Droll and diverting; fine characters to follow through time.
Goldfarb’s (The Last Tag, 2012, etc.) young-adult adventure takes time-traveling siblings from modern times to a murder mystery in 1930 Arizona.
Ryn and his little sister, Aeden, squander their summer vacation helping clean out their late great-Auntie Zanne’s house. The two find an old box, marked with their names, that contains prisms and cryptic notes. The prisms, if arranged a certain way, can bend time, which the siblings confirm by landing decades in the past. But they don’t arrive together—Aeden finds an ally, and Ryn is caught up with a gang. As Ryn searches for his sister, everyone else looks for gold, and some are willing to kill for it. Goldfarb’s novel ceaselessly regales, enriched by two resilient and charismatic main characters. Most chapters alternate between Ryn’s and Aeden’s first-person perspectives, a technique that prolongs the suspense as the siblings spend most of the story apart. Some chapters present points of view from characters introduced along the way, including a murderer who wants a payout in gold. The siblings’ relationship is initially belligerent as they grumble over chores, but it progressively matures. Their love and respect for each other is more apparent when they’re separated. The humor is modest but shrewd. Few understand Ryn’s name; one person believes it’s short for Rendell and another finds it easier to call him Rin Tin Tin. And the kids-out-of-time jokes never sidetrack the narrative; people mock Ryn both for his sneakers (“fancy-dancy New York shoes”) and because he suggests rubbing two pieces of wood to start a fire, not realizing that matches are readily available. Goldfarb smartly keeps the time traveling at a minimum to subvert any skepticism. Perhaps the author’s greatest feat is an effective multigenre approach of murder mystery, horror, sci-fi, and Ryn’s trekking via horseback even recalls a Western.
Droll and diverting; fine characters to follow through time.Pub Date: April 27, 2012
ISBN: 978-1475084948
Page Count: 310
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Cracking page-turner with a multiethnic band of misfits with differing sexual orientations who satisfyingly, believably jell...
Adolescent criminals seek the haul of a lifetime in a fantasyland at the beginning of its industrial age.
The dangerous city of Ketterdam is governed by the Merchant Council, but in reality, large sectors of the city are given over to gangs who run the gambling dens and brothels. The underworld's rising star is 17-year-old Kaz Brekker, known as Dirtyhands for his brutal amorality. Kaz walks with chronic pain from an old injury, but that doesn't stop him from utterly destroying any rivals. When a councilman offers him an unimaginable reward to rescue a kidnapped foreign chemist—30 million kruge!—Kaz knows just the team he needs to assemble. There's Inej, an itinerant acrobat captured by slavers and sold to a brothel, now a spy for Kaz; the Grisha Nina, with the magical ability to calm and heal; Matthias the zealot, hunter of Grishas and caught in a hopeless spiral of love and vengeance with Nina; Wylan, the privileged boy with an engineer's skills; and Jesper, a sharpshooter who keeps flirting with Wylan. Bardugo broadens the universe she created in the Grisha Trilogy, sending her protagonists around countries that resemble post-Renaissance northern Europe, where technology develops in concert with the magic that's both coveted and despised. It’s a highly successful venture, leaving enough open questions to cause readers to eagerly await Volume 2.
Cracking page-turner with a multiethnic band of misfits with differing sexual orientations who satisfyingly, believably jell into a family . (Fantasy. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62779-212-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
BOOK TO SCREEN
A flawed but entertaining Halloween thriller.
Penny’s sleepy little farming town hasn’t been the same since it was terrorized by a masked killer who claimed five teenage victims last Halloween.
That killer just happened to be the father of her ex-boyfriend, Nash, and afterward, Penny’s parents forced her to break up with Nash. This October, everyone is on edge. Nash and his sister, Grace, are local outcasts, and when Penny finds another classmate’s dead body while shopping for Halloween costumes in a party supply store, the proverbial pitchforks come out. As the body count rises, the townspeople quickly blame Nash and Grace. To take the heat off Nash, for whom Penny still has feelings, the two team up to try to figure out the killer’s identity. But when it becomes apparent that the killer is targeting Penny, their mission becomes a matter of life or death. Suspenseful chases and mysterious sightings interspersed with an occasional dead body keep the pacing fast and consistent. The setting is reminiscent of Scream’s Woodsboro, and Preston makes good use of spooky Halloween decorations. The character development is light, and readers will quickly become frustrated with the many poor choices Penny makes. The abrupt ending may irritate some, but slasher fans will nevertheless enjoy trying to figure out who the menacing person hiding behind a mask is. Penny and Nash are cued white; Penny’s friends include some racial and religious diversity.
A flawed but entertaining Halloween thriller. (Thriller. 12-18)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780593481516
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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