FUTURE IMPERFECT

A slick, fast-paced thriller with a comic-book aesthetic. D-student Ade Patience begins to see the future when he gets a head injury. Chasing “the Buzz”—his name for the high the visions give him—Ade insults tough guys, stages car accidents and jumps off buildings, leaving his companions (usually female) to clean him up, tend to his wounds and take him safely home. The story opens on a day Ade has foreseen and anticipated: The day She, the future love of his life, appears in the school cafeteria and sings to him. She is Vauxhall: bold, perfect and, as per the visions, destined for Ade. But fast-talking liar Jimi Ministry wants Vauxhall for himself. To his great distress, Ade keeps seeing visions of himself killing Jimi, and his visions always come true. The pace is cinematic, with short chapters, short sentences, snappy banter and Ade's cool, careening narration. Female characters play a decidedly subordinate role: Ade's lesbian best friend Paige dutifully tends to him after concussions; his Jesus-freak mother adoringly writes down the details of his visions in her Revelation Book and Vauxhall takes his orders throughout the action leading to Ade and Jimi's final, climactic meeting. For fans of action movies and anti-hero comics who don't mind two-dimensional women. (Science fiction. 14 & up)