A crazed professional poacher and the elephant who smashed his leg 50 years before meet again in this brutal, melodramatic sequel to The Place of Lions (1991). In his hidden storeroom on the lifeless volcanic slopes of Tanzania’s Ol Doinyo Lengai, Laurens van der Wel has gathered thousands of tusks, but his special prey, known to the Masai as Papa Tembo, “Father Elephant,” remains elusive. About to slaughter another elephant family, van der Wel suddenly herds them instead into a close and torches it, sure that their screams will draw Papa Tembo, which they do. The prose is often colorful—“Only the carrion eaters had done well that year, the sly hyenas and gargoyle vultures lazily plying their putrescent trade”—but Campbell’s generalizations about Africa (e.g., “A world of magic and ancient savagery where life meant little,”) evoke a now-musty colonialism, and he adds characters more for didactic purposes than to enhance the plot: a scientist and his two teenage children to observe—at length—elephant behavior, and a pair of anti-poacher vigilantes from the previous book. They all come together in the smoke-filled climax in which Papa Tembo crushes the slobbering, gun-waving van der Wel into a pulp, then calmly allows the other humans to help the captured elephants escape. A long and tumid story, with little to see readers through beyond some lurid writing and, for those with a proclivity for such carnage, the expectation of gory just deserts. (glossary) (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-15-201727-5
Page Count: 265
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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