An action-packed, if occasionally muddled, coming-of-age adventure.
SF and spiritual philosophy converge in this first installment of Robbins’ (The Reluctant Human, 2012) series.
On his 18th birthday, Reuben Mitchell awakens from a recurring nightmare and can’t shake the feeling that something from an “unseen world” is “trying to break through” into this one. All his life, he’s been haunted by bad luck, culminating in a car crash that killed both his parents. Desperate to make sense of this trauma while navigating adult life in Big City, Reuben observes acts of casual cruelty and comes to the conclusion that the world, and he, are “ripping in two.” He soon starts to see otherworldly presences, including demons, in his daily life, which most other people can’t see. However, an accountant named Tanz rescues him from one of these demons, and it turns out that Reuben’s savior is a former guardian of the planet Narican. Reuben discovers that his own nightmares are actually clues to his past, revealing his true identity as one of the few survivors of Narican’s Sun Clan. Tanz trains Reuben to help him combat the dark forces that threaten to destroy Earth, just as they did Narican long ago. Robbins will keep readers’ attention with unrelenting action and the engaging drollery of Reuben’s narration. This first series installment establishes a breakneck pace that will hopefully continue in the next book. However, just as Reuben has difficulty distinguishing between two dueling realities, readers may find it hard to parse the relationship between Reuben’s world and ours. Familiar brand names, such as Toyota and Pac-Man, and locations such as the Alps and the Atlantic Ocean, don’t mesh well with the clearly fictional names, such as Big City. However, the story moves too fast for readers to worry too much about minor inconsistencies.
An action-packed, if occasionally muddled, coming-of-age adventure.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73339-780-3
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Bowker
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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