Overall, a solid adventure about a little-known place and time.
Audra doesn’t understand what her parents are hiding until the Cossacks come to arrest them.
It’s June 1893, in what used to be the country of Lithuania but has been part of Russia for years. Twelve-year-old Audra has spent most of her life on her parents’ farm. Her stage-magician father travels, and Audra knows he and her mother are doing something illegal, but she doesn’t know what. When Officer Rusakov arrests them and sets fire to their home, Audra discovers that they’ve been smuggling books—printed in Lithuanian. The Russians long ago banned that language, spoken or written, in an attempt to force assimilation. Even though everyone speaks both languages (Lithuanian in secret), Audra’s parents have kept her illiterate rather than have her attend Russian school. Now she joins a group of rebels smuggling books from printers in Prussia: adults Milda and Ben, and Lukas, a boy her own age. Magic tricks her father taught her allow her to distract her pursuers rather than hide from them. Written from Audra’s first-person point of view, with an all-white cast in keeping with its Eastern European setting, the novel suffers a bit from inconsistent pacing but delivers believable action and suspense. The Cossack leader comes across as a typical evil Russian, but the other characters are more fully drawn.
Overall, a solid adventure about a little-known place and time. (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-27547-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
An intriguing speculation about authoritarian futures with a terrific cover.
Young Letta becomes wordsmith to her community in a future that follows a climate apocalypse.
A likable protagonist, Letta (white with green eyes and red hair) is the one positive female character in this narrative of resistance and revelation. She is at the mercy of John Noa, the controlling savior of a number of people who joined his Ark just before a warming planet Earth produced massive, devastating floods in an event remembered as the Melting. Noa is obsessed with the potential of the spoken word to influence human conflict and confusion. When Letta chooses to shelter a wounded boy, Marlo, shot as a Desecrator by Noa’s security force, the corruption at the heart of things begins to reveal itself to Letta. Her disillusion deepens when her master goes missing and when a young boy, son of her neighbor, is banished for misusing language. Marlo (sallow-skinned, with blue-gray eyes and black hair) turns out to be part of a largely self-sufficient community living outside the Ark and opposed to Noa’s strictures. Forde’s pacing and characterization are compelling, especially after initial chapters focused on Noa’s truncated List-based language of acceptable words (all English ones) and people’s awkward struggle to speak it. Brief expository passages interspersed with Letta’s story reveal Noa’s thinking and his ugly desire to eliminate the weakness of language.
An intriguing speculation about authoritarian futures with a terrific cover. (Science fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-4796-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More rousing, swashbuckling fun.
Pasts, futures, and zombies challenge two young bank robbers in a dystopian future Britain.
Surly quick-draw specialist Scarlett McCain and her game but distractable mind-reading partner, Albert Browne, first met in The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne (2021). They really have their work cut out for them in this sequel, as rescuing two friends from the clutches of brutal crime lords requires hijacking a shipment of high-tech artifacts mined from an ancient and heavily guarded pre-Cataclysm site—even as an agent of the implacable Faith Houses with scarily strong telepathic and telekinetic powers is hot on their trail. Stroud dishes up another gleefully violent, headlong plot replete with cliffhangers, breathtaking feats, and all-too-narrow escapes from both hails of bullets and terrifying creatures ranging from outsized owls and snakes to humans transformed into infectious, cannibalistic Tainted. In developing the outrageous pair of rogues who front this memorably colorful cast of thugs and shady characters, he takes time out to fill in some of Scarlett’s nightmarish childhood, particularly her profound guilt for failing to protect her little brother after the deaths of their parents. Albert likewise gains dimension by learning to face his fears about losing control of his own mental powers in the course of a wildly explosive climax. In the aftermath, a glimmer of hope that Scarlett’s brother might not have been eaten by the Tainted after all sets up future exploits. Like the two leads, the entire cast reads as White.
More rousing, swashbuckling fun. (Science fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780593430408
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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