An easy and light read, especially for young sci-fi mystery lovers.
In Holy Ghost Writer’s third installment of his 12-book series, Zeddy, a young boy, embarks on an epic journey to find and save his father.
It’s 2099, and a strict International Government rules the world. In this police state, the International Government has rewritten history for its benefit, smart children are taken from their parents to work for the government, new laws are decreed daily, and the environment and ozone are in great jeopardy of collapsing from years of abuse. Zeddy is 6 going on 16. His IQ is through the roof, he loves books, and he’s a science whiz, just like his father, Zane. Since Zane has a deep knowledge of science, he’s made to work part time for the International Government. When Zane mysteriously disappears, Zeddy and his mother embark on a journey to find him. Since the International Government, however, is strict, suspicious and seemingly ubiquitous, the two must be careful not to get caught digging into a government employee’s disappearance. Before embarking on his search, Zeddy discovers a zutterfly. A zutterfly is similar to a butterfly but is made of dark matter. They are one of the inhabitants of the planet Zamira. The zutterfly somehow came to Earth with Zane and wishes to return to Zamira. Zeddy intuits that Zamira and this zutterfly are the keys to discovering his father’s location. The Holy Ghost Writer departs from his/her normal reliance on previously developed characters in this third book. Though this originality is refreshing, the plot, scenes and character development remain thin. For instance, Zeddy wants to research a professor who might be able to help find his father. The International Government can monitor all Internet searches, so in order to disguise his search, Zeddy follows his investigation with a search for a piece of information about space that is slightly related to the professor. Though it seems to be meant to display Zeddy’s craftiness and wit, it instead exposes a rather ignorant government that cannot see through such a simple decoy. The author hooks the reader more successfully than the previous two volumes, and Zeddy’s quick-paced search drives momentum and curiosity.
An easy and light read, especially for young sci-fi mystery lovers.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481096492
Page Count: 98
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Harry Potter–like threads spun into a fresh, enjoyable mix of magic and mystery.
A teenage orphan enters a curious school and encounters mysteries and dangerous secrets in this first installment of a debut YA fantasy series.
Life in Croswald is about to change for 16-year-old orphan Ivy, a lowly castle maid in charge of the kitchen “scaldrons,” oven-heating, fire-breathing dragons. Fleeing the castle after a messy scaldron mishap, Ivy hops a strange conveyance that transports her to a school for potential quill-wielding, spell-casting “scrivenists.” (The author’s creative language—students are “sqwinches,” and “hairies” are lanterns housing fairies with luminous hair—is one of the book’s pleasures.) Learning that there is more to her gift for sketching than she realized, Ivy studies spells and the magical properties of inks and quills, but strange things keep happening. Why is an old scrivenist, long thought dead, working in secret? Why is the head of the oddly familiar school moving paintings to the “Forgetting Room” so that no one will remember they existed? How can Ivy get a look at a certain journal stored there, and what does it have to do with her recurrent dream? And why has Ivy drawn the interest of the Dark Queen of Croswald and her truly fearsome Cloaked Brood? The intrigue is layered with such whimsical inventions as one school lunchroom run by ghostly bad cooks and another by a jester who is best avoided, scrivenists who end their lives as tomes in a library, and small houses pulled by a gargantuan flying beast with its own weather system. Yes, there are many Harry Potter–ish elements: a school for young wand-wielders, quirky shops dealing in enchanted student supplies, eccentric characters, spells gone wrong, an evil pursuer. But Night’s blend of magic, danger, and suspense (and a touch of steampunk) is a well-realized, fresh fantasy world all its own, and Ivy is an appealing protagonist of relatable complexity. A few bobbles: Ivy seems to go without food for long stretches; the use of “effected” rather than “affected”; a professor who is both standing and perched on a chair.
Harry Potter–like threads spun into a fresh, enjoyable mix of magic and mystery.Pub Date: July 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9969486-5-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Stories Untold Press
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In this riveting futuristic novel, Spaz, a teenage boy with epilepsy, makes a dangerous journey in the company of an old man and a young boy. The old man, Ryter, one of the few people remaining who can read and write, has dedicated his life to recording stories. Ryter feels a kinship with Spaz, who unlike his contemporaries has a strong memory; because of his epilepsy, Spaz cannot use the mind probes that deliver entertainment straight to the brain and rot it in the process. Nearly everyone around him uses probes to escape their life of ruin and poverty, the result of an earthquake that devastated the world decades earlier. Only the “proovs,” genetically improved people, have grass, trees, and blue skies in their aptly named Eden, inaccessible to the “normals” in the Urb. When Spaz sets out to reach his dying younger sister, he and his companions must cross three treacherous zones ruled by powerful bosses. Moving from one peril to the next, they survive only with help from a proov woman. Enriched by Ryter’s allusions to nearly lost literature and full of intriguing, invented slang, the skillful writing paints two pictures of what the world could look like in the future—the burned-out Urb and the pristine Eden—then shows the limits and strengths of each. Philbrick, author of Freak the Mighty (1993) has again created a compelling set of characters that engage the reader with their courage and kindness in a painful world that offers hope, if no happy endings. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-439-08758-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
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