bookshelf

BLUE FINGERS

Name: BLUE FINGERS
Author: Cheryl Aylward Whitesel
ISBN: 0-618-38139-2

A NINJA’S TALE

by Cheryl Aylward Whitesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 22, 2004

bookshelf

In a brave effort to draw martial arts film and game fans, Whitesel chronicles a young farm lad’s involuntary entry into a clan of astonishingly adept warriors. Having botched a chance to make good as a dyer’s apprentice, young Koji runs despairingly into the forest and finds himself held captive in a hidden rebel camp. Slowly, Koji falls under the spell of these seemingly superhuman ninja (they never use that word, but call themselves “grass”), who can dislocate their own joints at will and perform other eye-popping physical feats. Gradually developing into a strong, clever fighter himself, he joins them in a bizarrely convoluted plot to weaken the local daimyo by tricking him into rejecting the firearms recently introduced by European traders. However, the author’s long, slow setup may lose readers attuned to instant and continual action, and her focus on Koji’s emotional landscape and maturation is so close that the rough-hewn plot never acquires much suspense or sense of danger. Still, worth a try with readers of Lensey Namioka’s samurai mysteries, or (changing countries) Da Chen’s Wandering Warrior (2003). (glossary, historical note, two booklists) (Fiction. 11-13)

Pub Date: March 22, 2004

ISBN: 0-618-38139-2

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Clarion Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT HISTORICAL FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION

bookshelf

NOMANSLAND

by Lesley Hauge ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2010

bookshelf

Long after the destruction of society, a tribe of Amazons lives an ascetic life. Along with the other young women of her community, Keller longs to become a Tracker, guarding the borders from mutant, deviant men. She doesn’t want to be dragged into political machinations: not those of her secret-keeping teachers; nor those of the ruling Committee who decide when the girls will be impregnated; nor those of the other Novice Trackers’ prohibited cliques. The most popular of the Novices, Laing, has discovered a cache of secrets and is reveling in its forbidden discoveries: press-on fingernails, names that end in i and y, makeup, social manipulation. Meanwhile, the all-powerful Committee Chair publicly flaunts a different taboo femininity, riding sidesaddle in Victorian garb. Oddly, the girls relate exclusively to glamorous 20th-/21st-century Western models, although the limited sources available to them also portray young girls, athletes and women in niqab. Nevertheless, secrets revealed make for a compelling emotional journey for Keller in this possible series opener, despite the incongruous obsession with 21st-century mores. (Dystopian science fiction. 11-13)

Pub Date: July 1, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-8050-9064-2

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010

Categories:

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

bookshelf

FRAMED IN FIRE

by David Patneaude ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1999

bookshelf

Patneaude (The Last Man’s Reward, 1996, etc.) hatches a silly plot and one-dimensional characters, but preteens might enjoy this piece of escapist entertainment about a boy wrongly committed to a mental asylum. Peter’s weak-willed mother has lied to him all his life about his real father, allegedly dead. Peter doesn’t get along with his stepfather, a car salesman, who schemes to have him committed by a corrupt psychiatrist. In the asylum, Peter befriends two disturbed inmates and a health technician who help him escape. Among the absurd plot concoctions: Peter’s five-year-old half-brother, Lincoln, is psychic, allowing Peter extraordinary access to clues he needs to find his real father; and that his father has been searching for Peter all along. Patneaude resurrects elements from his first novel, Someone Was Watching (1993), in which a supposedly drowned sister has really been kidnapped, and in which a cross-country trip unfolds without much mishap. His writing style, however, is so robust that even if readers find little remotely connected to reality in these pages, there’s more than enough suspense in the fast-paced narrative to keep them entertained. (Fiction. 8-13)