Eleven-year-old Skip, a budding artist, is a runaway from a violent foster home. His only friend, Billy, is a homeless man who tries to keep Skip at arm’s length. As brutal as Skip’s life on the streets can be, it’s worse still when bombs fall, devastating the city. War has come, and the daily lonely terror of homelessness has been supplanted by total chaos. Oddly, though, Skip is almost happy. He and Billy find Max, a six-year-old boy, in the ruined shell of the city library, and suddenly Skip has the closest thing he’s ever had to a family. They set up housekeeping in an abandoned amusement park, where they are joined by a troubled teenage mother and her infant. Between dodging looters and soldiers, the newly formed family finds time for music and make-believe (with an unfortunate recurring theme of playing Indian). Alas, no amount of grit and determination will erase the bombs from the sky or the soldiers from the countryside. This philosophical, appealing survival tale is simultaneously grim and hopeful. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: March 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2264-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
In this sketchy, incoherent, near-future tale, a child named Rain and the lion she has raised are stolen from an inland village for some never-explained Sacrifice by “Tekkies” inhabiting The Island, a former mountaintop surrounded by risen seas. Aside from vague references to “the Wild,” “Drylands” and air-conditioned “chill chambers,” the author does little to set up either the scene or the back story, nor does she ever reveal why Rain or the lion are considered so significant. Instead she focuses almost entirely on Rain’s unhappiness and confusion through disconnected encounters with Island residents, and then she engineers a highly contrived escape for the girl and lion as their former prison is totally destroyed for unknown reasons. The deadly effects of global warming certainly make a cogent theme, but this effort to take it up seems to have been, at best, phoned in by a veteran South African author who usually offers much more careful and sensitive work (Song of Be, 1993, etc.). Goodness knows, there's a raft of other eco-disaster tales out there for readers so inclined. (Science fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-84780-114-2
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This sequel to A Templar's Apprentice (2010) takes Tormod in circular journeys around Scotland without particularly advancing the plot. The truth o’ yon Tormod’s powers canno’ be denied—or understood very well, given the brogue-laden prose, which lacks the accuracy for true flavor but is still thick enough to interfere with readability. Tormod is on the run with his new friend, the redheaded and equally magically gifted Aine. They skip from adventure to adventure, uncontrolled psychic abilities troubling them while they seek a Knight Templar with the gift of healing. Tormod's health suffers as his visions become worse. His travels, from discovering a village whose residents have been massacred by soldiers to a brief interaction with Robert the Bruce, are soon only interruptions; primarily his days are occupied by delirium, visions and out-of-control magical temper tantrums. At least his fever dreams are revealing the King of France's wicked plot against the Templars, but it won't do him much good as he wanders through the Highlands. A discombobulated traveling tale, best summed up in Tormod's own stream of consciousness: "Torquil. The Abbot. The Templar. Aine. Bertrand. The bairn. Cornelius. Visions. Dreams. Nightmares." (Fantasy. 9-11)
Pub Date: April 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-545-05675-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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