Atmospheric writing and a premise that’s as fresh as newly turned earth can’t compensate for an overcrowded plot, making...
Gothic surrealism as everlasting as a ghost’s kiss blends with coming-of-age angst for the modern age.
Byrne introduces readers to a world in which entering one’s own grave is a rite of passage for 13-year-olds on par with Sweet 16 parties and graduation celebrations. Each year, newly teenage kids eagerly await receiving the keys to their very own personal graves. In fact, “a person’s grave was a window to her innermost thoughts. To go into another person’s grave was like eavesdropping on someone praying—it was beyond improper; it was flat out wrong.” The Windhams, a white family of grave keepers, live in upstate New York. High school junior Athena spends all her free time in her grave, but younger sister Laurel hasn’t embraced the ritual, much to the chagrin of her overprotective parents. It’s an eerie concept with just enough curiousness to make a person want to know more. Byrne’s masterful presentation of minute details makes the whole ritual world feel so real readers will want to Google it. But while the story is as layered as any cemetery worth its salt, it also juggles multiple storylines, including: the death of a sibling and the loss of a child; home schooling vs. traditional school; suffocating loneliness and a missing child. The result is a congested plot and obtuse characters.
Atmospheric writing and a premise that’s as fresh as newly turned earth can’t compensate for an overcrowded plot, making this a good effort but a challenging read. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-248475-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Fast-moving and intriguing though inconsistent on multiple fronts.
Kids endure rigorous competition aboard a spaceship.
When Babel Communications invites 10 teens to participate in “the most serious space exploration known to mankind,” Emmett signs on. Surely it’s the jackpot: they’ll each receive $50,000 every month for life, and Emmett’s mother will get a kidney transplant, otherwise impossible for poor people. They head through space toward the planet Eden, where they’ll mine a substance called nyxia, “the new black gold.” En route, the corporation forces them into brutal competition with one another—fighting, running through violent virtual reality racecourses, and manipulating nyxia, which can become almost anything. It even forms language-translating facemasks, allowing Emmett, a black boy from Detroit, to communicate with competitors from other countries. Emmett's initial understanding of his own blackness may throw readers off, but a black protagonist in outer space is welcome. Awkward moments in the smattering of black vernacular are rare. Textual descriptions can be scanty; however, copious action and a reality TV atmosphere (the scoreboard shows regularly) make the pace flow. Emmett’s first-person voice is immediate and innocent: he realizes that Babel’s ruthless and coldblooded but doesn’t apply that to his understanding of what’s really going on. Readers will guess more than he does, though most confirmation waits for the next installment—this ends on a cliffhanger.
Fast-moving and intriguing though inconsistent on multiple fronts. (Science fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-55679-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s the haunting details of those around Kai that readers will remember.
Kai’s life is upended when his coastal village is devastated in Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami in this verse novel from an author who experienced them firsthand.
With his single mother, her parents, and his friend Ryu among the thousands missing or dead, biracial Kai, 17, is dazed and disoriented. His friend Shin’s supportive, but his intact family reminds Kai, whose American dad has been out of touch for years, of his loss. Kai’s isolation is amplified by his uncertain cultural status. Playing soccer and his growing friendship with shy Keiko barely lessen his despair. Then he’s invited to join a group of Japanese teens traveling to New York to meet others who as teenagers lost parents in the 9/11 attacks a decade earlier. Though at first reluctant, Kai agrees to go and, in the process, begins to imagine a future. Like graphic novels, today’s spare novels in verse (the subgenre concerning disasters especially) are significantly shaped by what’s left out. Lacking art’s visceral power to grab attention, verse novels may—as here—feel sparsely plotted with underdeveloped characters portrayed from a distance in elegiac monotone. Kai’s a generic figure, a coat hanger for the disaster’s main event, his victories mostly unearned; in striking contrast, his rural Japanese community and how they endure catastrophe and overwhelming losses—what they do and don’t do for one another, comforts they miss, kindnesses they value—spring to life.
It’s the haunting details of those around Kai that readers will remember. (author preface, afterword) (Verse fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-53474-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2015
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