Adventurous, thought-provoking, fast-paced, and subtly hilarious—in short, a delight to read.
Cantwell (My Friend Casey, 2015, etc.) offers a children’s story of a courageous mouse’s journey to Mars that’s part adventure and part political satire.
A mouse named Max has an owner, Melissa, who treats him kindly and trains him well, and in time, he becomes quite intelligent. But one day, his curiosity gets the best of him, and he escapes through the backyard fence and becomes lost in the city. He finds a group of friendly mice and soon becomes their leader, first directing them out of the dangerous city into the forest and then from the dangerous forest to Mars by balloon. But although the environment of the great red planet seems conducive to their survival, its inhabitants, unfortunately, are not. Robotic mice immediately take Max and his friends captive, and the mechanical royal family sentences them to be executed. The pretentious Princess Bling Bling, however, takes a liking to Max, and after sharing with him the history of her people on Mars, she offers to keep him alive—as her pet. But Max, concerned about his friends, tries to find a way to save them and escape the clutches of the dangerous Mars mice. The book teaches kids about the importance of caring for the environment and the danger of letting technology run one’s life. This is mainly shown through the history of the robotic mice; they were preceded by the Monkey People (symbolic of humans), who were destroyed by laziness and environmental abuse, and the Computer People (symbolic of technology), who eventually destroyed one another. The book also features unique, lovable characters and a quirky sense of humor; adults will get a kick out of Senator Blabbermouth, who keeps a hot air balloon afloat with rambling speeches full of “hot air”: “I promise you free cheese, chocolates for dessert, no taxes...blah, blah, blah.” The book also provides a secondary story about Melissa that’s brilliantly woven throughout Max’s tale. The charming illustrations effectively highlight major events and match the text’s silly tone.
Adventurous, thought-provoking, fast-paced, and subtly hilarious—in short, a delight to read.Pub Date: Dec. 14, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5320-0944-0
Page Count: 108
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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