Implausible, poorly written trash that, most damningly, bores.
A slapdash continuation of the story of a high school in quarantine that started in The Loners (2012).
The infected, gun-wielding kids who broke into McKinley High keep the door open long enough for most of the Loners clique to escape before outside adults re-seal it, restarting the familiar plot. Now Lucy and Will struggle at the bottom of the social heat, and a group of parents has taken over responsibility for the school, food drops and “graduation.” Besides the disbanding of the Loners, the other clique shake-up is Varsity’s ouster of dictatorial Sam. Vulnerable Will stumbles into a party thrown by the heretofore-ignored newly trapped kids, nicknamed Saints after their school mascot, and joins. Soon Will and the Saints’ unbalanced leader control the parents through extortion and throw wild parties featuring entrances on motorcycles and the riding of a live, wild hog (a transparent, clumsy link to Lord of the Flies); despite the flash, it’s a slow-paced, tensionless storyline. Meanwhile, Lucy joins the Sluts, who welcome her with sexual bullying during “Naked Week,” a hazing ritual introduced through writing on par with bad porn. This book never lets plausibility get in the way of objectification—one character plans a grandiose gentlemen’s club in the war-torn high school, and female sexuality is constantly bartered. Near the end, Thomas (Lex Hrabe and Thomas Voorhies’ collective pen name) finally remembers the first novel’s only successful element: Gore.
Implausible, poorly written trash that, most damningly, bores. (Science fiction. 16-18)Pub Date: July 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-60684-336-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Egmont USA
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
Revisiting characters from The Cook’s Family (1998), Yep again explores personal and cultural conflicts arising between the generations in a Chinese-American family. Suddenly saddled with caring for four younger siblings after a wealthy businessman hires her widowed mother as a governess—or amah—for his daughter, Stephanie, Amy Chin is forced to miss several ballet rehearsals for Cinderella, to listen to glowing accounts of Stephanie’s sophistication, and to accept expensive clothing and other gifts from her. While gaining new insight into how Cinderella’s stepsisters must have felt, Amy’s understandable resentment is compounded by the news that Stephanie will be moving in while her father is away on a trip. Yep builds that feeling to fever pitch, then dispels it by casting Stephanie as a lonely child hurt by one parent’s death and the other’s neglect; becoming friends, Stephanie and Amy clear the air and mend some fences with their well-meaning parents in a climactic face-off. The characters, most of them familiar from previous appearances, are distinct if not particularly complex, the San Francisco setting is vividly drawn, and the issues are laid out in plain terms and tidily resolved. It’s formulaic, but not entirely superficial. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-399-23040-8
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A year in the life of a Baltimore boy provides the basis for a formidable portrait of urban American life. Eleven-year-old Sam Webber, usually known as Little Sam, abruptly becomes just plain Samuel when his father disappears without a trace. Hoping he was kidnaped (abandonment is the far more devastating, though likely, explanation), Sam is traumatized further by the move his mother’s forced to make from their pristine middle-class neighborhood to a rough area of town. A closet in their new home becomes the TV room, and Sam watches rain pour in through a leaky kitchen window. Completing the transformation of Sam’s old life to new is his attendance at an unfamiliar school full of bullies, pregnant teens, and, miraculously, Greely. A black janitor at the school, Greely notices Sam’s distress—the constant hyperventilation, the nausea, his obvious fears—and befriends the boy in a way that alters him profoundly. Greely tells Sam about the civil rights movement, tosses a football with him, takes him to the Little Tavern for burgers—in short, becomes a surrogate father. Others slowly fill the shoes Sam’s father left empty: His mother’s new boyfriend Howard, sharing comic books and companionship; and Junie and Ditch, his mother’s employers at the flower shop. In Sam’s second Baltimore, a skinned, gritty version of what he once knew, he comes into his own, no longer afraid of dirty streets or gangs of kids and slowly accepting the loss of his father as he learns to depend more on himself. Although his father never returns, others love and nurture Little Sam, leading to the emergence of a Sam who is less troubled. A warming exploration of fairly routine material, made attractive by newcomer Fuqua’s depiction of city life. (Author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-890862-02-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Bancroft Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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