Unexceptional of both concept and play, more hampered than enhanced by its format.
Two magically immersive video games cast as “choose your path”–style adventures kick off a series set in an abandoned arcade.
Both games are conventional types, running separate courses despite the interwoven format. In a setup, “you” find the arcade in a long-closed mall and opt either to join Space Pirates in fighting the evil Galactic Authority or to take on a trio of undead necromancers. In either case, big icons that look like game controllers offer multiple options for next moves—all split into short (sometimes one- or two-line) snippets of narrative on widely separated pages—nearly all of which lead, a few options along in the plotlines, to being eaten by animated toys, squeezed by an Abominable Snowmancer, blasted into “little bits of space trash,” or some other form of sudden death. Not only does the requisite flipping prevent the development of any sort of dramatic pacing, there’s so much back-ing and forth-ing that gamers, even (or perhaps particularly) dedicated ones, will quickly grow weary of it. Moreover, to no evident purpose beyond padding the page count, some passages recur word for word multiple times. Aside from the icons, a scanty assortment of line-drawn prize tokens, robots, and melodramatically posed monsters are the only visuals.
Unexceptional of both concept and play, more hampered than enhanced by its format. (Horror/science fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-8429-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The lead miner of the “ha-ha-horror” vein offers 33 more microtales (all but three newly minted) in a fifth Weenies collection. Most end badly for a young narrator or protagonist: In the title story plus three more, vampires triumph over obnoxious teens; in others a ghost, a malicious elf, swarming spiders and bees, all-too-omnivorous “MutAnts” and reanimated skeletons likewise snuff out the incautious or naïve. The laws of physics come into play when television-addict “Rapt Punzel” carelessly throws her huge weight of hair out a window. All humanity waxes rank and tubby after a young inventor finds a way to turn soap into candy. And a lad discovers that playground “Cooties” aren’t as intangible as he thought. Lubar keeps the pace changing and injects plenty of humor—most notably and hilariously a clueless student’s run of luck in a geography bee (A country on the Strait of Hormuz? “Oh, man.” Oslo is the capitol of what country? “No way”). He rounds it off with a closing section of story notes; about "Cooties," he writes, "I was thinking about cooties (I have too much leisure time), and it hit me that someone has to be the last person to have them." All in all, the gathering assays out as rich in eye-rollers, groans and mild chills. (Funny horror short stories. 11-13)
Pub Date: May 24, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2345-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Starscape/Tom Doherty
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stewart and Riddell cap their Edge Chronicles with a large-scale grand tour and cast reunion. Several generations after the events in Freeglader (2004), young orphan Nate Quarter is forced to flee for his life from a murderous mine supervisor—which becomes more or less a theme as, acquiring such doughty companions as the mine owner’s intrepid daughter Eudoxia and Librarian Knight Zelphyius Dax along the way, he comes and goes from Great Glade and several other cities or settlements that have grown up in the vast Deep Woods that border the overhanging Edge of the world. The long journey takes him through multiple battles, chases, rescues and political upheavals to mystical encounters with figures from the past in the ever-dark Night Woods and then on to a climax in the restored airborne city of Sanctaphrax. A huge cast teeming with multiple races of uneasily coexistent goblins, trolls and more, plus Dementor-ish gloamglozers and other deadly predators are all depicted in lovingly minute (and occasionally gruesome) detail in Riddell’s many pen-and-ink portraits and add plenty of color to this vigorous sendoff. (Fantasy. 11-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-375-83743-2
Page Count: 688
Publisher: David Fickling/Random
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
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