Full of potential but unfortunately never quite finds its sea legs.
Seventeen-year-old Mary Reade has always longed for the sea; surviving poverty by living as a boy, she sails under the command of a cruel and tyrannical captain.
When their ship is boarded by pirates, Mary joins the pirate crew as Mark Reade, seizing a way to head toward Nassau, where her childhood best friend and crush resides. She immediately becomes smitten with Calico Jack Rackham’s partner, Anne Bonny, who is everything Mary isn’t: fiery, impetuous, and feminine. It becomes clear Anne’s also smitten, but Mary is terrified of the potentially deadly consequences of coming out. When she does reveal her secret, she discovers Anne will do whatever’s necessary to survive—including outing Mary and forcing her to make some difficult choices. Debut author McNamara doesn’t shy away from depicting the horrors of a misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic society. The third-person narration always uses feminine pronouns for the protagonist, although Mary expresses discomfort with claiming a binary gender identity. At times, Anne’s characterization leans toward the cheating bisexual, and Mary’s self-doubt and self-loathing may be difficult, rather than enlightening, for trans and nonbinary readers. Readers well-versed in the lives of the famous pirate duo may feel hornswoggled that so much of their known story has been underwhelmingly altered for this telling, and pirate fans will feel disappointed that there is relatively little swashbuckling.
Full of potential but unfortunately never quite finds its sea legs. (Historical fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: June 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5107-2705-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of the series who managed to enjoy volumes four and five will be pleased to find more of the same
The Caretakers fight the mind-controlling Echthroi through a tangle of timelines.
This penultimate volume in the Imaginarium Geographica series features such a massive ensemble of dead white men that it's difficult to follow their storylines. Don Quixote, Aristophanes and a badger quest for magic armor. Charles Williams, original characters Rose and Edmund, H.G. Wells, Richard Burton and a Clash of the Titans–style mechanical owl travel in time. J.R.R. Tolkien and Jules Verne meet a secret society so packed with dead authors that six William Blake clones ("We call them Blake's Seven") fit right in. A Chinese librarian speaking pidgin English betrays the questers, Medea meets Gilgamesh, and triple agents abound. A goblin market is peopled with characters from The Last Unicorn who make jokes from Blazing Saddles; Nathaniel Hawthorne paraphrases the 1988 cult classic They Live; a future Caretaker quotes Darth Vader. "Jules Verne show[s] goats descended from the herds of Genghis Khan in a county fair in an Indian nation in America … " Confused yet? If not, perhaps you'll be able to make sense of a resolution that relies on pasts that never were and futures that might-have-been.
Fans of the series who managed to enjoy volumes four and five will be pleased to find more of the same . (Fantasy. 14-16)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-1223-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Gory horror that thinks nihilist incoherence is the same thing as edgy. It's wrong
A court-mandated hike becomes zombie flick, laden with 1980s pop-culture references.
Seventeen-year-old Nick's life could be better. Since his worthless father, the Dude, "Has Other Concerns" than buying groceries, Nick works at the chicken factory to earn food and medicine for his oddball baby sister. An accident at the factory leaves Nick jailed for...well, it's not clear what he's jailed for. Living in an unjust world, perhaps? Nick’s troupe of realistically foulmouthed delinquents are soon fighting off chicken-gnawing, entrails-chomping zombies at the top of a mountain, calling one another “fag” every step of the way. In prose that consists of far too many one-sentence and even one-word paragraphs ("Had to see. / If it was. / Skoal. / Another step"), Nick has masturbatory fantasies about the hottest girl zombie, even while mooning over the object of his affections, Petal Gazes, a manic pixie punk-rock girl with anime eyes and a "Bauhaus" hoodie. Like Pete Hautman’s Rash (2006), this over-the-top boys'-prison-camp adventure resembles a grown-up Holes (1998), but lacks the heart and ultimate optimism of either. The sexed-up face-eating may please dedicated fans of the shambling undead, despite self-aware sarcasm that explicitly mocks the commercialism of current zombie fandom.
Gory horror that thinks nihilist incoherence is the same thing as edgy. It's wrong . (Horror. 15-17)Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5947-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
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