Readers will be lost, indeed.
The only mystery here is how one of America’s oldest unsolved events—the Lost Colony of Roanoke—becomes tedious in this piece of speculative fiction.
Seventeen-year-old Miranda Blackwood knows she’s the town freak because her family carries a curse that has confined them for centuries to Roanoke Island, N.C., the same island from which the English colonists attempting to found the first colony disappeared without a trace. It doesn’t help that she’s begun seeing strange visions of the settlers’ ships. After the island awakens to find 114 of its residents missing (matching the number of Lost Colonists)—and Miranda’s father murdered—Miranda aims to find the causes. Phillips, a descendant of the “Witch of Roanoke Island,” can "hear voices" when he is on the island, so his police-chief father summons him from his safe boarding school on the mainland to assist. In a third-person narration that alternates viewpoints, the passionless teens enlist the aid of crackpot theorist Dr. Roswell. Through him, they learn more about their ancestries and Elizabethan alchemist John Dee, who, according to Roswell, wanted to build a New London on Roanoke as a first outpost of an empire of immortals. When Dee returns from the past and takes possession of Miranda’s dead father’s body, the teens’ new mission becomes keeping this egomaniac from realizing his dream. Just when adventure should set in, the story grows increasingly repetitive and mind-numbing.
Readers will be lost, indeed. (Speculative fiction. 13 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-908844-07-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Strange Chemistry
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
Both entertaining and well-written; demands and holds readers’ attention.
A duology opener that revisits the world of Divergent (2011).
Beatrice “Tris” Prior is Divergent. But before she can select Dauntless, her Choosing Ceremony is interrupted by a group of factionless rebels, and her good friend is killed. Amid the chaos, Tris sees Evelyn, the wife of Abnegation leader Marcus Eaton—but Evelyn supposedly died years ago. And, shockingly, she’s an Amity woman who’s holding a gun. Tris doesn’t tell anyone, even her father, when he later questions her. Her brother, Caleb, chooses Erudite—the faction that’s most critical toward the Abnegation and their practices—and Tris feels pressured to stay in Abnegation. But when her father tries to erase her memories, she knows she’s unsafe. Tris’ mother helps her escape to the factionless, where Tris meets Four, a Dauntless boy. Their relationship shows her that she was right to leave Abnegation—and that maybe the rebels are correct to want the death of the faction system. As Tris becomes friends with the other “faction failures,” she realizes that no faction is as it seems, and that power is a corrupting influence they can’t escape. This exciting work revisits beloved characters, offering a new understanding of them and of what happens when we stand up and ask questions. Returning fans and those new to this world will appreciate the witty banter, slow-burn romance, and heartache stemming from betrayal and complicated familial love. The leads are cued white.
Both entertaining and well-written; demands and holds readers’ attention. (Dystopian. 13-18)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9780063462595
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2026
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter.
After a Nigerian British girl goes off to an exclusive boarding school that seems to prey on less-privileged students, she discovers there might be some truth behind an urban legend.
Ife Adebola joins the Urban Achievers scholarship program at pricey, high-pressure Nithercott School, arriving shortly after a student called Leon mysteriously disappeared. Gossip says he’s a victim of the glowing-eyed Changing Man who targets the lonely, leaving them changed. Ife doesn’t believe in the myth, but amid the stresses of Nithercott’s competitive, privileged, majority-white environment, where she is constantly reminded of her state school background, she does miss her friends and family. When Malika, a fellow Black scholarship student, disappears and then returns, acting strangely devoid of personality, Ife worries the Changing Man is real—and that she’s next. Ife joins forces with classmate Bijal and Benny, Leon’s younger brother, to uncover the truth about who the Changing Man is and what he wants. Culminating in a detailed, gory, and extended climactic battle, this verbose thriller tempts readers with a nefarious mystery involving racial and class-based violence but never quite lives up to its potential and peters out thematically by its explosive finale. However, this debut offers highly visually evocative and eerie descriptions of characters and events and will appeal to fans of creature horror, social commentary, and dark academia.
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781250868138
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
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