Better in its parts than its whole—but even second-drawer Jinks tops the general run.
Weary “Go-Devil Man” Alfred Bunce and his uncertain apprentice, Ned, face a seemingly overwhelming plague of child-eating bogles in this busy trilogy closer.
In what amounts to a wrap-up volume livened by gross bits, Jinks sends her bogle hunters—with help from the ad hoc Committee for the Regulation of Subterranean Anomalies—into Victorian London’s dark nooks and noisome sewers after a series of shadowy menaces. She also sets ex-apprentices Birdie and Jem on to careers in the theater, trots in a country witch to explain how to mass-produce bogle-killing magical spears, consigns vicious butcher/crime lord Salty Jack to a suitably brutal fate, and ties off various other loose ends. Though en masse the darksome creatures seem less hideously menacing than the rare and terrifying haunts of previous volumes, here their toothy, tentacled bodies do slither chillingly enough into view and explode with satisfying violence, “like a gigantic pimple,” when speared. (One particularly memorable battle takes place in a privy.) Set pieces notwithstanding, though, the climax turns to more of an anticlimax as the growing crisis is averted via an authorial rationale that even younger readers may find hard to buy. An epilogue leaves the majors married or nearly married and Bunce in happy retirement.
Better in its parts than its whole—but even second-drawer Jinks tops the general run. (map, glossary of slang) (Historical fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-544-08696-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
A tween gets in over his head in this introspective and nostalgic story.
Thirteen-year-old Joey Goodman spends every August in Atlantic City, New Jersey, at his grandparents’ hotel.
It’s 1975, and the city is soon to become a gambling resort as old hotels are replaced with casinos. Joey’s passion is playing Skee-Ball at the boardwalk arcades. There, he attracts the attention of shady Artie Bishop, known as the king of Steel Pier, and becomes involved in Bishop’s unspecified criminal activities. Suave Artie engages Joey in conversation about the boy’s favorite book, The Once and Future King, and Joey begins to regard him almost as a new King Arthur. Artie offers him a job chaperoning his daughter, Melanie, when she comes to visit. After Joey finishes his unpaid waiter’s shift at the hotel restaurant each day, he lies to his family, meets Melanie, and they explore the piers’ seedy amusements. Joey falls for 15-year-old Melanie, and she regards him fondly but is attracted to his older brother Reuben. The close-knit Jewish family of four bickering brothers, parents, uncle, and grandparents (especially wise grandpa Zeyde) is lovingly portrayed. The descriptions of Joey’s ponderings about God (he’s had his bar mitzvah but is undecided) and Artie’s business dealings may not hold young readers’ interest, and the immersive setting could appeal more to adults old enough to remember the time and place. All characters are presumed White.
A tween gets in over his head in this introspective and nostalgic story. (author’s note) (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72843-034-8
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Kar-Ben
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
A blast for action fans, with potential for a long run.
Kicking off a new series with a bang (several bangs, in fact), Stroud sends two young fugitives with murky pasts fleeing murderous pursuers across a fractured future Britain.
It’s a land of wilderness and often radioactive ruins, with remnants of humanity in scattered walled towns huddling for protection against crazed, cannibalistic Tainted roaming the woods and ruthlessly culling anyone with even minor mutations under the direction of magisterial Faith Houses. Scarlett McCain, professional thief, initially thinks the uncommonly persistent, bowler-hatted gunmen are after her for her last bank robbery—but soon realizes their quarry is actually Albert Browne, a strangely secretive and ingenuous lad she impulsively pulled from a blown-up bus. What makes him so valuable? The answer, coming through hails of gunfire, massive explosions, narrow escapes galore, and encounters with terrifying monsters (not all of them nonhuman) on the way to a desperate climactic struggle in the immense concrete archipelago of London revolves around a secret prison where children with special mental abilities are kept, tortured, and trained for purposes unknown. If Scarlett turns out to be formidable in the crunch and Albert not so much, by the end the two have not only bonded, but proven to have complementary abilities that bid fair to serve them well in future exploits. The vivid setting, rapid-fire dialogue, and nonstop action will propel readers through this raucous, rousing rumble. The cast presents White.
A blast for action fans, with potential for a long run. (Science fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-43036-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
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