For fans who want complete closure or angsty manly friendships
The base of any good love triangle is the epic bromance between rivals.
Meghan Chase's quest ended after her three requisite volumes drew to a close in The Iron Queen (2011), but her suitors were left behind. Meghan's iron kingdom is poisonous to fey such as her beloved Ash and best friend Puck, so the boys wander the Nevernever in search of magic to turn Ash human. As they taunt witches, fight Thornguards and travel the River of Dreams, Ash remembers the friendship he once shared with his rival. Before the death of their shared first love, Ariella, Ash and Puck were the best of friends. Is it a blessing or a curse that Ariella seems not to be so dead after all? She's the seer who'll lead the questers to the Testing Grounds, where Ash (too coldly competent to be fully likable) will be proven worthy of Meghan. This series ender suffers from an awkward blend of high-falutin' and prosaic: Our hero, full name Ashallayn'darkmyr Tallyn, complains when Puck "struck me upside the head." Tension between Ash and Puck drives this Boys' Own adventure. "If Puck was dead," Ash muses, "my world would become as cold and lifeless as the darkest night in the Winter Court."
For fans who want complete closure or angsty manly friendships . (Fantasy romance. 12-15)Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-373-21036-7
Page Count: 399
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
A dreamlike tale of bullying and coping that owes slightly too much to nostalgia to work
Does this failed prequel to the Phoenix Award–winning Weetzie Bat (1989) at least succeed as a standalone novel?
It's 1975, and 13-year-old Louise Bat is mourning the death of her parents' marriage. In a first-person voice that breaks any possibility of the magical realism that made the original Dangerous Angels series so powerful, Weetzie explores the scariness of her apartment complex. At school, she forms an outcasts club with anorexic Lily and (requisite for Block) gay best friend Bobby, having friends can protect her only so much from bathroom graffiti and gum in her hair. Worse, the mean girls of junior high have nothing on the scary witchlike inhabitants of unit 13: purple-eyed Hypatia Wiggins and her nasty, Jayne Mansfield–loving daughter Annabelle (any possible connection to Weetzie Bat's purple-eyed, Jayne Mansfield–wannabe witch, Vixanne Wigg, is left undeveloped). But perhaps Weetzie has a guardian angel at both home and school: Winter, Annabelle's brother. Is it Winter who's leaving her the notes that show her L.A. at its most sparkly, mysterious and flavorful? Inexplicably, Weetzie's story concludes by cutting off any possibility of magic in this realism.
A dreamlike tale of bullying and coping that owes slightly too much to nostalgia to work . (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-156598-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Despite the simplistic and incongruous-feeling telepathic-enslaver theme, readers will return for the next installment in...
Although it packs in more genres than comfortably fit, this series opener and debut offers a high coolness factor by rewriting Cinderella as a kickass mechanic in a plague-ridden future.
Long after World War IV, with a plague called letumosis ravaging all six Earthen countries, teenage Cinder spends her days in New Beijing doing mechanical repairs to earn money for her selfish adoptive mother. Her two sisters will attend Prince Kai’s ball wearing elegant gowns; Cinder, hated because she’s a cyborg, won’t be going. But then the heart-thumpingly cute prince approaches Cinder’s business booth as a customer, starting a chain of events that links her inextricably with the prince and with a palace doctor who’s researching letumosis vaccines. This doctor drafts cyborgs as expendable test subjects; none survive. Cinder’s personal tenacity and skill, as well as Meyer’s deft application of "Cinderella" nuggets—Cinder’s ill-fitting prosthetic foot (loseable on palace steps); a rusting, obsolete car colored pumpkin-orange—are riveting. Diluting them is a space-fantasy theme about mind-controlling Lunars from the moon, which unfortunately becomes the central plot. A connection between Cinder’s forgotten childhood and wicked Lunar Queen Levana is predictable from early on.
Despite the simplistic and incongruous-feeling telepathic-enslaver theme, readers will return for the next installment in this sharp, futuristic "Cinderella" tale. (Science fiction/fairy tale. 12-15)Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-64189-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011
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