Twenty-eight years after the harrowing events in A Darker Magic (1987), evil rises again in the town of Caledon. To Emily (who still has nightmares about last time) and her young niece Alice the menace is palpable, centering on a neglected playground and on the devil that's part of an antique set of Punch-and-Judy puppets. Bedard's lean, graceful prose is readable, but his efforts to build suspense seem labored—macabre descriptions of a relentless succession of small events and details, scenes from a typically violent Punch-and-Judy script interspersed between chapters, a vague supernatural attack on Alice's little sister. After all the buildup, the climactic battle is won with disappointing ease: Alice and Emily sneak into the old library where the puppets are kept, break through a weak web of protective illusion, and smash the oddly helpless devil. Even readers who admire Bedard's command of language are likely to be let down by how briefly the danger assumes material form. Frequent references to the first book are tempting, but it's only tangentially relevant to the one at hand. The better-defined horrors in Mahy's Changeover and Westwood's He Came From The Shadows create more vivid impressions. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: April 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-689-31827-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1994
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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