Gun battles and gore invigorate this amped-up sequel.
In this sequel to Shifters (2014), a pair of superpowered siblings prepare for war against an empire of fascist aliens.
Teens Ryland and Tanner Ascunse of Wethersfield, Connecticut, have just learned that they are Shifters, originally from the planet Gaia. They possess superspeed (among other powers) and belong to a race of aliens that wants to destroy its own children thanks to a prophecy claiming that a child causes the downfall of the Shifters and the rise of the powerless Ordinaries. After defeating an invasion force of adult Shifters in Washington, D.C., Ryland, Tanner, and their small band of superpowered teens are publicly branded as terrorists and blamed for the attack. Once they escape government lockdown, they drive toward their friends’ home, where an army of Shifter kids has gathered to train. Clay, a competent (and gorgeous) pilot, informs them of the step-by-step strategy to wage war against the adult Shifters; this first involves flying to the mining world Six to disrupt the Shifter empire’s fuel supply. Ryland and Tanner, meanwhile, have vengeance on their minds. The villainous Navin slaughtered someone dear to them, and Tanner’s girlfriend, Devon, has been taken hostage. Going on the offensive, the siblings also realize that one of them is surely the child mentioned in the prophecy—and the other is expendable. In the second volume of their epic YA sci-fi series, the Pershings crank up the emotional intensity and violence while trying to keep their protagonists lovable. The teens still mock each other as they trade narration duties; Tanner, for example, tells Ryland, “You can’t just start with us on another planet without explaining how we got here.” There’s also a suitable amount of jaw-dropping detail, like the mention of a Shifter battleship that “creaks and moans as it...stands angled high in the air, impossibly on its end.” Frequently, however, too many supporting characters rotate in and out of focus, and the story feels like a Doctor Who episode on fast-forward. Nevertheless, the fallout from a savage climax asks fresh questions that will lure readers back for the next volume.
Gun battles and gore invigorate this amped-up sequel.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-1502921048
Page Count: 376
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Harry Potter–like threads spun into a fresh, enjoyable mix of magic and mystery.
A teenage orphan enters a curious school and encounters mysteries and dangerous secrets in this first installment of a debut YA fantasy series.
Life in Croswald is about to change for 16-year-old orphan Ivy, a lowly castle maid in charge of the kitchen “scaldrons,” oven-heating, fire-breathing dragons. Fleeing the castle after a messy scaldron mishap, Ivy hops a strange conveyance that transports her to a school for potential quill-wielding, spell-casting “scrivenists.” (The author’s creative language—students are “sqwinches,” and “hairies” are lanterns housing fairies with luminous hair—is one of the book’s pleasures.) Learning that there is more to her gift for sketching than she realized, Ivy studies spells and the magical properties of inks and quills, but strange things keep happening. Why is an old scrivenist, long thought dead, working in secret? Why is the head of the oddly familiar school moving paintings to the “Forgetting Room” so that no one will remember they existed? How can Ivy get a look at a certain journal stored there, and what does it have to do with her recurrent dream? And why has Ivy drawn the interest of the Dark Queen of Croswald and her truly fearsome Cloaked Brood? The intrigue is layered with such whimsical inventions as one school lunchroom run by ghostly bad cooks and another by a jester who is best avoided, scrivenists who end their lives as tomes in a library, and small houses pulled by a gargantuan flying beast with its own weather system. Yes, there are many Harry Potter–ish elements: a school for young wand-wielders, quirky shops dealing in enchanted student supplies, eccentric characters, spells gone wrong, an evil pursuer. But Night’s blend of magic, danger, and suspense (and a touch of steampunk) is a well-realized, fresh fantasy world all its own, and Ivy is an appealing protagonist of relatable complexity. A few bobbles: Ivy seems to go without food for long stretches; the use of “effected” rather than “affected”; a professor who is both standing and perched on a chair.
Harry Potter–like threads spun into a fresh, enjoyable mix of magic and mystery.Pub Date: July 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9969486-5-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Stories Untold Press
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In this riveting futuristic novel, Spaz, a teenage boy with epilepsy, makes a dangerous journey in the company of an old man and a young boy. The old man, Ryter, one of the few people remaining who can read and write, has dedicated his life to recording stories. Ryter feels a kinship with Spaz, who unlike his contemporaries has a strong memory; because of his epilepsy, Spaz cannot use the mind probes that deliver entertainment straight to the brain and rot it in the process. Nearly everyone around him uses probes to escape their life of ruin and poverty, the result of an earthquake that devastated the world decades earlier. Only the “proovs,” genetically improved people, have grass, trees, and blue skies in their aptly named Eden, inaccessible to the “normals” in the Urb. When Spaz sets out to reach his dying younger sister, he and his companions must cross three treacherous zones ruled by powerful bosses. Moving from one peril to the next, they survive only with help from a proov woman. Enriched by Ryter’s allusions to nearly lost literature and full of intriguing, invented slang, the skillful writing paints two pictures of what the world could look like in the future—the burned-out Urb and the pristine Eden—then shows the limits and strengths of each. Philbrick, author of Freak the Mighty (1993) has again created a compelling set of characters that engage the reader with their courage and kindness in a painful world that offers hope, if no happy endings. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-439-08758-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
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