A zooming grand-slam of sci-fi fun.
Acevedo (Rescue from Planet Pleasure, 2016, etc.) offers a middle-grade sci-fi adventure about talented father-and-son scientists who find themselves banished to the suburbs.
Thirteen-year-old Alfonso Frankenstein attends the Dr. Moreau Junior Academy, and his father, Dr. Eugino Frankenstein, teaches at the University of Doom. After creating a zombie badger in his Cadaver Recomposition class and setting off a cascade of animal reanimations, Alfonso tries to contact his father. He finds, unfortunately, that because of a “system quarantine” at the university, he can’t communicate with Dr. Frankenstein. He soon learns that his dad has been removed from the University of Doom for “nine counts of playing God”—despite the school’s motto of “LUDIMUS DEUS”: “We play God.” This forces the Frankensteins to move to a battered, split-level home in suburbia. The problems begin immediately when Sarah, a neighbor and Alfonso’s classmate at Ty Cobb Middle School, accidentally hits him in the face with a baseball—although the teenagers soon become friends. However, Alfonso also learns that Professor Moriarty, the family nemesis who orchestrated Dr. Frankenstein’s firing, has apparently followed them to their new home. At school, Alfonso must navigate a new world of bullies and boring assignments while keeping a lookout for the next phase of Moriarty’s vengeful scheme. In this feast of middle-grade weirdness, Acevedo caters to fans of smart, retro sci-fi; baseball; and, of course, gross-out horror. Crackling prose brings the various creatures to life—and often inventive death—such as zombies whose “Feathers and skin crinkled into ash and sloughed away, revealing flesh that glopped from skeletons.” The author maintains a youthful mindset when critiquing big ideas in science, such as the notion of human minds merging with the web: “Is that where they want to meld their consciousness?” comments Dr. Frankenstein. “With cheesy pop-up ads for easy credit and ring tones?” He even establishes a few new elements—such as Otis Carroll, librarian and intergalactic assassin—for use in a potential sequel. By the end, readers of all ages will definitely crave further adventures in this anything-goes world.
A zooming grand-slam of sci-fi fun.Pub Date: July 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9964039-8-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: Hex Publishers
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Downbeat but often engaging poems and stories.
A slim volume of largely gay-themed writings with pessimistic overtones.
Poe (Simple Simon, 2013, etc.) divides this collection of six short stories and 34 poems into five sections: “Art,” “Death,” “Relationship,” “Being,” and “Reflection.” Significantly, a figurative death at the age of 7 appears in two different poems, in which the author uses the phrase “a pretended life” to refer to the idea of hiding one’s true nature and performing socially enforced gender roles. This is a well-worn trope, but it will be powerful and resonant for many who have struggled with a stigmatized identity. In a similar vein, “Imaginary Tom” presents the remnants of a faded relationship: “Now we are imaginary friends, different in each other’s thoughts, / I the burden you seek to discard, / you the lover I created from the mist of longing.” Once in a while, short story passages practically leap off of the page, such as this evocative description of a seedy establishment in Lincoln, Nebraska: “It was a dimly lit bar that smelled of rodent piss, with barstools that danced on uneven legs and made the patrons wonder if they were drunker than they thought.” In “Valéry’s Ride,” Poe examines the familial duties that often fall to unmarried and childless people, keeping them from forming meaningful bonds with others. In this story, after the double whammy of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hits Louisiana, Valéry’s extended family needs him more than ever; readers will likely root for the gay protagonist as he makes the difficult decision to strike out on his own. Not all of Poe’s main characters are gay; the heterosexual title character in “Mrs. Calumet’s Workspace,” for instance, pursues employment in order to escape the confines of her home and a passionless marriage. Working as a bookkeeper, she attempts to carve out a space for herself, symbolized by changes in her work area. Still, this story echoes the recurring theme of lives unlived due to forces often beyond one’s control.
Downbeat but often engaging poems and stories.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5168-3693-2
Page Count: 120
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A volume of poetry that shines when focused on the author’s experiences of race and culture.
A collection speaks in part to the poet’s Mexican-American heritage.
In these multifaceted poems, Mexico-born, Houston-raised Salazar (Of Dreams and Thorns, 2017) explores general human themes like love and war in addition to specific experiences as a person of color. The book begins with a sensual meditation on desire, featuring luscious descriptions of a lover, from lips “moist like youth” to the body’s “softest velvet” slopes. The poems shift to odes to cultural icons like the Tejano star Selena and Mexican-German painter Frida Kahlo as well as occasion pieces honoring his brother’s 40th birthday and a friend’s mother’s memorial service. The author hits his stride when he delves into identity. In “I Am Not Brown,” he contemplates the societal implications of skin tone and his inability to fit into the rigid category of Caucasian or Latino. “For white and black and brown alike / Are slaves to history’s brush strokes,” he writes. “Grateful for the Work,” perhaps Salazar’s loveliest poem, catalogs the day of a laborer, starting with an early morning awakening and following him as he toils in 100-degree heat, enjoys tacos from his lunch pail, buys beverages from a child’s lemonade stand, and returns home to an equally hard-working wife. The author then makes an abrupt turn toward Syria in a series of poems that condemn that country’s president, Bashar Hafez al-Assad. They serve as a rallying cry for Syrians and grieve for the murdered masses. Salazar’s closing poem, “Sons of Bitches,” is a clunky rant about a 20-year-old immigrant shot in the head by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent. The gratuitous violence and political theologizing are ill at ease with the intimate, personal experiences that preceded them, such as the fablelike “A Mexican is Made of This,” in which Salazar beautifully describes the “rainbows, bronze, backbone, butterflies” that his people embody.
A volume of poetry that shines when focused on the author’s experiences of race and culture.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9991496-3-8
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Bronze Diamond Productions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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