The author who made a splash with The Big Splash (2008) takes the “costumed superheroes” genre out for a joyride, and anyone who comes along will never read comics the same way again. Six years as Bright Boy, sidekick to crime-fighting superhero Phantom Justice, has left Scott a teenager with no life, no friends and revealing yellow tights that show the news cameras every bit of the involuntary hard-on he gets after heroically rescuing a beautiful victim. Then another seemingly devastating development: He and arch-nemesis Monkeywrench (Dr. Chaotic’s sidekick) both lose their masks in battle, and Monkeywrench turns out to be not only a girl, but one he knows from school. This leads to a giddy, liberating romance, as well as cool costume makeovers and sensational publicity after the cameras catch some of that love action. It also earns them death sentences from their respective employers, who turn out to be very different from their public images and not at all willing to be edged out of the limelight by supporting characters. Scott’s present-tense narration keeps pedal to the metal from start to finish, and readers will be quickly won over as the two super-strong, super-fast, super-likable protagonists face both inner conflicts and a Dark Knight–ish villain as deeply psychotic and scary as he is super powerful. Look for more twists than a pretzel factory and a possible sequel. (Superhero fantasy. 11-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8109-9803-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
Without that frame, this would have been a fine addition to the wacked-out summer-camp subgenre.
Survival camp? How can you not have bad feelings about that?
Sixteen-year-old nerd (or geek, but not dork) Henry Lambert has no desire to go to Strongwoods Survival Camp. His father thinks it might help Henry man up and free him of some of his odd phobias. Randy, Henry’s best friend since kindergarten, is excited at the prospect of going thanks to the camp’s promotional YouTube video, so Henry relents. When they arrive at the shabby camp in the middle of nowhere and meet the possibly insane counselor (and only staff member), Max, Henry’s bad feelings multiply. Max tries to train his five campers with a combination of carrot and stick, but the boys are not athletes, let alone survivalists. When a trio of gangsters drops in on the camp Games to try to collect the debt owed by the owner, the boys suddenly have to put their skills to the test. Too bad they don’t have any—at all. Strand’s summer-camp farce is peopled with sarcastic losers who’re chatty and wry. It’s often funny, and the gags turn in unexpected directions and would do Saturday Night Live skits proud. However, the story’s flow is hampered by an unnecessary and completely unfunny frame that takes place during the premier of the movie the boys make of their experience. The repeated intrusions bring the narrative to a screeching halt.
Without that frame, this would have been a fine addition to the wacked-out summer-camp subgenre. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4022-8455-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Promising elements aplenty, but they never fully mesh or deliver more than a passing chill.
Cryptic clues in a Web comic put a Seattle teenager onto the trail of a deranged kidnapper and his victim.
Three years after the (supposed) drowning of bosom friend Libby, 16-year-old May is shocked to see new stickers and other merch for “Princess X,” an intrepid swordswoman in a puff-sleeved dress and sneakers that she and Libby had privately invented in fifth grade. The princess’s recently posted online adventures tell a scary tale about escaping from a “Needle Man” years after being stolen as a replacement for his own dead daughter. They leave May convinced that Libby is still alive—hiding out from her clever, relentless captor and imbedding veiled messages in the comic that only May would catch. Said hints lead May and Trick, a hacker dude she goes to for help, on a quest through the city’s seedier and underground quarters to encounters with Jackdaw (a gay, goth Robin Hood) and a desperate scheme to steal proof of the Needle Man’s perfidy. Priest cranks the suspense somewhat by casting the kidnapper as both an IT expert and a killer, but because he mostly appears only in the emotionally charged, sparely drawn purple-and-black comics pages that Ciesemier scatters through the tale’s first two-thirds, he remains, at best, a shadowy bogeyman.
Promising elements aplenty, but they never fully mesh or deliver more than a passing chill. (Thriller. 11-14)Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-62085-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Levine/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
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