All in all, well below par…in the very best sense.
A teenager faces the exhilarating—and dismal—prospect of becoming a golfing phenom.
Having made the previous year’s U.S. Amateur semifinals, 17-year-old Frank vows to do even better this time around—and so he does, persevering through challenges and distractions to qualify for the Masters at Augusta National. Meanwhile, Frank’s determination to attend college and the cautionary example of Tiger Woods and his greedy, domineering dad notwithstanding, his divorced father has fallen into the clutches of a bottom-feeding agent who is steering him toward forcing his young phenom to turn pro. Though the phrase “suspenseful golf action” may strike most readers as cognitive dissonance, Feinstein (Backfield Boys, 2017, etc.) does a good job of driving his tale down the fairway by putting his protagonist through a series of spectacular feats and comebacks on real courses and filling out his cast with actual renowned golf pros, journalists, and officials. Along with laying in generous measures of golf’s jargon, and elaborate rituals of play as Frank rolls along to the Masters’ final round, the author tees off on the sport’s checkered racist and sexist history as well as unsavory corporate sponsors and the money-grubbing NCAA. Frank remains heroically above all of that, though…particularly after a climactic act of sportsmanship leaves him on the moral high ground. The book follows a white default.
All in all, well below par…in the very best sense. (Sports fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-374-30595-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
Much rousing sturm und drang, though what’s left after the dust settles is a heap of glittering but disparate good parts...
Scott tops off his deservedly popular series with a heaping shovelful of monster attacks, heroic last stands, earthquakes and other geological events, magic-working, millennia-long schemes coming to fruition, hearts laid bare, family revelations, transformations, redemptions and happy endings (for those deserving them).
Multiple plotlines—some of which, thanks to time travel, feature the same characters and even figures killed off in previous episodes—come to simultaneous heads in a whirl of short chapters. Flamel and allies (including Prometheus and Billy the Kid) defend modern San Francisco from a motley host of mythological baddies. Meanwhile, in ancient Danu Talis (aka Atlantis), Josh and Sophie are being swept into a play to bring certain Elders to power as the city’s downtrodden “humani” population rises up behind Virginia Dare, the repentant John Dee and other Immortals and Elders. The cast never seems unwieldy despite its size, the pacing never lets up, and the individual set pieces are fine mixtures of sudden action, heroic badinage and cliffhanger cutoffs. As a whole, though, the tale collapses under its own weight as the San Francisco subplots turn out to be no more than an irrelevant sideshow, and climactic conflicts take place on an island that is somehow both a historical, physical place and a higher reality from which Earth and other “shadowrealms” are spun off.
Much rousing sturm und drang, though what’s left after the dust settles is a heap of glittering but disparate good parts rather than a cohesive whole. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 22, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-385-73535-3
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
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