Thoughtful and exciting, with wonderfully imagined characters.
A teenage girl with powerful abilities aids imprisoned gods and helps defend a village from evil scientists in this concluding installment of a trilogy.
Celeste Araia Nolan, about 14, is a survivor of The Event, a cataclysmic disaster that swallowed up her parents and led to many strange, fluxing transformations of people and animals. Everyone has copper skin; some creatures meld together, like Lou and Layla—a “spectacular fusion of peacock and horse.” In Books I and II, Celeste discovered she could fly, rescued a village of children, trapped two feuding gods, discovered the lair of insane scientists who caused The Event, and helped release Zoya, a giant octopus held captive by the scientists, from agony. “I’m more than just a girl. I’ve done things,” says Celeste. Now, with one member of her lost family restored, Celeste has a new mission: Release the gods from their prisons to restore the planet’s balance, bring two kidnapped children home, and defend her village from the villainous scientists, who are building an army of invasion. Meanwhile, Celeste is enjoying her mutual attraction with Nick, who stirs new feelings and makes her feel beautiful. With help from allies like Old Man Massive, a sentient mountain, Celeste discovers more about her powers and faces her greatest challenge yet—one that will change her forever. McHargue (Waterwight Flux, 2017, etc.) packs a lot into this fast-moving final volume. While backstory is well-integrated into the narrative, this isn’t a stand-alone novel. That said, in many ways this outing, with its clearly stated quest and thrilling showdown, is easier to follow than the first two. The trilogy’s side characters, often so bizarre due to the flux, are now more familiar and often possess a rare individual charm—such as Orville, an “emerald-winged man,” who has also been a French-speaking windup frog. Celeste’s young romance helps balance her superpowers; as she says, “I may not be just a girl, but I’m still a girl.” Among so many cookie-cutter YA fantasies, McHargue’s originality is a pleasure to encounter.
Thoughtful and exciting, with wonderfully imagined characters.Pub Date: March 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9969711-3-3
Page Count: 213
Publisher: Strack Press LLC
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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