This final installment offers more than the usual complement of cliffhangers, daring escapes, and surprises; fans of this...
The young agent and codebreaking genius, recruited by the secret Spectrum organization, risks life and limb to uncover the traitor within its ranks.
With Spectrum agents sidelined while the traitor remains at large, Ruby’s forced to take survival-training classes. (Lessons in surviving an avalanche and avoiding hypothermia soon come in handy.) Is the traitor the same evildoer who terrifies even an archvillain like the Count? The answer may lie in Spectrum’s only other child spy, Bradley Baker. Ruby’s research takes her to Spectrum’s well-protected underwater vault on Meteor Island, where she learns that Baker, believed killed in a plane crash, may still be alive. Ruby’s familiar sidekicks return: loyal friend Clancy; housekeeper and TV bingo addict Mrs. Digby; Ruby’s clueless parents; and Hitch, posing as the family butler to keep an eye on Ruby. As clues pile up, new dangers loom; Ruby evades them with panache and nifty high-tech gadgetry, including a bicycle with a hyperspeed setting and a fur cape that doubles as a parachute. Readers can try a few codes that Ruby cracks (they’re explained in an afterword). Ruby’s world remains a largely white one; its decidedly retro atmosphere (a 1970s California that feels more like the ’50s) is reinforced by the narrative’s meandering pace, asides, and non sequiturs.
This final installment offers more than the usual complement of cliffhangers, daring escapes, and surprises; fans of this droll, quirky, and sui generis series won’t be disappointed. (note) (Mystery. 9-14)Pub Date: May 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5472-6
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Clever in small doses—tedious after the first few dozen entries.
A routine writing exercise filled with in-jokes and carried to ridiculous extremes by a mammoth stable of YA and children’s authors.
Produced to benefit the creative writing program 826NYC, the anthology consists of alibis of various length offered by 83 (!) alphabetically ordered contributors accused of killing evil editor Herman Q. Mildew. Along with making frequent reference to cheese (the stinky sort, natch), pickles and frozen legs of lamb, some “suspects” protest their inability to meet any deadline (Libba Bray) or map out a scheme (“Plotting has never been my strong point. Just read any of my books,” writes Sarah Darer Littman). Others protest that they adored the victim despite his habit of callously rejecting their story ideas, mistreating their manuscripts, insulting their pets, calling them at odd hours and bilking them of royalties. Dave Eggers and Greg Neri provide lists of explicitly described ways in which they did not kill Mildew, Mo Willems and Michael Northrup claim to have been off killing someone else at the time, and Elizabeth Eulberg, Mandy Hubbard, John Green, Lauren Myracle and several others shift the blame to fellow writers. Young readers, even the sort who worship authors, will find their eyes soon glazing over.
Clever in small doses—tedious after the first few dozen entries. (author bios) (Belles lettres. 10-12)Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61695-152-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Soho Teen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A ghoulish thriller: melodramatic and tongue-in-cheek, sometimes both at once.
Colfer opens a new series that promises to be every bit as brisk and violent as Artemis Fowl—this one featuring travelers using steampunk-style time machines for (usually) evil purposes.
Chevron Savano is a teenager of Shawnee descent trained as an FBI agent in an ill-fated anti-terrorist program (and named, as it turns out, for a gas station). She hooks up with Riley, a 19th—century lad trained in the killing arts by Victorian-era master assassin/stage magician Albert Garrick. Their purpose? Simply to stay alive, as a secret device that opens wormholes between past and present but sometimes causes weird mutations in those who use it has turned Garrick into a shape-changing supergenius. He now has modern memories and a new, horrifying agenda that requires the Timekey Chevie carries around her neck. The plot moves back and forth between modern times and 1898 London (or an alternate, as in his lurid descriptions of the city’s festering stews the author makes several seemingly offhand references to “slum cannibals”). The chase hurtles along through washes of gore and less wholesome substances to a massively explosive resolution. Riley and the “Injun princess,” as she is repeatedly dubbed, make reasonably resourceful protagonists, but the scary, casually murderous Garrick really steals the show.
A ghoulish thriller: melodramatic and tongue-in-cheek, sometimes both at once. (Science fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: May 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4231-6162-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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