by Laura Martin ; illustrated by Eric Deschamps ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 30, 2017
A decent finish featuring plenty of action and lots of dinos—the latter furnishing not only thrills, but both bacon and eggs...
Sky’s search for her long-missing father becomes a race against time following the discovery of a scheme to reclaim Earth’s surface from the resurgent dinosaurs—with nukes.
Rightly thinking that the environmental effects of a nuclear apocalypse would wipe out the last surviving remnants of humanity too, Sky leads a seemingly quixotic attempt to infect the tech of the plan’s brutal but charismatic architect, a political boss known as “the Noah,” with toxic software. But getting to his headquarters beneath shattered New York’s Grand Central Station requires making her way through multiple betrayals, shootings, subway tunnels, firefights, and explosions. And that’s not to mention the frequent, terrifying (if low on explicit gore) encounters with hosts of prehistoric creatures—from Dracorex hogwartsia and rhinolike pentaceratops to predatory carnotaurus, plesiosaurs, condorraptors, and troodons. Red-haired, white Sky needs rescuing a little too often this time around to come off quite as tough and resilient as in the opening episode, and like allies Shawn (the brilliant white hacker) and Todd (the hunky white survivalist), those around her are by and large typecast sorts.
A decent finish featuring plenty of action and lots of dinos—the latter furnishing not only thrills, but both bacon and eggs for a closing breakfast. (afterword) (Science fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-241625-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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by Gordon Korman ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 21, 2020
This weave of perceptive, well-told tales wears its agenda with unusual grace.
Two young people of different generations get profound lessons in the tragic, enduring legacy of war.
Raised on the thrilling yarns of his great-grandpa Jacob and obsessed with both World War II and first-person–shooter video games, Trevor is eager to join the 93-year-old vet when he is invited to revisit the French town his unit had helped to liberate. In alternating chapters, the overseas trip retraces the parallel journeys of two young people—Trevor, 12, and Jacob, in 1944, just five years older—with similarly idealized visions of what war is like as they travel both then and now from Fort Benning to Omaha Beach and then through Normandy. Jacob’s wartime experiences are an absorbing whirl of hard fighting, sudden death, and courageous acts spurred by necessity…but the modern trip turns suspenseful too, as mysterious stalkers leave unsettling tokens and a series of hostile online posts that hint that Jacob doesn’t have just German blood on his hands. Korman acknowledges the widely held view of World War II as a just war but makes his own sympathies plain by repeatedly pointing to the unavoidable price of conflict: “Wars may have winning sides, but everybody loses.” Readers anticipating a heavy-handed moral will appreciate that Trevor arrives at a refreshingly realistic appreciation of video games’ pleasures and limitations. As his dad puts it: “War makes a better video game….But if you’re looking for a way to live, I’ll take peace every time.”
This weave of perceptive, well-told tales wears its agenda with unusual grace. (Fiction/historical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: July 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-29020-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
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by Eoin Colfer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 5, 2019
Like its bestselling progenitors, a nonstop spinoff afroth with high tech, spectacular magic, and silly business.
With their big brother Artemis off to Mars, 11-year-old twins Myles and Beckett are swept up in a brangle with murderous humans and even more dangerous magical creatures.
Unsurprisingly, the fraternal Irish twins ultimately prove equal to the challenge—albeit with help from, Colfer as omniscient narrator admits early on, a “hugely improbable finale.” Following the coincidental arrival on their island estate of two denizens of the subterranean fairy realm in the persons of a tiny but fearsome troll and a “hybrid” pixie-elf, or “pixel,” police trainee, the youngest Fowls immediately find themselves in the sights of both Lord Teddy Bleedham-Drye, a ruthless aristocrat out to bag said troll for its immorality-conferring venom, and Sister Jeronima Gonzalez-Ramos de Zárate, black-ops “nunterrogation” and knife specialist for ACRONYM, an intergovernmental fairy-monitoring organization. Amid the ensuing whirl of captures, escapes, trickery, treachery, and gunfire (none of which proves fatal…or at least not permanently), the twins leverage their complementary differences to foil and exasperate both foes: Myles being an Artemis mini-me who has dressed in black suits since infancy and loves coming up with and then “Fowlsplaining” his genius-level schemes; and Beckett, ever eager to plunge into reckless action and nearly nonverbal in English but with an extraordinary gift for nonhuman tongues. In the end they emerge triumphant, though threatened with mind wipe if they ever interfere in fairy affairs again. Yeah, right. Human characters seem to be default white; “hybrid” is used to describe nonhuman characters of mixed heritage.
Like its bestselling progenitors, a nonstop spinoff afroth with high tech, spectacular magic, and silly business. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-368-04375-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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