A group of teens are marooned on a creepy deserted island in Lutz’s heart-pounding debut.
Diving is in 17-year-old Tasia “Sia” Gianopoulos’ blood. Sia’s Yiayia (grandmother) spent much of her youth free diving in the waters off Kalymnos, Greece, and now Sia helps her mother lead diving trips in the Florida Keys. She has a bad feeling about diving the wreck of the USS Andrews, but since her father’s incarceration for murder they desperately need the money. Sure enough, a client dies, and when a nearby charter, chock full of science students, arrives to help, they’re attacked by a giant tentacled creature. Soon after, Sia wakes on an island that shouldn’t exist along with her 7-year-old brother, Felix; her crush, Ben, whom she met right before the attack; and his ex-girlfriend, Steph. Simple survival is hard enough without the creature that attacked them lurking right offshore, and a series of disturbing events leads to the island’s mysterious heart and a shocking revelation. Lutz strikes the perfect balance of realistic and uncanny, and Sia’s dive sequences, in particular, are seriously spooky. While this type of thing has been done before, Lutz does it so darn well that readers won’t mind, and the choice to tell the story via Sia’s letters to her father adds poignance. Sia’s family is Greek American, Ben is cued as black, and Steph is white.
An escapist thriller that will reel readers right in. (Science fiction thriller. 13-18)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-310-77010-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Blink
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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A slightly abridged graphic version of the classic that will drive off all but the artist’s most inveterate fans.
Admirers of the original should be warned away by veteran horror artist Bernie Wrightson’s introductory comments about Grimly’s “wonderfully sly stylization” and the “twinkle” in his artistic eye. Most general readers will founder on the ensuing floods of tiny faux handwritten script that fill the opening 10 pages of stage-setting correspondence (other lengthy letters throughout are presented in similarly hard-to-read typefaces). The few who reach Victor Frankenstein’s narrative will find it—lightly pruned and, in places, translated into sequences of largely wordless panels—in blocks of varied length interspersed amid sheaves of cramped illustrations with, overall, a sickly, greenish-yellow cast. The latter feature spidery, often skeletal figures that barrel over rough landscapes in rococo, steampunk-style vehicles when not assuming melodramatic poses. Though the rarely seen monster is a properly hard-to-resolve jumble of massive rage and lank hair, Dr. Frankenstein looks like a decayed Lyle Lovett with high cheekbones and an errant, outsized quiff. His doomed bride, Elizabeth, sports a white lock à la Elsa Lanchester, and decorative grotesqueries range from arrangements of bones and skull-faced flowers to bunnies and clownish caricatures.
Grimly plainly worked hard, but, as the title indicates, the result serves his own artistic vision more than Mary Shelley’s. (Graphic classic. 14 & up)Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-186297-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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This hefty sequel to Six of Crows (2015) brings high-tension conclusions to the many intertwined intrigues of Ketterdam.
It's time for revenge—has been ever since old-before-his-time crook Kaz and his friends were double-crossed by the merchant princes of Ketterdam, an early-industrial Amsterdam-like fantasy city filled to the brim with crime and corruption. Disabled, infuriated, and perpetually scheming Kaz, the light-skinned teen mastermind, coordinates the efforts to rescue Inej. Though Kaz is loath to admit weakness, Inej is his, for he can't bear any harm come to the knife-wielding, brown-skinned Suli acrobat. Their team is rounded out by Wylan, a light-skinned chemist and musician whose merchant father tried to have him murdered and who can't read due to a print disability; Wylan's brown-skinned biracial boyfriend, Jesper, a flirtatious gambler with ADHD; Nina, the pale brunette Grisha witch and recovering addict from Russia-like Ravka; Matthias, Nina's national enemy and great love, a big, white, blond drüskelle warrior from the cold northern lands; and Kuwei, the rescued Shu boy everyone wants to kidnap. Can these kids rescue everyone who needs rescuing in Ketterdam's vile political swamp? This is dark and violent—one notable scene features a parade of teens armed with revolvers, rifles, pistols, explosives, and flash bombs—but gut-wrenchingly genuine. Astonishingly, Bardugo keeps all these balls in the air over the 500-plus pages of narrative.
How can such a hefty tome be un-put-down-able excitement from beginning to end? (glossary) (Fantasy. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62779-213-4
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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