Ambitious but a failure both as a whole and in its parts.
Teens square off against sinister immortals in an overstuffed muddle presented, Hugo Cabret–style, through an alternating mix of prose and wordless visuals.
White’s prose, created in collaboration with Di Bartolo, puts generic elements and character types together for a slow-moving tale featuring a set of bored undying. They have gathered in a small Maine town in 1900 to move the caged demon that keeps them alive to a new hidden location, in the process menacing a clutch of teenage residents. The creators offer no historical background or specific agenda for the bad guys, aside from just continuing to live. They are pursued across the decades by Arthur, dedicated to their destruction. Di Bartolo’s wordless graphic panels chronicle that quest, which takes Arthur over continents and through the 20th century into the 21st. Readers are likely to find themselves more confused than enthralled. The graphic panels are interspersed in short, episodic sections from the very beginning so that readers will have no idea how they are connected to the text until links are supplied many pages later. Moreover, the art is drawn and colored in a loose, blurry way that makes recurring figures hard to recognize (Arthur has a facial scar, but that’s no help since he doesn’t acquire it until late in the prose story), and many discrete incidents are often so compressed that the graphic portion frequently feels more like a sketchy storyboard than a story.
Ambitious but a failure both as a whole and in its parts. (Graphic/fantasy hybrid. 12-14)Pub Date: April 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-56144-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
In Nina's world, children have GPS trackers until they turn 18, and surveillance satellites monitor for subversive talk. Tight control stands between young women and a threatening sexuality; at 16, teenage girls get tattooed with their age and become fair game. Fifteen-year-old Nina, unlike her friends, dreads becoming “sex-teen.” Her life is too confusing without extra complications: Her mother's just died, and Nina's half sister Dee might be legally claimed by her father to be a servant—or worse. How does the cute boy who might be a member of the resistance fit into Nina's life? And had Nina's mother been part of the resistance herself? Nina doesn't want to get involved, but she needs to protect Dee. A large suspension of disbelief is required for the dysfunctional gender politics. (How did the situation get so broken? How do teenage boys and girls manage to be friends when they're only weeks or months away from effectively legal rape?) Otherwise, a fun little thriller for the abstinence romantics. (Science fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-14-241771-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Speak/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2010
Those obsessed with paranormals won't dislike anything here, but everyone else should give it a miss
Boy meets Girl. Boy turns out to have a deep—nay, otherworldly—connection to Girl despite being the loneliest member of a family of immortal, sexy, good-hearted monsters.
Newly-orphaned Brooklynite Kate Mercier is now living in Paris with her grandparents and sister. She's grateful for anything that breaks the constant tyranny of her depression, even the weird obsession she's developing with Vincent, a hot Parisian she's seen in her favorite café. Vincent is equally obsessed with Kate, but after a few dates his secret is revealed: Vincent is a revenant, driven by some mystical force to give his life to save others again and again, constantly reborn as an 18 year old with rippling "rock-hard abdominal muscles." Along with his revenant family (one father figure, several extremely sexy pseudo-brothers and a teenage girl to be Kate's friend), he rescues at-risk Parisians while fighting off the revenant's evil counterparts among the undead. Kate and Vincent are, of course, drawn to each other, miserable with despair when apart. When they are together, it takes all Vincent's willpower not to molest his beloved; readers of Twilight and its ilk know the drill. But wait! Evil is afoot, and perhaps it will spice up their love life!
Those obsessed with paranormals won't dislike anything here, but everyone else should give it a miss . (Paranormal romance. 12-14)Pub Date: May 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-200401-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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