George and Edie remain admirably stoic heroes, but dry prose inhibits this conclusion’s pace. In a many-layered London, George and Edie are stuck in a timeless moment, the only humans who didn’t disappear when time froze. They’re not alone, though: Spits (metal and stone statues, mostly war figures) fight for good, while Taints (sculptures of non-human creatures) ally with the double-strong force of the dark. The dark has an Ice Devil and the ghoulish Walker, a grisly immortal who kills casually and steals life-forces. George and Edie’s tenacious fighting spirits are especially touching because of their separate histories of emotional loss, but the narration’s verbosity decelerates motion; for example, a falling object is “an angular jagged shape getting bigger with startling rapidity as it spun straight at them,” its speed slowed by description. Battle action and Edie’s nightmares also grind to a trudge. Only Edie’s time-travel views of the Walker torturing her mother move quickly and creepily. Mostly for fans of the livelier second installment. (Fantasy. 10-13)
Pub Date: April 7, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4231-0179-6
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2009
The lush tropical rainforest serves as an unexpected but colorful setting for this sequel to Smith's Thunder Cave (1995, not reviewed). Jake Lansa, 14, is angry when his father, Robert ``Doc'' Lansa, leaves him in the care of a retirement home with his grandfather, while he goes off to a jaguar preserve in the jungles of Manaus, near Brazil. The early scenes in the retirement facility are humorous and touching, but the pace accelerates once Jake flies down for a visit with his dad. In one of the novel's most dramatic moments, a confrontation between father and son is interrupted by an explosion aboard the boat Doc has chartered. Jake is forced to become the ultralight pilot of the expedition, and to hire the mysterious Captain Silver to take them upriver. Jake's crash course in piloting is exciting, as is the journey. The rainforest in the background brings the plight of this endangered environment into focus for young readers: Smith's portrayal of the decimated forests, the filthy strip-mining towns, and the desolate native tribes is haunting. The mystery aboard ship unravels at a suspenseful pace, and while everyone must work together to insure their survival, Jake emerges a hero. A first-rate adventure about greed, mutual dependence, and family. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-7868-0282-0
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
Completing the switch in narrative view begun in Julie (1994), the sequel to Julie of the Wolves (1972), George continues her tale of the Avalik River pack entirely from the standpoint of its members: Kapu, the young new alpha; his daughter and successor, Sweet Fur Amy; Ice Blink, a lone wolf who carries rabies—and Willow Pup Julie, who lives in town but puts in appearances to inspect new pups or perform rescues. George invests all of her characters equally with expressive language, customary patterns of behavior, distinct personalities, and rich emotional lives. The wolfpack culture is complex and thoroughly articulated; readers who follow Kapu through seasons fat and lean, births, deaths, and challenges (serious, but always bloodless) to his leadership will be as devastated as the pack is when he is trapped and removed for a scientific experiment. Working mostly offstage, Julie engineers his return, but he does not rejoin the pack. The rhythms of life on the tundra are slow ones, and the only deaths George describes explicitly are those of wolves who succumb to the contagion that Ice Blink brings; the result is a story that flows at an even, deliberate pace, without—save for the brief outbreak of rabies—much suspense or sense of danger. The wolf's-eye view will draw new readers to the books, but fans of the first books, already well-versed in wolf society, may find many of the situations repetitive. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1997
ISBN: 0-06-027406-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997
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