A satisfying follow-up that will leave readers eager for the next entry.
In this sequel to The Factory (2025), the future seems fabulous—as long as you don’t look too closely.
Twenty years after Asher deployed the Time Bomb and froze himself and Director Mach on the Factory roof, he awakens to a transformed world. His childhood friend and former partner in rebellion, Vi, is now the 33-year-old director of TimeLabs, the rebranded name of the Factory. Climate change has devastated the planet, and enclosed environments now protect human life. The Factory also appears improved: Extractions are safer, participants are fully informed about the procedure, and the facility presents itself as fun and kid-friendly. Even as Asher is slowly “re-integrating into the timefield,” he’s encouraged to blend in under an assumed identity, make friends, and enjoy himself. As Asher explores TimeLabs, he begins to suspect that not everything is as it seems. Befriending Ruby, a girl with secrets of her own, and a boy named Hadi, Asher works to unravel the threads of what really happened over the last two decades and what’s going on inside TimeLabs now. Returning fans will be pleased by this action-packed entry. The fast-moving writing is smart and filled with complex ideas, and the characters are interesting and sympathetic, though not as deeply developed as in the first book. Asher and Ruby present white, Hadi is of Arab descent, and Vi is cued Chinese American.
A satisfying follow-up that will leave readers eager for the next entry. (Dystopian. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781546111092
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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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