An earnest, plodding novel of the future, in which a teenager is shocked to discover a community of disabled outcasts living in tunnels below her city. With human society reduced to two closely regulated walled cities, permission is required to go Outside to visit the ``environment.'' When Gem, 16, discovers in the database an old map showing rivers and other points of access underground, her friend Jay admits knowing all about them and takes her down to meet the Waterbound, inhabitants who live in darkness and semidarkness. Blind Mike, deaf Sal, wheelchair-bound Sophie, and others, perhaps a hundred altogether, are dead, according to official records, but were secretly rescued by courageous hospital workers. It turns out that Gem and everyone she knows has a sibling below ground; her previously unsuspected sister, Alice, has gone ``Downstream beyond'' to an unknown fate. Stemp's disabled people display a realistic mix of dispositions, but they're all types—one blind, one legless, one with cerebral palsy—and unlike Gregory Maguire's I Feel Like The Morning Star (1989) or Lois Lowry's The Giver (1993), there are no authority figures to grapple with or moral dilemmas to conquer. The plot, replete with hanging threads, is also practically devoid of danger, suspense, humor, or surprise, nor does the climax, in which the Waterbound suddenly decide to reveal themselves by writing notes on folded paper flowers and floating them downstream, lead to any clear resolution. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8037-1994-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1996
Lowry returns to the metaphorical future world of her Newbery-winning The Giver (1993) to explore the notion of foul reality disguised as fair. Born with a twisted leg, Kira faces a bleak future after her mother dies suddenly, leaving her without protection. Despite her gift for weaving and embroidery, the village women, led by cruel, scarred Vandara, will certainly drive the lame child into the forest, where the “beasts” killed her father, or so she’s been told. Instead, the Council of Guardians intervenes. In Kira’s village, the ambient sounds of voices raised in anger and children being slapped away as nuisances quiets once a year when the Singer, with his intricately carved staff and elaborately embroidered robe, recites the tale of humanity’s multiple rises and falls. The Guardians ask Kira to repair worn historical scenes on the Singer’s robe and promise her the panels that have been left undecorated. Comfortably housed with two other young orphans—Thomas, a brilliant wood-carver working on the Singer’s staff, and tiny Jo, who sings with an angel’s voice—Kira gradually realizes that their apparent freedom is illusory, that their creative gifts are being harnessed to the Guardians’ agenda. And she begins to wonder about the deaths of her parents and those of her companions—especially after the seemingly hale old woman who is teaching her to dye expires the day after telling her there really are no beasts in the woods. The true nature of her society becomes horribly clear when the Singer appears for his annual performance with chained, bloody ankles, followed by Kira’s long-lost father, who, it turns out, was blinded and left for dead by a Guardian. Next to the vividly rendered supporting cast, the gentle, kindhearted Kira seems rather colorless, though by electing at the end to pit her artistic gift against the status quo instead of fleeing, she does display some inner stuff. Readers will find plenty of material for thought and discussion here, plus a touch of magic and a tantalizing hint (stay sharp, or you’ll miss it) about the previous book’s famously ambiguous ending. A top writer, in top form. (author’s note) (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-618-05581-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
Witty repartee between the central characters, as well as the occasional well-done set piece, isn’t enough to hold this hefty debut together. Teenagers Seth and Kendra are dropped off by traveling parents at their grandfather’s isolated Connecticut estate, and soon discover why he’s so reluctant to have them—the place is a secret haven for magical creatures, both benign and decidedly otherwise. Those others are held in check by a complicated, unwritten and conveniently malleable Compact that is broken on Midsummer Eve, leaving everyone except Kendra captive in a hidden underground chamber with a newly released demon. Mull’s repeated use of the same device to prod the plot along comes off as more labored than comic: Over and over an adult issues a stern but vague warning; Seth ignores it; does some mischief and is sorry afterward. Sometimes Kendra joins in trying to head off her uncommonly dense brother. She comes into her own at the rousing climax, but that takes a long time to arrive; stick with Michael Buckley’s “Sisters Grimm” tales, which carry a similar premise in more amazing and amusing directions. (Fantasy. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-59038-581-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006
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