A quirky, meticulously plotted adventure.
In Forest’s (The Poisoned City, 2016) futuristic middle-grade novel, children with robotic avatars work to stop a power-hungry hacker.
In the 22nd century, humanity has colonized several planets and moons of the solar system. People sleep in pods on Earth while remotely controlling robotic bodies that can look like anyone or anything. The calculations-obsessed Kade Walker, who’s “12.9 years old,” is the official social companion of Princess Tamika Bell of Venus, and they both have their own avatars. The 14-year-old princess’s family has a tarnished reputation because her mother, Azra, is considered a traitor throughout the colonies. Ten years ago, Azra “handed over a high-level clearance code” to the power-hungry Dolores Fremont, who tried to take over human civilization. Kade wants to rehabilitate Tamika’s image, so he hacks into the colonies’ teleportation system; he and Tamika secretly visit Neptune’s moon Triton, where they meet Prince Brend and his royal companion, Naida Snow. Brend throws a party that becomes dangerous when a dragon misbehaves. Then Kade and Tamika learn that Brend, who’s asleep on Earth, isn’t actually controlling his own bot. It turns out that Dolores is free from her stasis imprisonment and making another play for the colonies. In this sci-fi romp, Forest offers a classic dynamic—precocious youngsters outsmarting wicked adults—and intriguing worldbuilding details. Her planet-hopping avatars, as in video games, needn’t be strictly human, so she gives Kade’s claws, wings, and horns, like a gargoyle, while Naida’s is reminiscent of a mermaid. Even stranger, the author establishes that the kids don't have a notion of what death is; Kade “wondered what happened if someone got a very large cut and spilled blood faster than their body could re-make it. Would the person just deflate like a balloon?” It’s an aspect of the kids’ utopian society that Forest doesn’t fully explore. Later, Dolores reveals a dark truth about nonhuman avatars that may fly over the heads of younger audiences, who will enjoy the story’s more saccharine elements; by the end, Kade is no longer Tamika’s “social companion,” but her true friend. Debut artist Rose provides excellent, manga-style black-and-white illustrations.
A quirky, meticulously plotted adventure.Pub Date: June 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73372-740-2
Page Count: 162
Publisher: Forest Avenue
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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