A wily, tender bit of Christian-oriented fantasy that’s also likely to entertain the skeptical.
In Syben’s debut YA novel, a teenage girl learns life’s lessons—in the afterlife.
Sixteen-year-old Chelsea Elizabeth Whitmore is killed in a boating accident while on a first date and returns to consciousness to find herself an angel at her own funeral. She also discerns the presence of Lydia, her late great-grandmother, who’s been sent to lead her to heaven and fill her in on the details of her new existence. Chelsea discovers that she’s to be part of an angelic combat squad, under Lydia’s guidance, charged with aiding living people and landing blows against Satan’s minions. As if to prove that the divine has a sense of humor, Chelsea’s first assignment is to look after her own bully, Sidney Sappington, and two of her bratty friends. The girls’ lavish late-night antics lead to a confrontation with a stalker; thanks in part to Chelsea’s and Lydia’s monitoring, though, the perpetrator is caught. Their next job flings them onto the 19th-century frontier to first protect a woman named Abigail and then her daughter, Maggie, as each braves demons, wildlife, and conniving fellow travelers. After that, Chelsea and Lydia visit the remains of Baltimore in 2902 to reunite Chase, a downtrodden divorcé of modest means, with his son, Fred, despite Chase’s ex-wife’s attempts to separate them. Chelsea’s successes merit an encounter with the Creator himself—and result in a revelation that weaves the previous chaotic episodes together. This spunky novel is full of verve and inventive scenarios, and its underlying moral insights never seem contrived or didactic; all the knowledge that Chelsea gains she earns through her own experiences and choices. Syben’s ambitious blending of sci-fi/fantasy motifs—such as time travel and Dantesque forces of spiritual good and evil—pays off in an easygoing, well-timed story that’s unhindered by its own complexity. Aside from this scenery, the novel’s themes are simple but not pat; the question of what makes for a good life looms large—even if the protagonist isn’t technically living.
Pub Date: March 28, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 408
Publisher: Stone Tablet Books
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.
In this YA graphic novel, an alienated Métis girl learns about her people’s Canadian history.
Métis teenager Echo Desjardins finds herself living in a home away from her mother, attending a new school, and feeling completely lonely as a result. She daydreams in class and wanders the halls listening to a playlist of her mother’s old CDs. At home, she shuts herself up in her room. But when her history teacher begins to lecture about the Pemmican Wars of early 1800s Saskatchewan, Echo finds herself swept back to that time. She sees the Métis people following the bison with their mobile hunting camp, turning the animals’ meat into pemmican, which they sell to the Northwest Company in order to buy supplies for the winter. Echo meets a young girl named Marie, who introduces Echo to the rhythms of Métis life. She finally understands what her Métis heritage actually means. But the joys are short-lived, as conflicts between the Métis and their rivals in the Hudson Bay Company come to a bloody head. The tragic history of her people will help explain the difficulties of the Métis in Echo’s own time, including those of her mother and the teen herself. Accompanied by dazzling art by Henderson (A Blanket of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) and colorist Yaciuk (Fire Starters, 2016, etc.), this tale is a brilliant bit of time travel. Readers are swept back to 19th-century Saskatchewan as fully as Echo herself. Vermette’s (The Break, 2017, etc.) dialogue is sparse, offering a mostly visual, deeply contemplative juxtaposition of the present and the past. Echo’s eventual encounter with her mother (whose fate has been kept from readers up to that point) offers a powerful moment of connection that is both unexpected and affecting. “Are you…proud to be Métis?” Echo asks her, forcing her mother to admit, sheepishly: “I don’t really know much about it.” With this series opener, the author provides a bit more insight into what that means.
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.Pub Date: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55379-678-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HighWater Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Aspiring filmmaker/first-novelist Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angst—the right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists, though some might object to the sexuality, drinking, and dope-smoking. More sophisticated readers might object to the rip-off of Salinger, though Chbosky pays homage by having his protagonist read Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden, Charlie oozes sincerity, rails against celebrity phoniness, and feels an extraliterary bond with his favorite writers (Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, etc.). But Charlie’s no rich kid: the third child in a middle-class family, he attends public school in western Pennsylvania, has an older brother who plays football at Penn State, and an older sister who worries about boys a lot. An epistolary novel addressed to an anonymous “friend,” Charlie’s letters cover his first year in high school, a time haunted by the recent suicide of his best friend. Always quick to shed tears, Charlie also feels guilty about the death of his Aunt Helen, a troubled woman who lived with Charlie’s family at the time of her fatal car wreck. Though he begins as a friendless observer, Charlie is soon pals with seniors Patrick and Sam (for Samantha), stepsiblings who include Charlie in their circle, where he smokes pot for the first time, drops acid, and falls madly in love with the inaccessible Sam. His first relationship ends miserably because Charlie remains compulsively honest, though he proves a loyal friend (to Patrick when he’s gay-bashed) and brother (when his sister needs an abortion). Depressed when all his friends prepare for college, Charlie has a catatonic breakdown, which resolves itself neatly and reveals a long-repressed truth about Aunt Helen. A plain-written narrative suggesting that passivity, and thinking too much, lead to confusion and anxiety. Perhaps the folks at (co-publisher) MTV see the synergy here with Daria or any number of videos by the sensitive singer-songwriters they feature.
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-02734-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: MTV Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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