Jill Jekel and Tristen Hyde are going to need major mojo to win that chemistry scholarship they’re aiming for, because they never seem to do any science. In this ellipsis-laden paranormal romance, the scions of the doomed houses of Jekyll and Hyde—a hand-waving explanation justifies the distinct family trees, and Jill explains that her grandfather changed the spelling of their name when he immigrated, “[y]ou know, to distance us from the bad stuff that happened in England”—fall in love. Tristen wants to save himself from the family curse, which he believes will turn him into a mad killing machine. Jill wants enough money to go to college and get help for her mother, chronically depressed since the mysterious death of Jill’s father. What if Jill holds the ancient Jekyll secret, the chemical formula to create monsters out of men? Can that help Tristen? Sadly, it can’t help this novel. Giving the formula to a boy turns him into a violent killer, but giving it to a girl arouses “hormones” that make her “act so boldly, so embarrassingly forward” and prompt her to demand violence between men while “writhing” against them. There’s plenty of better fantastical love stories for the thirsty fan. (Paranormal romance. 12-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-15-206390-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not much forward momentum but a tasty array of chills, thrills, and chortles.
The victory of Jacob and his fellow peculiars over the previous episode’s wights and hollowgasts turns out to be only one move in a larger game as Riggs (Tales of the Peculiar, 2016, etc.) shifts the scene to America.
Reading largely as a setup for a new (if not exactly original) story arc, the tale commences just after Jacob’s timely rescue from his decidedly hostile parents. Following aimless visits back to newly liberated Devil’s Acre and perfunctory normalling lessons for his magically talented friends, Jacob eventually sets out on a road trip to find and recruit Noor, a powerful but imperiled young peculiar of Asian Indian ancestry. Along the way he encounters a semilawless patchwork of peculiar gangs, syndicates, and isolated small communities—many at loggerheads, some in the midst of negotiating a tentative alliance with the Ymbryne Council, but all threatened by the shadowy Organization. The by-now-tangled skein of rivalries, romantic troubles, and family issues continues to ravel amid bursts of savage violence and low comedy (“I had never seen an invisible person throw up before,” Jacob writes, “and it was something I won’t soon forget”). A fresh set of found snapshots serves, as before, to add an eldritch atmosphere to each set of incidents. The cast defaults to white but includes several people of color with active roles.
Not much forward momentum but a tasty array of chills, thrills, and chortles. (Horror/Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-3214-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Askew is a compelling, almost shamanistic figure (not another Skellig, but close), and both in tone and locale this powerful...
Almond (Skellig, 1999) spins teenagers of very different backgrounds and experience into a whirl of ghosts and dreams, stories-within-stories, joy, heartache, and redemption.
In order to be able to care for his newly widowed grandfather, Kit has moved with his parents to the town of Stoneygate, perched in desolate decline on top of a maze of abandoned coal mines. He is soon drawn to follow wild, unstable, aptly named John Askew into a game called “Death” that leaves him sealed up in a tunnel; Kit emerges from the darkness with images of children and others killed in the mines flickering at the edge of his sight, and a strange, deep affinity for Askew. Inspired by Askew’s brutal family life, and gifted with a restless, brilliant imagination, Kit begins a prehistoric quest tale involving two lost children—a story that takes on a life of its own. Setting his tale in a town where the same family names appear on both mailboxes and tombstones, and where dark places are as common as sad memories, Almond creates a physical landscape that embodies the emotional one through which his characters also move, adding an enriching symbolic layer by giving acts and utterances the flavor of ritual.
Askew is a compelling, almost shamanistic figure (not another Skellig, but close), and both in tone and locale this powerful story is reminiscent of Alan Garner’s Stone Book quartet. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 7, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-32665-3
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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