A dystopian thrill ride with room for sequels.
A teenager with a dangerous secret is hotly pursued across wastelands devastated by eco-catastrophe in this Mad Max–style thriller.
Two hundred years from now, in a Texas that’s been reduced to a few fortified cities and farms surrounded by extreme storms and mutant wildlife, 17-year-old Juniper Conway hopes to escape a forced move back to the city where she was orphaned. She joins an outgoing convoy of venturesome commercial truckers. But as if the (un)natural hazards lying in wait along the route—ranging from sudden blizzards to gigantic tunneling terra cetus, or earth whales—aren’t bad enough, her murdered scientist parents left her with a key component to an addictive, strength-enhancing, widely abused nano drug they’d developed. Now, all sorts of bad actors are hot on her trail. Along with featuring reckless gangs of colorfully dressed whale hunters, metal spikes as fashion accessories, and high-tech body enhancements, Lewellen propels her dystopian tale on a bed of low-pressure romantic steam as Juniper, who reads white, is thrown into sustained contact with Dax Garza, the truckers’ hot Mexican lead driver, who has secrets of his own. Readers will certainly be on Juniper’s side from her initial escape until, in a memorably gross capper, she literally finds herself in the belly of the (cetacean) beast.
A dystopian thrill ride with room for sequels. (map) (Science fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9798886051063
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Enclave Escape
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
Sanderson (Legion, 2018, etc.) plainly had a ball with this nonstop, highflying opener, and readers will too.
Eager to prove herself, the daughter of a flier disgraced for cowardice hurls herself into fighter pilot training to join a losing war against aliens.
Plainly modeled as a cross between Katniss Everdeen and Conan the Barbarian (“I bathed in fires of destruction and reveled in the screams of the defeated. I didn’t get afraid”), Spensa “Spin” Nightshade leaves her previous occupation—spearing rats in the caverns of the colony planet Detritus for her widowed mother’s food stand—to wangle a coveted spot in the Defiant Defense Force’s flight school. Opportunities to exercise wild recklessness and growing skill begin at once, as the class is soon in the air, battling the mysterious Krell raiders who have driven people underground. Spensa, who is assumed white, interacts with reasonably diverse human classmates with varying ethnic markers. M-Bot, a damaged AI of unknown origin, develops into a comical sidekick: “Hello!...You have nearly died, and so I will say something to distract you from the serious, mind-numbing implications of your own mortality! I hate your shoes.” Meanwhile, hints that all is not as it seems, either with the official story about her father or the whole Krell war in general, lead to startling revelations and stakes-raising implications by the end. Stay tuned. Maps and illustrations not seen.
Sanderson (Legion, 2018, etc.) plainly had a ball with this nonstop, highflying opener, and readers will too. (Science fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-55577-0
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
SEEN & HEARD
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