A fast-paced fantasy for preteens who are ready for something meatier than the average chapter book.
Like many kids, Max thinks his mandatory summer vacation will be boring. He’s terribly wrong.
Max Rigdon, a strong-willed 12-year-old, was sent to spend the summer with his “crazy” grandfather. Max is angry because his departure will mean losing the starting pitcher position on the baseball team. He’s sure he’s about to have a terrible summer. He’s almost right, although events at Grandpa’s house transpire quite differently than he imagined. Some dark scenes set the stage early: As Max walks from the bus stop to Grandpa’s house, the neighbors chant menacingly at him. Later that night, on his first night away from home, Max has a disturbing nightmare that is something of a premonition. “These things can’t be real. There has to be a logical explanation for all of this,” his new friend Cindy tells him. The explanation, it turns out, is that Max’s grandfather is a gatekeeper, traveling to and from other dimensions, fighting evil and trying to keep it away from this world. But some nasty elements have slipped in, and it’s up to Max, Cindy and Grandpa to right the world and prevent the destruction of life as we know it. While it’s apparent that Grandpa, Max and company are on the right side of the fight, there’s no mention of a higher power or godlike figure; the wars in the various worlds Max visits are being fought over basic concepts such as freedom. By steering clear of religious overtones and mixing a little magic with technology, Max’s story is likely to appeal to many young readers while it avoids offending some of their parents’ sensibilities. Max isn’t fully developed in this first installment in the Gatekeeper series, although he does grow from a somewhat dubious, unwilling participant to an eager protector of the human race. Rather than describing his characters’ thoughts and feelings at length and including great detail in scenes and settings, Cochrane’s writing emphasizes action, which, along with the more fantastical elements, may appeal to reluctant readers.
A fast-paced fantasy for preteens who are ready for something meatier than the average chapter book.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2007
ISBN: 978-0979720208
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Dark Moon Publishing Inc.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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