Timely subject matter and an adequate romance, but nothing super.
Geeky girl with absent father and quirky hobby meets unsuitable boy, then realizes Mr. Right has been under her nose all along.
Blaze's self-centered father, a caricature, left the family to become an actor, leaving her with only her name (from Ghost Rider's Johnny Blaze) and a love for classic Marvel Comics. Now, Blaze spends her time ferrying her 13-year-old brother Josh and his farting, breast-ogling, gay-joke–making friends to and from soccer practice. She has a crush on Mark, Josh's soccer coach, but their relationship fails to progress until Blaze's friend snaps a picture of Blaze trying on lingerie and sends it to Mark's phone. After a confusing and pressure-filled sexual encounter and Mark's subsequent brushoff, Mark posts the half-naked photo on clunkily named Facebook stand-in FriendsPlace, and it goes viral. The resultant bullying is harsh but believable, and it's satisfying to see Blaze channeling her hurt and anger into making comics and redecorating her Superturd of a minivan. Less impressive, however, are some of Blaze's asides to the reader (“Stuart is one of only three black students in our school....I feel somewhat hip and urban having him here at my house”) and the frequent subtle digs at girls being high-maintenance, stalkers, actual sluts and brainwashing feminists.
Timely subject matter and an adequate romance, but nothing super. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4022-7348-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
A change of pace from the teeming swarms of fantasy and paranormal romance but too underpowered to achieve escape velocity.
A low-wattage collection of original stories and poems, as unmemorable as it is unappealingly titled.
The collection was inspired by a perceived paucity of short science fiction for teen readers, and its production costs were covered by a Kickstarter campaign. The editors gather a dozen poems and 21 stories from a stable of contributors who, after headliners Jack McDevitt and Nancy Holder, will be largely unknown even to widely read fans of the genre. The tales place their characters aboard spacecraft or space stations, on other worlds or in future dystopias, but only rarely do the writers capture a credibly adolescent voice or sensibility. Standouts in this department are the Heinlein-esque “The Stars Beneath Our Feet,” by Stephen D. Covey & Sandra McDonald, about a first date/joyride in space gone wrong, and Camille Alexa’s portrait of a teen traumatized by a cyberspace assault (“Over It”). Along with a few attempts to craft futuristic slang, only Lavie Tidhar’s fragmentary tale of Tel Aviv invaded by successive waves of aliens, doppelgangers, zombies and carnivorous plants (“The Myriad Dangers”) effectively lightens the overall earnest tone. Aside from fictional aliens and modified humans, occasional references to dark skin (“Out of the Silent Sea,” Dale Lucas) are the only signs of ethnic diversity. Most of the free-verse poetry makes only oblique, at best, references to science-fictional themes.
A change of pace from the teeming swarms of fantasy and paranormal romance but too underpowered to achieve escape velocity. (author bios) (Science fiction/short stories. 12-14)Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9847824-0-8
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Underwords
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
Fishing, fighting and girls make this a real guy’s-guy story in which a fairly solid plot is marred by overwriting,...
A coming-of-age story set on an Alaskan fishing boat.
The title is a wordplay on “fast” as “quick” and the nautical use of “fast,” meaning to make secure—and a clever plot summation. Sixteen-year-old Augustus has fast hands. They can play percussion, and they can damage. Their ability to damage has given him a choice: go to juvenile detention or crew on his uncle’s commercial halibut-fishing boat in Alaska. Gus chooses the sea, ignorant of the fishing boat’s 19-hour workday. Eventually he acclimates and becomes proud of doing a man’s work. He also learns more about his scattered family and does some rethinking about a friend he betrayed back home. Gus’ narration is often inconsistent in both tone and storyline and relies heavily on telling rather than showing. The commercial fishing jargon will confuse any readers not completely familiar with that trade. Female characters are simply stereotypes. Gus’ mother cries. The restaurant owner is motherly, and the love interest is a lap-dancer (briefly) who wants to be a singer, knows self-defense and has no problem shedding her clothes for a hot-springs soak with the guys—an adolescent male fantasy if there ever was one.
Fishing, fighting and girls make this a real guy’s-guy story in which a fairly solid plot is marred by overwriting, confusing jargon and one-dimensional female characters. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: May 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-935347-31-6
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Epicenter Press
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
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