Lots of fun for the right audience.
Six British kids save the world in this suspenseful, comic romp through Switzerland’s famed CERN laboratories.
Iago leads a pack of diverse and talented kids in his attempt to save the world from annihilation by a mad scientist, Katarina Kreng, an over-the-top villain who intends to create a black hole that will swallow the Earth. She’ll use subatomic particles called killer strangelets in the CERN Large Hadron Collider, where Iago’s Uncle Jonas works, to accomplish her dastardly deed. The group of young heroes hops a private plane to Switzerland and plots their attack using schematic drawings stolen from Uncle Jonas. While one wields his hacking skills to open doors and dig up information, Iago and his secret heartthrob Charlie, his pretty female friend, try to infiltrate the facility. Suspense ensues when they succeed. Furlong keeps the narrative brisk and full of light humor, although the preposterous tale remains a bit of a jumble. The kids appear to be middle-school age, and that seems to be the book’s natural audience, although some older readers may enjoy it. Reminiscent of the Alex Rider series for a younger set, this appears headed toward James Bond–style mayhem but with as much an emphasis on comedy as on suspense.
Lots of fun for the right audience. (Comic suspense. 9-13)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-9562315-6-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Inside Pocket
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones.
An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named “Jack Gantos.”
The gore is all Jack’s, which to his continuing embarrassment “would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames” whenever anything exciting or upsetting happens. And that would be on every other page, seemingly, as even though Jack’s feuding parents unite to ground him for the summer after several mishaps, he does get out. He mixes with the undertaker’s daughter, a band of Hell’s Angels out to exact fiery revenge for a member flattened in town by a truck and, especially, with arthritic neighbor Miss Volker, for whom he furnishes the “hired hands” that transcribe what becomes a series of impassioned obituaries for the local paper as elderly town residents suddenly begin passing on in rapid succession. Eventually the unusual body count draws the—justified, as it turns out—attention of the police. Ultimately, the obits and the many Landmark Books that Jack reads (this is 1962) in his hours of confinement all combine in his head to broaden his perspective about both history in general and the slow decline his own town is experiencing.
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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