A well-meaning, awkward cautionary tale.
Boxed in by societal prejudices, a young Chicano struggles to find his identity.
Split into two separate periods, Chacón’s insightful novel portrays the trials of Victor Reyes, a death metal–loving, artistic teen who’s seemingly ill-fated in life. In the book’s first half, 14-year-old Victor recovers from a shooting—he was dead for a hair over 2 minutes—that leaves him with a fuzzy memory. Almost everyone, including his mom, believes he’s a cholo, a gangbanger destined for trouble. Though Victor tries his best to mend his relationship with his mom, he frequently ends up in incriminating situations. Meanwhile, Victor meets and falls for a feisty part-Mexican, part-Indian girl. The story moves at a meandering pace, which Chacón uses to sketch in disjointed details. Victor’s first-person narration doesn’t stand out in any particular way, but each of the diverse supporting characters features a distinct, if stereotypical, voice to fill in that void. The novel’s second half focuses on 17-year-old Victor, a senior succeeding in school and love. A supportive teacher helps him refine his artistic goals, pushing him to apply for art school. But Victor’s anger and past won’t let him go, and soon he’s knee-deep in the cholo life. Overall, the author employs a well-worn redemption arc, and the often clunky, self-conscious narration doesn’t really help to make it feel fresh: “They looked sort of geeky cool, like journalism students, the kind of kids that YA novels are written about.”
A well-meaning, awkward cautionary tale. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-55885-840-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Piñata Books/Arte Público
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Seventeen-year-old Cassie has accepted her ability to see impending death; she is a descendent of the mythological Fates....
This dark, thoughtful sequel to The Mark (2010) eventually subverts practically every paranormal-romance cliché.
Seventeen-year-old Cassie has accepted her ability to see impending death; she is a descendent of the mythological Fates. Seeking guidance on this "gift," she leaves her small-town home and friends to immerse herself in a study of death, working at a funeral home, researching different spiritual traditions and visiting a young woman committed to psychiatric care after seeing the "Angel of Death." She also becomes involved with the supremely arrogant (and dangerously magnetic) Zander, who claims to have the answers about Cassie's purpose and destiny. Cassie is both mature and sensitive, ever conscious of the feelings of others and agonizingly aware of the consequences of her own choices, while retaining all the foibles and yearnings of a realistic teenager. If her school life and the multicultural Chicago setting are given short shrift, and most of the secondary characters remain opaque, that's because so much depth is given to Cassie's interior struggles. While it may frustrate some readers that her ethical quandary never receives a clear solution and so many plot threads remain dangling, others will respect her eventual acceptance of uncertainty.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59990-597-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For those zombie enthusiasts who haven't already collected the other anthologies in which most of these were previously...
Another anthology shambles onto the zombie bandwagon.
This predominantly reprint collection sets a high bar for quality when it opens with Jonathan Mayberry's stellar "Family Business," which was rewritten as the opening of Rot & Ruin (2010). Starting an anthology with by far its best offering, sadly, makes all the other entries suffer in comparison. Despite the unflattering basis for comparison, there's plenty of solid brain-eating goodies here, from Kelly Link's tale of a boy who screws up exhuming his dead girlfriend to Nina Kiriki Hoffman's upsetting and sharply graphic tale of an abused and murdered teen prostitute looking for her own sort of closure. Scott Nicholson's "You'll Never Walk Alone" ruins a perfectly good zombie horror with its stereotypes of Appalachians as ignorant, racist hicks who can't decide if zombism is an "Aye-rab bug" or plague of sinners whose "souls are roasting under Hell." Other contributors successfully mine the gore and grotesquerie of undeath for Viking feminist empowerment tales (Christine Morgan), poignant stories of shambling love (Catherynne M. Valente), pirate adventures (Thomas S. Roche) or just gleefully gross thrills (Marie Atkins).
For those zombie enthusiasts who haven't already collected the other anthologies in which most of these were previously published . (Horror. 14 & up)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59780-312-0
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Night Shade
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2011
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