The frequent shifts make it hard to keep track of who’s where in this dizzying debut, but Ephraim’s ability to see past the...
A spin through parallel universes schools a teenager in the hazards of making wishes.
Ephraim comes home one day to find his troubled mother in the midst of a suicide attempt—having just, she claims, viewed his body in the morgue. More puzzling still, among the corpse’s effects is a strange-looking quarter. When prompted by a mysterious note in his school locker, he tries making a wish on it, and, to his amazement, his mother is suddenly out of the hospital with no memory of the day before. Complications ensue as further wishes hook him up with classmate Jena but also ring in other, unexpected and increasingly disturbing changes. Horrified to learn at last that the coin is actually a mentally controlled part of a device for traveling among alternate realities, that each “quantum shift” he makes forcibly switches him with an analog of himself and that the rest of the device is in the hands of a casually violent version of (in his universe) his best friend Nathan, Ephraim sets out to make amends. Ephraim’s strategy of returning all of his displaced analogs to their original planes simply by retracing his travels doesn’t hold water (you can’t go home again when every change from quantum events up spawns a new reality), but by the end he’s earned the self-confidence to make fresh starts with both mother and girlfriend.
The frequent shifts make it hard to keep track of who’s where in this dizzying debut, but Ephraim’s ability to see past the temptations of power despite an active teen libido provides him with a sturdy moral base. (Science fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61614-609-2
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Pyr/Prometheus Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A glossy repackaging of a jejune tale.
A reissue of the 2016 novel published as Consider.
Alexandra Lucas and her boyfriend, Dominick, are about to start their senior year of high school when 500 vertexes—each one a doorway-shaped “hole into the fabric of the universe”—appear across the world, accompanied by holographic messages communicating news of Earth’s impending doom. The only escape is a one-way trip through the portals to a parallel future Earth. As people leave through the vertexes and the extinction event draws nearer, the world becomes increasingly unfamiliar. A lot has changed in the past several years, including expectations of mental health depictions in young adult literature; Alex’s struggle with anxiety and reliance on Ativan, which she calls her “little white savior” while initially discounting therapy as an intervention, make for a trite after-school special–level treatment of a complex situation; a short stint of effective therapy does finally occur but is so limited in duration that it contributes to the oversimplification of the topic. Alex also has unresolved issues with her Gulf War veteran father (who possibly grapples with PTSD). The slow pace of the plot as it depicts a crumbling society, along with stilted writing and insubstantial secondary characterization, limits the appeal of such a small-scale, personal story. Characters are minimally described and largely racially ambiguous; Alex has golden skin and curly brown hair.
A glossy repackaging of a jejune tale. (Science fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-72826-839-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An entertaining fantasy set in a world that readers will want to revisit.
Brie risks the deadly land of the Fae to save her sister.
Brie doesn’t trust many people other than Jas, her eternally hopeful sister, and Sebastian, mage apprentice and Brie’s secret love (as if she had time for romance). Brie struggles to meet the payments for the magical contracts binding their lives to Madame Vivias, supplementing her cleaning work by stealing from the rich. While the land of Faerie tempts other girls with word of a castle, a lavish ball, and a fae prince seeking a wife, Brie mistrusts the creatures who capitalize on humanity’s greed. When Jas’ contract is sold to the fae, Brie braves the golden Seelie queen’s court, meets the noble Prince Ronan, and travels on to the Unseelie king’s shadow court. In the process she discovers love, historical secrets, atrocities, and her own hidden strength. While many elements regarding the fae and a love triangle will feel familiar to fans of the genre, and the magic could have been more fleshed out, discussions of power, inequity, trust, and hope expand the worldbuilding in refreshing ways. Similarly, consideration of the balance between truth and secrets, lies and stories, is intriguing as it’s applied to characters, relationships, and historical lore. Despite certain predictable reveals, the plot itself, which starts off slowly, picks up and is pleasantly convoluted with multiple satisfying surprises. Major human characters read as White.
An entertaining fantasy set in a world that readers will want to revisit. (Fantasy. 13-16)Pub Date: July 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-358-38657-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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