In a story straight out of the Kipling/H. Rider Haggard tradition, a British teenager learns that the world is wider than he ever imagined when he's kidnapped and taken deep into the jungles of Borneo. To the tribal Iban, dreams have great significance, and good or evil omens are pervasive; impelled by a vision, young Bayang leaves his village, taking Tambong—an outcast known as ``Duck Foot'' for her deformity—as a guide. When the two encounter Harry Windsor, a 15-year-old orphaned in WW I, they snatch him away, convinced that he can help them achieve the insights their dreams promise. The Iban ``Bejelai,'' or ``Dream Walk,'' becomes a journey of discovery for Harry, too, as his mettle is tested by his captors and by the jungle's dangers (including a party of headhunters); by the end, he has indeed helped both Bayang and Tambong, while they've shown him the narrowness of his racist, White Man's Burden views. Bosse's characters are strong and admirable, his writing precise and evocative; and the jungle—``where time was always now, and the vast ocean of greenery washed over [Harry] like an endless dream''- -is a strong presence holding both terrors and wonders in its depths. As in he did in Ganesh (1981) and in the brutal Captives of Time (1987), this gifted storyteller stirs hearts and minds while teaching readers to value the wisdom of distant cultures. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: Aug. 18, 1993
ISBN: 0-374-31757-7
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
PERSPECTIVES
A high-intensity tale shot through with spectacular magic battles, savage mayhem, cool outfits, monsters, hidden doors, over-the-top names, narrow escapes, evil schemes and behavior heroic, ambiguous and really, really bad. When the murder of a favorite uncle touches off a frantic search for a fabled superweapon known as the Scepter of the Ancients, 12-year-old Stephanie is abruptly pitched out of her mundane life. She hooks up with Skulduggery Pleasant—a walking, wisecracking, nattily dressed, fire-throwing skeleton detective—and similar unlikely allies to fight a genially sadistic sorcerer out to conquer the world and to bring back the bad old gods. It’s a great recipe for a page-turner, and though Landy takes a chapter or two to get up to full speed, the plot thereafter accelerates as smoothly as Pleasant’s classic Bentley toward a violent, seesaw climax. Earning plenty of style points for hardboiled dialogue and very scary baddies, the author gives his wonderfully tough, sassy youngster a real workout, and readers, particularly Artemis Fowl fans, will be skipping meals and sleep to get to the end. Expect sequels. (Fantasy. 12-15)
Pub Date: April 3, 2007
ISBN: 0-06-123115-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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