A lengthy first installment that sets up darker perils to come.
In this YA debut, siblings return to a fantasy realm to find fresh conflict brewing.
Since his parents’ divorce two years ago, 14-year-old John Jenson has lived with his father in Hunter’s Run, Maine. He dearly misses his 13-year-old sister, Violet, and can’t wait for her upcoming visit. While in school, however, he learns that she’s gone missing en route. The police find her backpack by a river in the woods near the bus station. Unlike his father and Officer Wilkins, though, John doesn’t suspect the worst. He believes that Violet can swim in river rapids because she did so two years ago in the Valley, a realm of magic and talking animals where he and she fought the foul Soldiers of Sorrow. In his memories, though, John isn’t completely sure that the Valley wasn’t just a hallucination that he and his sister shared. Then, as he investigates, a creepy old man points him to a rowboat on the river. When John hesitates, a tropical bird on the stranger’s shoulder says, “Just get in the darn boat and save us all a headache.” Meanwhile, Violet and her small white dog, Hodgey, wake up in the Valley’s Gateway Glade. They meet a deer named Ripple who informs Violet that a rebellion has broken out, and the Soldiers of Sorrow have returned. Selbrede merges idyllic fantasy trappings, such as the deer chief Boulder’s cave garden, and elements similar to those in comic books like Fables. He splits the chapters between John’s and Violet’s viewpoints, and within these chapters, he offers many glimpses into the siblings’ first visit to the Valley. The prose revels in teenage snarkiness and humor, as when John thinks, “I had been told about avoiding strangers, especially ones climbing trees in bathrobes.” As the narrative progresses, magical artifacts come into play, including the Ivory-Bound Book, which can reveal “the darkest secrets about oneself.” Tension comes from not knowing which human or animal characters might be possessed by the Soldiers of Sorrow, who embody traits such as jealousy, hate, and despair.
A lengthy first installment that sets up darker perils to come.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-329-60254-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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