantic tension is a highlight of this enjoyable duology closer. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781250857453
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
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by Tahereh Mafi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 15, 2011
Part cautionary tale, part juicy love story, this will appeal to action and adventure fans who aren't yet sick of the genre.
A dystopic thriller joins the crowded shelves but doesn't distinguish itself.
Juliette was torn from her home and thrown into an asylum by The Reestablishment, a militaristic regime in control since an environmental catastrophe left society in ruins. Juliette’s journal holds her tortured thoughts in an attempt to repress memories of the horrific act that landed her in a cell. Mysteriously, Juliette’s touch kills. After months of isolation, her captors suddenly give her a cellmate—Adam, a drop-dead gorgeous guy. Adam, it turns out, is immune to her deadly touch. Unfortunately, he’s a soldier under orders from Warner, a power-hungry 19-year-old. But Adam belongs to a resistance movement; he helps Juliette escape to their stronghold, where she finds that she’s not the only one with superhuman abilities. The ending falls flat as the plot devolves into comic-book territory. Fast-paced action scenes convey imminent danger vividly, but there’s little sense of a broader world here. Overreliance on metaphor to express Juliette’s jaw-dropping surprise wears thin: “My mouth is sitting on my kneecaps. My eyebrows are dangling from the ceiling.” For all of her independence and superpowers, Juliette never moves beyond her role as a pawn in someone else’s schemes.
Part cautionary tale, part juicy love story, this will appeal to action and adventure fans who aren't yet sick of the genre. (Science fiction. 12 & up)Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-208548-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
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