A well-paced, deftly plotted science fiction tale that suffers from its undernourished characters.
A group of friends struggle to incite a class war in this dystopian science fiction novel for young adults.
The earth is polluted to the edge of inhabitability 150 years in the future. Enormous, impenetrable domes dominate urban skylines, allowing a select few to live carefree inside what is known as the Inworld. Everyone else is damned to the Outworld, where they will surely die, at a young age, of an environmentally related disease. However, if an Outworlder wins the Fuse games (a sort of antigravity laser-taglike competition), they are recruited by the Caretakers (a brutally oppressive task force that polices the Outworld) and are granted entry to the Inworld. Our hero Tristan is on the verge of becoming San Francisco’s Fuse champion and spends the first part of the novel myopically dedicated to entering the Inworld. But, unbeknownst to him, forces are conspiring to keep Tristan from his goal. Like with 1984, The Hunger Games and countless others, social commentary and plot are intrinsically woven together in Otto’s tale. Through shifting points-of-view, the author uses his characters to provide a firsthand account of the disparity between the Inworld and Outworld. With his dreams of Inworld life crumbling, the harsh reality of Outworld life drives Tristan to an epiphany and he joins his friend Luisa as part of a tiny group of rebel Outworlders. Together, they search for a way to rouse the rest of their people from their complacent rut. Meanwhile, Tristan’s Fuse archrival Sonny is slowly becoming a megalomaniacal Caretaker. From here, the book becomes a propulsive procedural, running headfirst into scenes of tension-building action, driving the two worlds toward their inevitable climactic conflict. Unfortunately Otto’s focus on plot suffocates his characters, confining them to a one-dimensional limbo where they exist as vessels for plot development, interacting only for the purpose of strategizing their rebellion against the Inworld and to reinforce the book’s underlying social commentary.
A well-paced, deftly plotted science fiction tale that suffers from its undernourished characters.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4575-0791-5
Page Count: 245
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2018
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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