Comic adventures and serious courage mix well in this middle-grade novel.
In this comedy/horror chapter book, a boy sleepwalks into another world where he must fight a demon.
The night before starting sixth grade, Brady is nervous and can’t sleep. What if other kids hate him, or ignore him, or give him a horrible nickname? “Oh no—they were going to call him Snotface. It was official,” he worries. Finally drifting off, Brady finds himself standing asleep before his mirror, which summons his spirit into another world. A sinister demon tells Brady that he can’t go home until he completes a quest: return the demon’s lost pet beast, Sheila, from the Dangerous Forest. Journeying and noting events in his diary, Brady meets elflike creatures called the Ground Folk, who were chased into the Forest by the demon. They address Brady as “The One.” The Great Elder proposes that Brady act as a Trojan horse and attack the demon with the aid of Sheila, and the Ground Folk will join in. But this plan goes awry, and the Folk, with Brady, retreat to Horizon City. When the demon attacks the city at the head of an army of Molts, similar to dwarves, a fierce battle ensues. With the help of the wise Lady of the City, Brady must test his bravery before returning home to his bed and sixth grade. Shah (Adult Coloring Book Horror Land: Devil’s Child, 2017, etc.) leaves behind his usual comedy gross-out theme for this equally entertaining fantasy adventure. Though the book leans on standard tropes (the portal, the quest, the prophesied savior), Shah doesn’t take them too seriously. Instead, the tropes serve as a framework for comedy, of which there’s plenty, and for Brady’s personal growth. This means not just becoming braver, but more empathetic. When Brady sees his friend Lym and other Ground Folk joining the fight against the demon, he realizes that “I couldn’t let her fight. As brave as she was, she wouldn’t survive.” With new determination, he confronts the demon head-on. Sixth grade will be peanuts.
Comic adventures and serious courage mix well in this middle-grade novel.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 83
Publisher: 99 Pages or Less Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Like a 12-episode TV series condensed into a single book—categorically engaging, but occasionally overstuffed.
Terrorists planning a New Year’s Eve attack against the U.S. are working with people on American soil in Turney’s debut thriller.
In the post-9/11 world, federal agents pay meticulous attention to seemingly harmless behavior. But what appears to be a routine check on a monitored website in Arizona leads from an Arkansas redneck looking to mix a poisonous concoction for personal reasons to an Islamic extremist in Vegas who has already piqued the FBI’s curiosity. Mixed martial artist Taseen “Taz” Hamshan, with ties to the extremist, is recruited by agent Kyle Morel to go undercover and make nice with a suspected terrorist. But how are the terrorists staying ahead of the FBI? At first glance, readers might suspect that Turney’s 600-plus-page novel would hit lulls. Nope. He allows no off-the-cuff introduction to any character or subplot, providing rich back stories and, surprisingly, never dropping any of the minor plots. Even agents sent to handle mundane surveillance are established in detail—which makes it startling when anyone dies. It’s epic, almost excessively so, but the author does keep the numerous characters from overwhelming the book with subtle reintroductions, such as a soft reminder that Russian intelligence operative Kondrashov is watching the Iranian and Venezuelan presidents. Despite the multiple storylines, there’s cohesion. However, the novel might have benefited from giving stories and characters some breathing room. And the U.S. isn’t the squeaky-clean hero among indignant foreign countries—American citizens must contend with an unpopular president, while Russian agents, despite their country’s neutrality, debate warning the U.S. of a possible jihadist attack. The author laces the story together with striking transitions—evidence being blown up shifts to people watching pyrotechnics at the Treasure Island casino. As the New Year’s celebration approaches, Turney maintains intensity with a natural countdown and an abundance of people in peril. And don’t forget: One of the characters is a jihadist mole.
Like a 12-episode TV series condensed into a single book—categorically engaging, but occasionally overstuffed.Pub Date: May 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-0615645889
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Lionhorse Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A smart, entertaining take on eternal conundrums.
Celestial gumshoes search for the source of evil in this knotty supernatural allegory.
Recently deceased ex–CIA agent Stewart Willoughby is an Observer, an almost-angel who uses rough tactics in the fight against demonic adversaries. He gets a break when he recruits a new informant, a senior executive at the Company—aka hell—who’s willing to give him information on “The Formula” that demons use to goad humans into sin. (The impish fiends are forever whispering malevolent hints into people’s ears, sometimes in person and sometimes over the phone from infernal call centers.) With his fetching partner and former fiancée, Layla, Stewart embarks on an extended investigation into the nature and causes of evil, from garden-variety manslaughters to horrific genocides. Their sleuthing takes them to some of history’s grisliest crime scenes—and eventually starts to eat away at their souls, as they resort to methods that are uncomfortably similar to the brutalities they want to eradicate. In this installment of his Logic of Demons series, Goodman continues fleshing out his inventive vision of the afterlife as an edgy, inglorious, down-to-earth place, where heaven itself is divided between hostile liberal and fundamentalist factions, and no one is sure that an always-absent God even exists. The devils, as usual, get the best lines; Goodman’s portrait of hell as a dreary corporate bureaucracy is a satiric gem—the chief torments are pointless routine, office gossip and nasty performance evaluations. The novel drags, though, when it focuses on Stewart and Layla’s relationship, which stays blissfully bland even after it takes a satanic turn. But Goodman also probes meaty philosophical themes with sophistication, as his characters wrestle with the problem of evil and the blurry line separating right from wrong. Subversively, he suggests that evil may not be a demonic plot but just another name for human nature. Goodman’s allegorical symbology isn’t too intricate—a farm boy Stewart encounters turns out to be the quite literal embodiment of Time and Chance—and at times the novel’s intellectual debates feel like an undergraduate seminar. Still, Goodman’s cross between a detective novel and The Screwtape Letters makes for a stimulating read.
A smart, entertaining take on eternal conundrums.Pub Date: May 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-1432790790
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Outskirts Press Inc.
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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