Worth it to get fans from here to there; not of much interest as a stand-alone.
Hackers Noa and Peter step up their undercover battles against pharmaceutical giant Pike & Dolan as danger escalates for them both (Don’t Turn Around, 2012).
Pike & Dolan continue Project Persephone, their secret and deadly research ostensibly to end the PEMA epidemic striking teens across the country, despite having one of their labs exposed to the authorities by the teens. Peter has stayed with his parents in Boston even after discovering their involvement with P&D, while Noa has joined the Southwest-based Persefone’s Army, made up of freed subjects of P&D’s labs working to liberate others before they’re killed. Peter helps Noa via a secret chat group online while worrying that his ex-girlfriend Amanda might have contracted the always-fatal PEMA. Noa deals with internal problems within the army as she plans their next mission. In an attempt to find the new servers for P&D’s main computers, Peter increases his surveillance of Mason, a ruthless P&D agent, only to be drawn into Mason’s plotting; meanwhile, Noa grows suspicious of new recruits to her cause. Gagnon’s second in the Don’t Turn Around trilogy inches the tale forward with a few thrills concentrated at the volume’s close, but she spends far too much time examining from every side the various love triangles and quadrangles among its characters. Here’s hoping the finale will be a return to the thrills and surprises of the first installment and not more love among the hackers.
Worth it to get fans from here to there; not of much interest as a stand-alone. (Thriller. 12-16)Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210293-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers...
A harrowing tale of survival in the Killing Fields.
The childhood of Arn Chorn-Pond has been captured for young readers before, in Michelle Lord and Shino Arihara's picture book, A Song for Cambodia (2008). McCormick, known for issue-oriented realism, offers a fictionalized retelling of Chorn-Pond's youth for older readers. McCormick's version begins when the Khmer Rouge marches into 11-year-old Arn's Cambodian neighborhood and forces everyone into the country. Arn doesn't understand what the Khmer Rouge stands for; he only knows that over the next several years he and the other children shrink away on a handful of rice a day, while the corpses of adults pile ever higher in the mango grove. Arn does what he must to survive—and, wherever possible, to protect a small pocket of children and adults around him. Arn's chilling history pulls no punches, trusting its readers to cope with the reality of children forced to participate in murder, torture, sexual exploitation and genocide. This gut-wrenching tale is marred only by the author's choice to use broken English for both dialogue and description. Chorn-Pond, in real life, has spoken eloquently (and fluently) on the influence he's gained by learning English; this prose diminishes both his struggle and his story.
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers will seek out the history themselves. (preface, author's note) (Historical fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-173093-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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