The sort of teen horror-fantasy that would play well for high school heshers drawing horror comics in study hall.
Mayhem reigns as a dying boy and an outcast girl are boosted to the level of miraculous superhumans and thrust into violent battle against monstrous forces (or each other).
Though the title is lifted from a contemporary pop-song anthem and the protagonists are both teenagers, author Kennedy’s action-fantasy has R-level violence, erotica, and horror, despite intermittent YA settings and concerns. Terminally ill with scleroderma, the fatherless, brilliant Pax James Black was not expected to live past 10. Now, at 15, he languishes at Columbia University Medical Center, attended by his only real friend, lonely high school outcast Scarlett. But his near-death experiences have given Pax an ability to leave his ruined body and visit the “astral plane,” where the human prodigy cultivated relationships with cosmic spirit-beings, like Terkun’shuks’pai, or “Terry.” Normally, such occult entities hide their existence from trouble-prone Earth folk. When Terry confers a new “astral” body on a dying Pax—and the effects bleed onto Scarlett—the reason for this secrecy becomes clear. The newly superpowered couple, their every uncontrolled impulse a godlike, destructive force, spreads chaos and carnage throughout NYC and beyond (they also have meltingly hot sex, losing their virginity to each other in their new superforms). Moreover, the youths draw out of the shadows an assortment of malicious “negative energy” thingies, some native to Earth, others a threat to the entire universe (whew). Replete with action, sea monsters, murders/resurrections, government spooks, bad robots, classroom mean girls getting what they deserve Lovecraft-style, a rewrite of the Garden of Eden, and interdimensional alien space-invasion, Kennedy’s roller-coaster narrative is overstuffed with the stuff that certain extreme-genre fans (probably hard-core gamers on the side) enjoy being overstuffed with. Sequels are promised.
The sort of teen horror-fantasy that would play well for high school heshers drawing horror comics in study hall.Pub Date: June 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-46011-5
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Dark Trope
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dramatic skill and rich historical details make for a successful YA book, especially for readers with a particular interest...
Based on the reminiscences of Varble’s late husband, this young-adult novella describes a 6-year-old boy’s adventures in Simi Valley in the summer of 1934.
Recounting the adventures of Johnny, son of a tenant farmer during the Great Depression, the novella is as much a portrait of Simi Valley between the world wars as it is a portrayal of a boy’s awakening to an adult world. Rich in vivid historical detail—e.g., Johnny is born on March 11, 1928, the day before Francis Mullholland’s Saint Francis Dam fails, drowning hundreds in what remains one of the state’s greatest losses of life—the novella is also a deft sketch of a rural American life that has largely disappeared. Executed with a historian’s eye, Varble draws on research and recollection to vividly evoke Johnny’s family and valley life, including a cavalcade of colorful local figures, from the voluptuous Aunt Belle, to an Okie family fleeing the “black blizzards” of the Dust Bowl (storms which tripled in frequency from 14 in 1932 to 52 in 1934), to Andy, Johnny’s father’s friend who returns from San Quentin after serving time for the murder of his wife. While the characterizations can be overly simple, the details of time and place are often riveting: the harvesting of barley, the lighting of a wood stove, California “car culture” before licenses were commonplace, the hunting of a mountain lion. In prose as simple as a Hemingway story, the novella offers young readers a glimpse of an almost unimaginably unplugged world. Brief chapters keep the book fleet-footed even as they credibly reveal crucial steps to maturity—from curiosity to desire, from loss to altruism. The reader’s awareness of fascism’s rise in Europe—and Johnny’s likely future as a soldier—lends gravity to a tale that might otherwise seem a nostalgic look back at simpler times.
Dramatic skill and rich historical details make for a successful YA book, especially for readers with a particular interest in California.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2012
ISBN: 978-1477276976
Page Count: 130
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The lone-wolf-finds-love YA formula, tweaked and reshaped with a poet’s sensibilities.
A dark and complex young-adult fantasy of love, longing and war.
Roberts’ remarkably accomplished, involving (if lamentably titled) YA novel centers on Fang—a nightmare embodied in the form of a large, ferocious black dog with the thoughts, feelings and soul of a classic teen-novel bad-boy hero. Fang inhabits the Dark—a shifting, kaleidoscopic landscape inhabited by other nightmares, demons and brawling angels—where his “Muse” sits all day sad and silent in her ramshackle house, indifferent to Fang’s feelings for her. Fang’s existence as a stalker of other people’s dreams is being challenged from multiple directions (and by multiple females)—his indifferent Muse, the dreaming mortal girl Anna, and even Lily, a demon with hair like “blood” and a surprisingly romantic heart (“I’d trade a house full of regular flowers for just one,” Lily tells our hero, “if it was picked because it was perfect for me”). Complicating matters at the outset is Fang’s friend Jeffery, who concocts a scheme to radically extend the reach and power of the Dark—a plan that eventually upsets the delicate balance of power in the supernatural realm and sparks a war. Scene-stealer Baal heads the team of bad angels. He contemptuously tells one of the good guys, “Not all of us spend every night praying we could lick our Father’s boots again.” Roberts charges virtually every scene with tension and some refreshingly unsentimental dialogue, and the underpinning worldbuilding is complex and convincing. Through adroit pacing, distinctive characters (especially Fang himself, who’s the perfect balance of tough and tender) and some quite lovely prose, he crafts a story of surprising emotional punch.
The lone-wolf-finds-love YA formula, tweaked and reshaped with a poet’s sensibilities.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2013
ISBN: 9781620070802
Page Count: 277
Publisher: Curiosity Quills Press
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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