While not as believable or as enjoyable as Max's last adventure, this is still a solid read from start to breathless finish.
The third installment in the adventures of British teen Max Gordon, who continues his quest to learn more about his family’s past.
Continuing the non-stop action from Devil’s Breath (2008) and Ice Claw (2010), Max slips away from Dartmoor High School (with a little help from his friend Sayid) only slightly ahead of a corporate hit team. Why? Another friend has sent him a message, just before collapsing on the rails of London’s Underground. Max is able to decipher enough of the message to know that the answer to his mother’s death—and his father’s mental collapse—lies in the jungles of Central America. An agent from MI5 is hot on his trail, hoping to help, but Max is on the run from drug smugglers, plant thieves, the U.S. Coast Guard and a dedicated assassin who won’t quit, no matter what. Add in the threat of poisonous insects, giant snakes and murderous Mayan priests, and the challenges have never been higher for our dauntless hero. Max Gordon is a likable character who faces tough challenges with determination, physical strength and a positive attitude (and perhaps a little magic), and he's developed as well as his essentially James Bond–esque character will allow.
While not as believable or as enjoyable as Max's last adventure, this is still a solid read from start to breathless finish. (Thriller. 11-15)Pub Date: Dec. 27, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-385-73562-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sanderson (Legion, 2018, etc.) plainly had a ball with this nonstop, highflying opener, and readers will too.
Eager to prove herself, the daughter of a flier disgraced for cowardice hurls herself into fighter pilot training to join a losing war against aliens.
Plainly modeled as a cross between Katniss Everdeen and Conan the Barbarian (“I bathed in fires of destruction and reveled in the screams of the defeated. I didn’t get afraid”), Spensa “Spin” Nightshade leaves her previous occupation—spearing rats in the caverns of the colony planet Detritus for her widowed mother’s food stand—to wangle a coveted spot in the Defiant Defense Force’s flight school. Opportunities to exercise wild recklessness and growing skill begin at once, as the class is soon in the air, battling the mysterious Krell raiders who have driven people underground. Spensa, who is assumed white, interacts with reasonably diverse human classmates with varying ethnic markers. M-Bot, a damaged AI of unknown origin, develops into a comical sidekick: “Hello!...You have nearly died, and so I will say something to distract you from the serious, mind-numbing implications of your own mortality! I hate your shoes.” Meanwhile, hints that all is not as it seems, either with the official story about her father or the whole Krell war in general, lead to startling revelations and stakes-raising implications by the end. Stay tuned. Maps and illustrations not seen.
Sanderson (Legion, 2018, etc.) plainly had a ball with this nonstop, highflying opener, and readers will too. (Science fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-55577-0
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
SEEN & HEARD
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones.
An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named “Jack Gantos.”
The gore is all Jack’s, which to his continuing embarrassment “would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames” whenever anything exciting or upsetting happens. And that would be on every other page, seemingly, as even though Jack’s feuding parents unite to ground him for the summer after several mishaps, he does get out. He mixes with the undertaker’s daughter, a band of Hell’s Angels out to exact fiery revenge for a member flattened in town by a truck and, especially, with arthritic neighbor Miss Volker, for whom he furnishes the “hired hands” that transcribe what becomes a series of impassioned obituaries for the local paper as elderly town residents suddenly begin passing on in rapid succession. Eventually the unusual body count draws the—justified, as it turns out—attention of the police. Ultimately, the obits and the many Landmark Books that Jack reads (this is 1962) in his hours of confinement all combine in his head to broaden his perspective about both history in general and the slow decline his own town is experiencing.
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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