A few scary incidents and the references to poop and nasty food that are evidently required in all European light fiction...
A traveling salesman tricks an island of innocent, ageless children into selling their most valuable possession for fun and games in this undoubtedly metaphorical tale.
When Gleesome Goodday—looking in the illustrations like an evil clown clad in a Hawaiian shirt—emerges from his rocket ship promising to make everyone’s sweetest dreams come true, Brimir, Hulda and the rest of the children happily exchange percentages of their “youth” for such benefits as the ability to fly and dirt-proof coatings of Teflon. In no time (literally, as Goodday also nails the sun into the sky), the children have abandoned their previously idyllic lives to learn about commerce, ownership, democratic politics and making bombs. It’s all a laugh riot until Brimir and Hulda discover that all the children and animals on the other side of their world are pining away in perpetual darkness and notice that they themselves and all their playmates have gone gray. No worries, though: by abruptly turning Goodday into a fool who is easily tricked into freeing the Sun and emptying his tanks of hoarded Youth, the Icelandic author engineers a facile happy ending.
A few scary incidents and the references to poop and nasty food that are evidently required in all European light fiction add bits of savor to an otherwise bland import with a cautionary message that is, at best, vague. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60980-428-2
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
Typical of middle volumes: much backing and forthing to not enough purpose.
It’s hard not to like a fantasy that is set in an argumentative magical forest, but Blackwood squanders the promise of her debut (Jinx, 2013) with a sequel that just spins its wheels.
Though he’s repeatedly assured that he doesn’t know who he is or what he’s doing, 12-year-old wizard-in-training Jinx continues to explore the nebulous extent of his burgeoning magical powers. He does this both at a school in the city of Samara, where he discovers a new style of magic, and in the Urwald, where he can draw huge amounts of raw power from the trees—but his ability to hear and speak to them is a mixed blessing. Meanwhile, his crabby mentor, Simon Magus, is recaptured by the Bonemaster, an affable archnemesis who has also taken to exterminating the Urwald’s scattered human communities, and Simon’s scholarly wife, Sophie, has been imprisoned. Further complicating matters, Reven (aka Prince Raymond) has given the whole forest fantods by promoting a profitable lumbering operation on the way to reclaiming his throne. Blackwood drops hints of a larger conflict looming and continues to throw her protagonist into dangerous situations. At odds with this are tongue-in-cheek plot elements, such as Jinx’s ability to see thoughts as pink puffy clouds or other shapes, cryptic remarks delivered at odd moments by elves and an oddly rational werewolf.
Typical of middle volumes: much backing and forthing to not enough purpose. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-212993-2
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As Tycho’s cyborg grandpa, a semiretired pirate who clanks about brandishing the blaster cannon that has replaced his lost...
A high-seas pirate adventure is transformed, straight up, into space opera.
Tycho Hashoone has been vying with his twin sister, Yana, and older brother, Carlo, to be the next hereditary captain of his family’s privateer, Shadow Comet, all his life. Though he’s only 12, he’s already taking watches on the bridge and leading boarding parties of tattooed “crewers” armed with blasters and laser “musketoons” to capture prize ships. In this series opener, he also pitches in to unmask a scheme by His Majesty’s Sovereign Government of Earth and the nefarious Earth corporation GlobalRex to infiltrate the independent Jovian Union with hundreds of piratical “diplomats.” Fry plays a little fast and loose with astrophysics and gives this story set 300 years in the future a steampunk edge: Among other impossibilities, the Comet turns upside down in space, and gunnery crews “fling open the Comet’s gunports and winch the barrels of her weapons out through the hull.” He also loads up his supporting cast with colorful characters and his nonstop yarn with hot action or its imminent prospect.
As Tycho’s cyborg grandpa, a semiretired pirate who clanks about brandishing the blaster cannon that has replaced his lost forearm puts it: “Arrr.” (glossary of nautical and pirate lingo) (Steampunk. 10-12)Pub Date: Dec. 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-223020-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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