The cyberthrills are stylized, but the focus is on action, and there’s just enough left unresolved to tempt readers onward.
A young video game whiz squares off against monsters and terrorists in a mad genius’ cyberworld to save America.
Ex–football star Rick gained world-class Xbox expertise during months of seclusion following the sudden disappearance of his scientist father and an accident that cost him the use of his legs, so he puts up only minor resistance when federal agents kidnap him and demand that he allow his mind to be wired into a MindWar Realm. The Realm’s creator, Kurodar, is lining up support from the Axis Assembly (“the gathered leaders of every tyranny on earth”) to wage cyberwar on the United States. Rick works to learn how to use spiritual force in the Realm to battle ravening security bots on the way to sabotaging a never-specified demonstration of Kurodar’s powers. Meanwhile, the bad guy himself pursues a certain American computer expert known as Traveler—whose real identity is telegraphed well before a big reveal in the late going. In the end, Rick’s immediate lot has improved, but Kurodar remains at large, and evidence of a traitor sets up the next episode.
The cyberthrills are stylized, but the focus is on action, and there’s just enough left unresolved to tempt readers onward. (Science fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: July 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4016-8892-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones.
An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named “Jack Gantos.”
The gore is all Jack’s, which to his continuing embarrassment “would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames” whenever anything exciting or upsetting happens. And that would be on every other page, seemingly, as even though Jack’s feuding parents unite to ground him for the summer after several mishaps, he does get out. He mixes with the undertaker’s daughter, a band of Hell’s Angels out to exact fiery revenge for a member flattened in town by a truck and, especially, with arthritic neighbor Miss Volker, for whom he furnishes the “hired hands” that transcribe what becomes a series of impassioned obituaries for the local paper as elderly town residents suddenly begin passing on in rapid succession. Eventually the unusual body count draws the—justified, as it turns out—attention of the police. Ultimately, the obits and the many Landmark Books that Jack reads (this is 1962) in his hours of confinement all combine in his head to broaden his perspective about both history in general and the slow decline his own town is experiencing.
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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