A wonderfully odd thriller that should delight anyone who has ever been bullied.
In this fantasy, a teen’s attempts to pull his life together become complicated by the return of his supposedly imaginary—and murderous—childhood friend.
Neil Karp is a senior at Hawthorne High in Birch Creek, Michigan. After his father undergoes treatment for lung cancer, Neil decides to quit smoking. This worries his pot-loving friends Matt and Sam, especially the latter, who’s committed to the stoner life of driving a van and all but abandoned school for video games. When Sam buys a round of drugs from a nightclub dealer rather than local bully Russel “Shit Storm” Staubach, life becomes hellish for Neil and his friends. Staubach sells drugs from stock provided by 19-year-old Jason Noakes, whose family runs Birch Creek’s gangs. During a confrontation, Neil defends Sam by pushing Staubach against Noakes’ Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. Neil and company narrowly escape in the van and now must watch their backs for retaliation. The best part of Neil’s life is Lindsey McGuire, a cute violinist he’s finally found the courage to talk to. As he continues the high-wire act of dodging Noakes and courting Lindsey, Neil notices a strange presence on the periphery of his life. At a skate park one evening, he sees a dancing shape on a nearby rooftop. This is Frogmore, a tweed coat–wearing, talking frog whom Neil knew five years ago. Frogmore appeared when bullies attacked Neil at Rawlins Pond. The ostensibly imaginary friend killed the bullies, prompting Neil to take medication to heal from the trauma. Now Frogmore is back, just when Neil and his friends need protection.
James offers a fun, psychedelic thriller that’s steeped in classic rock and teen melodrama and styled after Stephen King’s Christine and Carrie. Fans may be surprised the story is set in the present. Many genuine, grounded moments revolve around 1980s cultural touchstones, as when Lindsey plays Van Halen’s “Ain’t Talking ’Bout Love” for Neil on her violin. The novel’s antagonists toss homophobic slurs around readily—making them retro and repulsive. James rounds out most of the cast well enough for the audience to worry when Frogmore starts killing people. Sam becomes exceptionally real to readers when he admits that he smokes because “I can’t turn my brain off.” Even Noakes garners sympathy as someone with a choice between continuing a violent life and buckling down to become a car mechanic. Frogmore, meanwhile, is a tantalizing plot element from the get-go. His mysterious origin spools out carefully, threading around a subplot involving a drug chemist named Hansen “Doctor Crankenstein” Hurst, who wants to “smash through this rigid bowl of reality” placed over humanity. Frogmore explains, “My kind” are travelers, “visiting different worlds on invisible safari,” which implies hunting. The creature does indeed toy with people, making certain deaths seem accidental while implicating Neil and even growing jealous of the teen’s human friends. The author’s descriptive prose delivers a gory finale in which more than one victim is murdered by the frog’s “muscular cable-like tongue.” Hurst’s incredible drug, called Fable, burns up and blows across town in the finale, revealing the potential for a sequel.
A wonderfully odd thriller that should delight anyone who has ever been bullied.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-71-192925-3
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A headbanging beginning to what could be a remarkable urban fantasy series—heavy metal playlist sadly not included.
After being murdered and inexplicably reborn, a heavy metal musician sets out on a journey of self-discovery with nothing short of the future of humankind at stake in the first installment of Sanderson and Orullian’s Strata Wars saga.
Jack Solomon is not having a good day. After moving to London from the mean streets of Los Angeles and starting a metal band called the Hounds of Winter, he’s been kicked out of the group just weeks before they’re scheduled to open for Black Sabbath at Wembley Stadium. While Jack is walking with his good friend Henry Wilkinson—a father figure of sorts who has mentored Jack over the years and owns the music venue the Iron Horse—they are both shot and (seemingly) killed. Then Jack regains consciousness and finds himself in a hellscape with a massive mountain of fire in the distance and countless human statues everywhere. After Henry appears in the vision, telling Jack, “You’ve got more to do,” Jack awakens in front of Henry’s flat, unharmed but covered in blood. With Henry’s body missing, Jack begins to understand his new reality: He’s a thanatist (don’t call him a necromancer) and Henry’s venue hides an entrance to the Strata—“several long periods of London history that have coalesced to form layers of the past.” The Strata are inhabited by gruesome creatures and millions of memories, and Jack discovers that someone wants to take over the Iron Horse, with its staircase to every level of the Strata, and begin a revolution where music (curated by a madman) can change the future of humanity. The many shoutouts to legendary bands notwithstanding, this novel is powered by two elements: the exceptional worldbuilding of the subterranean Strata, whose potential is virtually limitless; and Jack’s deeply personal healing journey, which includes forgiving others—like his mother, who abandoned him—and himself. Jack’s story arc is comparable to his adventures in the Strata: The deeper he descends into the Strata, the deeper he delves into himself.
A headbanging beginning to what could be a remarkable urban fantasy series—heavy metal playlist sadly not included.Pub Date: June 16, 2026
ISBN: 9781668068144
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.
In this long-awaited fifth installment of Shannon’s Bone Season series, the threat to the clairvoyant community spreads like a plague across Europe.
After extending her fight against the Republic of Scion to Paris, Paige Mahoney, leader of London’s clairvoyant underworld and a spy for the resistance movement, finds herself further outside her comfort zone when she wakes up in a foreign place with no recollection of getting there. More disturbing than her last definitive memory, in which her ally-turned-lover Arcturus seems to betray her, is that her dreamscape—the very soul of her clairvoyance—has been altered, as if there’s a veil shrouding both her memories and abilities. Paige manages to escape and learns she’s been missing and presumed dead for six months. Even more shocking is that she’s somehow outside of Scion’s borders, in the free world where clairvoyants are accepted citizens. She gets in touch with other resistance fighters and journeys to Italy to reconnect with the Domino Programme intelligence network. In stark contrast to the potential of life in the free world is the reality that Scion continues to stretch its influence, with Norway recently falling and Italy a likely next target. Paige is enlisted to discover how Scion is bending free-world political leaders to its will, but before Paige can commit to her mission, she has her own mystery to solve: Where in the world is Arcturus? Paige’s loyalty to Arcturus is tested as she decides how much to trust in their connection and how much information to reveal to the Domino Programme about the Rephaite—the race of immortals from the Netherworld, Arcturus’ people—and their connection to the founding of Scion, as well as the presence of clairvoyant abilities on Earth. While the book is impressively multilayered, the matter-of-fact way in which details from the past are sprinkled throughout will have readers constantly flipping to the glossary. As the series’ scope and the implications of the war against Scion expand, Shannon’s narrative style reads more action-thriller than fantasy. Paige’s powers as a dreamwalker are rarely used here, but when clairvoyance is at play, the story shines.
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781639733965
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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