R.D.’s life is messed up. He’s repeating eighth grade, his mother’s in prison for dealing crack and his father is a Mexican citizen, location unknown. R.D. was being raised by his grandparents in a neighborhood gone to hell, but his grandmother has run off with a trucker named Harry and his grandfather Earl has died, so R.D. is left to fend for himself. Lynch’s first-person narration is lively and immediate, sensitively delineating character and setting and expertly tracing the transformation of a young man readers will care about. After much floundering, R.D. cleans house, learns to cook, does laundry and even starts doing his school work. It turns out that underneath R.D.’s cynical and disaffected facade resides the intelligent and brave Richard Diaz, learning to do the right things in life. As his teacher, Miz Trueblood, says, “You’re going to get along in this world just fine, R.D.” A memorable story of grit and survival, and helping hands along the way. (Fiction. 12 & up)
Pub Date: April 15, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2185-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2009
Fear the reaper(s)…but relish this intelligent and entertaining blend of dark humor and high death tolls.
Death proves impermanent in this sequel to Scythe (2016).
In a world run by the (almost) all-powerful and (almost) omniscient artificial intelligence Thunderhead, only the Honorable Scythes deal permanent death to near-immortal humans. Yet a growing contingent of scythes, feared and flattered by society and operating outside the Thunderhead’s control, are proving rather dishonorable. No longer apprentices, 18-year-olds Citra Terranova and Rowan Damisch realize “the scythedom is…high school with murder” as they watch their fellow scythes jockey for power and prestige. Citra now gleans as Scythe Anastasia, questioning the status quo but also opposing the homicidally enthusiastic “new-order” scythes and their dangerous demagogue. Self-appointed as Scythe Lucifer, Rowan hunts other scythes whom he deems corrupt. Meanwhile, the existentially troubled Thunderhead questions its role as both creation and caretaker of humanity, sworn not to take life but fearing that its utopia will otherwise collapse into dystopia. Nationality and race are minimally mentioned—ethnic biases and genocide are considered very gauche—yet a population that defies death, aging, sickness, poverty, and war risks becoming bleakly homogenous, alleviated only by “unsavories” and scythes. This sequel digs deeper into Shusterman’s complex world and complicated characters, offering political maneuvering, fatal conspiracies, and impending catastrophe via a slowly unfurling plot and startling bursts of action.
Fear the reaper(s)…but relish this intelligent and entertaining blend of dark humor and high death tolls. (Science fiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4424-7245-7
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
A terrifyingly grounded accounting of the monsters that haunt us.
Grieving a dead parent is made even more unbearable by a zombie outbreak only Zharie seems to notice.
Zharie and her mother were the only Black women on the West Coast Swing dance floor, but after her mother’s death, Zharie is alone in other ways, questioning everything about her mom’s death, especially why no one else noticed she morphed into a zombie as she died. Now Zharie sees zombies everywhere, unsure if everyone else is oblivious, if it’s all a side effect of playing the Cranberries on repeat, or if it’s psychosis brought about by obvious trauma. But when Bo, a charming Black and Vietnamese boy, moves in above the apartment she’s sharing with her emotionally distant aunt, Zharie notices that half of him seems to be a decaying corpse—but only sometimes. The other half is the cute boy she wants to get to know better, if only because he’s an anomaly in this one-sided zombie apocalypse. Zharie narrates this mindfully haunting story with a sharp attention to sensory details, emphasizing the visceral shifts from living to undead and back; for Zharie, being close to Bo, with his soft lips and disarming smile, can quickly become proximity to death, gore, and a pungent stench. Still, she perseveres, learning that zombies are less a threat and more a symbol of heartbreak, but unfortunately there’s more to come as she uncovers the circumstances surrounding her mother’s final days.
A terrifyingly grounded accounting of the monsters that haunt us. (Horror. 13-18)Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-368-07583-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
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