This one’s a page-turner.
Combining a love of science fiction with modern technology and some very original thinking, this novel takes a look at some of society’s preconceived notions from a slightly off-kilter view.
Biracial English 15-year-old Ani Lee is used to taking care of herself: her Vietnamese mother is hospitalized in a mental institution after a horrible suicide attempt, and her white father is off pursuing some shady business ventures. For Ani, hacking into restricted websites is both easy and good fun, though her best friend and hacking partner is someone she’s never met. But when he sends her a secret .wav file, Ani finds out how alone in the world she really is, because now men with guns are trying to kidnap her for that file. It’s only by chance that she runs into 17-year-old Joe Dyson, a white American living in London, at an underground concert. Joe is an operative for the Youth Enforcement Task Initiative, a secret section of British Intelligence, who goes where only teens can blend in. Together, they have to solve exactly what the .wav file is, who wants it, and what makes it so important. Too many lives are at stake and someone’s pulling the strings, using music to gather the world’s youth into one massive, mindless army. But whose? The third-person narration alternates between Ani and Joe, weaving both psychological back story and futuristic sci-fi elements through the story. Though it takes its time, it never drags, parceling out plot details and worldbuilding in classic thriller fashion.
This one’s a page-turner. (Thriller. 12 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5107-0404-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Some might guess at the baffling, heart-pounding conclusion, but when all the sidewalk characters from Miranda’s Manhattan...
When Miranda’s best friend Sal gets punched by a strange kid, he abruptly stops speaking to her; then oddly prescient letters start arriving.
They ask for her help, saying, “I'm coming to save your friend's life, and my own.” Readers will immediately connect with Miranda’s fluid first-person narration, a mix of Manhattan street smarts and pre-teen innocence. She addresses the letter writer and recounts the weird events of her sixth-grade year, hoping to make sense of the crumpled notes. Miranda’s crystalline picture of her urban landscape will resonate with city teens and intrigue suburban kids. As the letters keep coming, Miranda clings to her favorite book, A Wrinkle in Time, and discusses time travel with Marcus, the nice, nerdy boy who punched Sal. Keen readers will notice Stead toying with time from the start, as Miranda writes in the present about past events that will determine her future.
Some might guess at the baffling, heart-pounding conclusion, but when all the sidewalk characters from Miranda’s Manhattan world converge amid mind-blowing revelations and cunning details, teen readers will circle back to the beginning and say, “Wow...cool.” (Fiction. 12 & up)Pub Date: July 14, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-73742-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Wendy Lamb/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A solid genre outing.
In the near future, an incarcerated teen with a reputation for escape attempts is moved to a new, maximum-security facility called the Rig, an oil-drilling platform in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, now converted to use as a prison.
Fifteen-year-old William Drake is a likable, tough-talking narrator who hails from London, the son of an African-American father and a Polish mother. True to hard-boiled type, Drake keeps to himself and resists making friends, even as he makes enemies of the worst baddies by defending weaker kids from them and is won over by the Rig's kindly psychologist, Dr. Lambros. Flavoring the third-person narration with some great one-liners (“She had the voice of a lifelong smoker thrown in a blender”), Ducie takes his time setting the stage for the action-packed second half of the novel, with Drake carefully plotting an escape that involves the skills of his hacker cellmate, Tristan, and the knowledge of Irene, a fellow prisoner who hints at a conspiracy that eventually blows up in their faces. All the elements of a great thriller are here—sinister villains, a stoic hero with a heart of gold, even mutated sharks. If some of these details seem a bit familiar to seasoned action-adventure fans, there is still plenty to keep them engaged, and the open-ended conclusion suggests there may be more to come.
A solid genre outing. (Thriller. 13-18)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-544-50311-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
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