Lyn is the daughter of seven neo-gladiators, the men her mother married, one after another, until each died in the arena for the pleasure of the national TV audience. Lyn’s world, so like ours in most ways, features mortal combats by top athletes and the occasional death-row inmate. Lyn’s entire life is governed both by the bylaws of the Gladiator Wives Association and the punishing contracts with Caesar’s, the company that owns the sport. When her seventh father dies, the mustache-twirlingly evil company tries to force Lyn into a widely televised marriage with the gladiator who killed him. Only the marriage can protect her emotionally unstable mother and cognitively disabled baby brother. Lyn rings true, not least in the conflict between pacifism and her bone-deep allegiance to gladiator culture. The world building, however, carries less resonance. Detailed histories draw attention to logical lapses, such as Caesar’s immense, inexplicable legal power. Despite obvious comparisons, this is a far less sympathetic (or believable) world than that of The Hunger Games and Catching Fire (2008, 2009). Entertainingly gruesome and emotionally resonant—but ultimately contrived. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-59990-372-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
Miah’s melodramatic death overshadows a tale as rich in social and personal insight as any of Woodson’s previous books.
In a meditative interracial love story with a wrenching climactic twist, Woodson (The House You Pass on the Way, 1997, etc.) offers an appealing pair of teenagers and plenty of intellectual grist, before ending her story with a senseless act of violence.
Jeremiah and Elisha bond from the moment they collide in the hall of their Manhattan prep school: He’s the only child of celebrity parents; she’s the youngest by ten years in a large family. Not only sharply sensitive to the reactions of those around them, Ellie and Miah also discover depths and complexities in their own intense feelings that connect clearly to their experiences, their social environment, and their own characters. In quiet conversations and encounters, Woodson perceptively explores varieties of love, trust, and friendship, as she develops well-articulated histories for both families. Suddenly Miah, forgetting his father’s warning never to be seen running in a white neighborhood, exuberantly dashes into a park and is shot down by police. The parting thought that, willy-nilly, time moves on will be a colder comfort for stunned readers than it evidently is for Ellie.
Miah’s melodramatic death overshadows a tale as rich in social and personal insight as any of Woodson’s previous books. (Fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-23112-9
Page Count: 181
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998
The best day of Michael Mackenzie's life becomes the worst when the bullet he exuberantly fires into the air during his 17th birthday party comes down a mile away and kills a man. When he hears the story on the radio, the news hits him like a lightning bolt. Numbly following the advice of his best friend, Joe, he buries the rifle and tries, without much success, to get on with life. So does the victim's 15-year-old daughter, Jenna, who had been present when the bullet struck. Switching between Michael's point-of-view and Jenna's, McDonald (Comfort Creek, 1996) sends the two teenagers dancing slowly toward each other, using mutual acquaintances, chance meetings at parties and the community pool, and glimpses at a distance. Both go through parallel phases of denial, both are tortured by remorse, exhibit behavior changes, and experience strange dreams; both eventually find ways to ease their grief and guilt. When the police close in, Joe takes the blame, giving Michael the nerve to confess. In the final chapter, McDonald shifts to present tense and brings Michael and Jenna to a cathartic meeting under a huge sycamore said in local Lenape legend to be a place of healing—an elaborate and, considering the suburban setting and familiar contemporary characters, awkward graft in this deliberately paced but deeply felt drama. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-385-32309-3
Page Count: 245
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1997
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