A thought-provoking and entertaining time-travel tale with a useful, even hopeful, message about personal responsibility....
Published 30 years ago as a three-volume series, this effort is an updated version combined into a single novel.
Rising junior-high-schooler Rebecca witnesses the kidnapping of a classmate and while trying to help him, is transported by time machine to 2050, a dystopian, post–nuclear-apocalypse future in which the few survivors live underground. Damaged by radiation, they have resorted to kidnapping young teens from the past to provide for future reproduction. In a fast-paced series of often-suspenseful events, the pair return to their own time accompanied by teens Lewis and Catherine. In a second part, Rebecca follows time-travelers Mark and Jonathan to a different dystopian future, a commerce-driven police state in which the pair are freedom fighters. Eventually, Rebecca ends up in her own time living side by side with another version of herself as she and her friends try to change the present in order to alter the future. The action and imaginative ideas will keep readers engaged, although the sometimes preachy, albeit worthwhile, message occasionally intrudes. With numerous characters making brief appearances, Rebecca’s role serves to connect the various time periods, although the three parts of this effort still feel a lot like separate, related tales.
A thought-provoking and entertaining time-travel tale with a useful, even hopeful, message about personal responsibility. (Science fiction. 10-15)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55455-198-9
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Fitzhenry & Whiteside
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
Breathtaking dragon battles peppered with musings on forgiveness, teamwork, and love.
Lunar Jones joins other planetary guardians to unravel clues from Proteus and save the solar system in this third series entry.
Lunar, a 15-year-old dragoon, is known far and wide and regarded as a hero on Mars, but his personal life contains tension. He’s bonded for life with Dread, the savvy war strategist King-Dragon of Mars, but the Dread Knights are leaving one by one to pursue other opportunities. Though he’s unhappy about this, Lunar doesn’t try to hold them back. Sorting out his feelings for Rose Proctor is another can of worms. Plus he’s preparing for the upcoming Solar Summit, which is held by the planetary dragons once every 500 years. Reminiscent of a dragon family reunion, the summit includes equal measures of information exchange, camaraderie, and squabbles, but the appearance of a shape-shifting Fear Dragon brings everyone to laser-focused attention as they rally against a monstrous unseen enemy. Lunar’s first-person narration presents him variously as an awkward teen, pep-talking mentor, and battle-savvy commander. The dragon battles rock, innovations abound, and the Proteus messages tantalizingly reveal themselves right up until the cliffhanger ending. Names and skin tones cue some ethnic and racial diversity among the smart, strong teenage crew members surrounding the white-presenting Lunar. Knowledge of the previous books is essential to fully appreciate this volume, which explores characters and situations from earlier entries; a prologue introduces the formidable new characters Doom and Gloom.
Breathtaking dragon battles peppered with musings on forgiveness, teamwork, and love. (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781665982016
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
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