Readers willing to go with the flow can look forward to the sequel
In a blasted, post-apocalyptic future, only three life-forms remain: humans, omnivorous locusts and the bioengineered corn that has become the sole source of food and fuel to civilization’s remnants.
Banyan, 17, makes his living as his dead father did, by fabricating trees from scrap metal. A wealthy landowner commissions him to build a forest, providing as a template a beautiful, yellow-leaved tree tattooed over the torso of his wife. Stranger still, the woman’s daughter shows him a recent photograph of a man—his father!—chained to a living tree. In short order, Banyan and a motley crew—his client’s son and a charismatic pirate girl, joined at various points by the wife, her daughter and the landowner’s Rasta bodyguard—are racing the landowner to the trees. They just have to get past GenTech’s massive cornfields and the locusts that live in them. Howard has a gift for the phantasmagoric image: the killing Surge that is this future’s ocean, the bark Banyan finds growing on a homeless man, the swarm of locusts descending for the kill and more. But he takes huge narrative leaps and skimps on worldbuilding, neglecting to explore this GenTech-controlled economy or where oxygen now comes from. It’s a refreshingly male-oriented world, though, despite the abrupt attraction between Banyan and the pirate that feels chucked in to provide the now-requisite romantic element.
Readers willing to go with the flow can look forward to the sequel . (Science fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-38789-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
A solid urban fantasy with a novel premise.
Seasons are meant to hunt and destroy each other, but what happens when two Seasons fall in love?
Jack is a Winter. With the help of his Handler, he hunts down the Autumn who comes before him, kills her, and runs from the Spring who comes next—until she kills him in turn. This cycle maintains the seasons and the weather, which is why Seasons are regulated: kept to their own territories when out in the world and to their own sections of the compound they call home. But since the beginning, Jack has sought out gaps in the system, which may be why he finds himself drawn to Fleur, the Spring tasked with killing him. Monitored both by technology and the magical creatures controlled by Chronos and Gaia—the beings responsible for the Seasons—as well as watched over by their own skeptical Handlers, Jack and Fleur nevertheless take a risk that could destroy the delicate balance in their lives and in the world. Melding high-tech bunkers in London and secretive road trips across the U.S. with mythology and magic, Cosimano tells a story of the bonds of friendship and the power of hope for the future. Though the large cast is sometimes cumbersome, the themes of friendship despite differences and self-sacrifice nevertheless shine through. Jack and Fleur seem to be white while a secondary character is cued as Latinx.
A solid urban fantasy with a novel premise. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: June 23, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-285424-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
How can such a hefty tome be un-put-down-able excitement from beginning to end? (glossary) (Fantasy. 14 & up)
This hefty sequel to Six of Crows (2015) brings high-tension conclusions to the many intertwined intrigues of Ketterdam.
It's time for revenge—has been ever since old-before-his-time crook Kaz and his friends were double-crossed by the merchant princes of Ketterdam, an early-industrial Amsterdam-like fantasy city filled to the brim with crime and corruption. Disabled, infuriated, and perpetually scheming Kaz, the light-skinned teen mastermind, coordinates the efforts to rescue Inej. Though Kaz is loath to admit weakness, Inej is his, for he can't bear any harm come to the knife-wielding, brown-skinned Suli acrobat. Their team is rounded out by Wylan, a light-skinned chemist and musician whose merchant father tried to have him murdered and who can't read due to a print disability; Wylan's brown-skinned biracial boyfriend, Jesper, a flirtatious gambler with ADHD; Nina, the pale brunette Grisha witch and recovering addict from Russia-like Ravka; Matthias, Nina's national enemy and great love, a big, white, blond drüskelle warrior from the cold northern lands; and Kuwei, the rescued Shu boy everyone wants to kidnap. Can these kids rescue everyone who needs rescuing in Ketterdam's vile political swamp? This is dark and violent—one notable scene features a parade of teens armed with revolvers, rifles, pistols, explosives, and flash bombs—but gut-wrenchingly genuine. Astonishingly, Bardugo keeps all these balls in the air over the 500-plus pages of narrative.
How can such a hefty tome be un-put-down-able excitement from beginning to end? (glossary) (Fantasy. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62779-213-4
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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