Against the plethora of mutant and superhuman narratives, this effort just feels shopworn.
Jacobs serves up a juvenile-detention story flavored with weirdness.
Shreveport Justice Cannon, know within the Casimir Pulaski Juvenile Detention Center for Boys as Shreve, is happy to deal candy and wait until his sentence is up. When Jack Graves arrives and is assigned to Shreve’s cell, Casimir Juvie starts receiving visits from the mysterious Mr. Quincrux and Ilsa. They are curious about Jack’s polydactyly—he is the titular 12-fingered boy—and the strange circumstances that brought Jack to Casimir. Shreve and Jack are forced to flee from Quincrux and his creepy ability to invade people’s minds, even as Shreve seems to develop a talent for mind hijacking as well. While both teens are perfectly likable, there’s nothing new about them either. Shreve’s back story of neglect and self-sacrifice and Jack’s outcast status based on physical appearance are all too familiar. Quincrux’s power adds a dash of paranormal horror, but a potentially intriguing exploration of moral relativism through Shreve’s possessions becomes more lecture than narrative. A string of seemingly random encounters provides action but works against narrative cohesion.
Against the plethora of mutant and superhuman narratives, this effort just feels shopworn. (Paranormal adventure. 12-14)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7613-9007-7
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Carolrhoda Lab
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
Not much forward momentum but a tasty array of chills, thrills, and chortles.
The victory of Jacob and his fellow peculiars over the previous episode’s wights and hollowgasts turns out to be only one move in a larger game as Riggs (Tales of the Peculiar, 2016, etc.) shifts the scene to America.
Reading largely as a setup for a new (if not exactly original) story arc, the tale commences just after Jacob’s timely rescue from his decidedly hostile parents. Following aimless visits back to newly liberated Devil’s Acre and perfunctory normalling lessons for his magically talented friends, Jacob eventually sets out on a road trip to find and recruit Noor, a powerful but imperiled young peculiar of Asian Indian ancestry. Along the way he encounters a semilawless patchwork of peculiar gangs, syndicates, and isolated small communities—many at loggerheads, some in the midst of negotiating a tentative alliance with the Ymbryne Council, but all threatened by the shadowy Organization. The by-now-tangled skein of rivalries, romantic troubles, and family issues continues to ravel amid bursts of savage violence and low comedy (“I had never seen an invisible person throw up before,” Jacob writes, “and it was something I won’t soon forget”). A fresh set of found snapshots serves, as before, to add an eldritch atmosphere to each set of incidents. The cast defaults to white but includes several people of color with active roles.
Not much forward momentum but a tasty array of chills, thrills, and chortles. (Horror/Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-3214-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In a hellish country ruled by megalomaniac Keran Berj, Grace has been raised by the People, a freedom-fighting sect dedicated to the overthrow of Keran Berj, to be an Angel. Like the rest of the girls in Angel House, Grace trained for the sacred day when she would strap on a bomb in front of a political target and blow herself up. But Grace has never truly felt like a child of the People, and when the moment of truth comes, she chooses not to die—though she still sets off her bomb in the village square. Now she's on the run from her own people and from Keran Berj's. This brief, atmospheric novella follows Grace's train journey to the border of Keran Berj's country. Accompanied by the strange boy Kerr, Grace contemplates her own past, that of her homeland and the choices that led her to this moment. Moody and compelling, without the easy moralizing so common in dystopian settings. (Science fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-525-42206-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2010
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
