Imaginative, whimsical, and a fine preamble to a potential sequel.
Phillips and Nissensen’s (The Color of Fear, 2015) YA horror series continues as 14-year-old Caitlin Fletcher returns to a transdimensional fairy-tale realm to rescue her kidnapped sister.
It’s been nearly a year since Caitlin visited the “nonmaterial realm of sheer imagination.” There, she’d befriended famous literary figures, such as Cinderella, and thwarted the evil Enchanter’s curse, which was turning the realm’s inhabitants into zombies. Lately, her psychotherapist has her doubting that the adventure ever happened. But when thousands of peculiar black crows appear in Hyde Park, Caitlin is quick to blame the Enchanter. Soon, a gang of “crowmen” from the other side enters the corporeal world, but its initial target surprisingly isn’t Caitlin—it’s her brainy, 10-year-old sister Natalie, whom they kidnap. It seems that Natalie has a connection to the most powerful realm of all: the “future kingdom” of Eos. Thankfully, Caitlin has help in her rescue mission from her “gruncle” (great-uncle) Derek Blackshaw; Glinda, the Good Witch of the South; and a few other alumni of L. Frank Baum’s Oz series. The new allies aim to prevent an in-person meeting between the Enchanter and Natalie, as the young girl won’t be able to resist the Enchanter’s magical Red Spectrum of light, which is full of negative emotions. As in the authors’ preceding novel, this entertaining story offers zombified, ghoulish versions of literary characters. There’s plenty of other macabre content, as well, including the aforementioned creepy crowmen and ghouls who crave flesh and blood. However, the narrative also has an endearing sense of humor, as when redheaded Caitlin claims that she’s Goldilocks in an attempt to bypass some security. The likable protagonist faces countless obstacles, including her unusual obsessive-compulsive disorder, which sometimes forces her to look at ceiling corners. Despite the darker elements, the authors splash their descriptions with plenty of bright color: a “burning lurid red” sun, the “maroon glow of dusk,” or a portal of a “rich yellow light” swirling “into a golden whirlpool.”
Imaginative, whimsical, and a fine preamble to a potential sequel.Pub Date: April 1, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 382
Publisher: Toon Studio Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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