The crystalline realization of this wildly dystopic future carries in it obvious and enormous implications for today’s...
“I don’t know when they first had feeds. Like maybe, fifty or a hundred years ago. Before than, they had to use their hands and their eyes. Computers were all outside the body. They carried them around outside of them, in their hands, like if you carried your lungs in a briefcase and opened it to breathe.”
Titus and his friends have grown up on the feed—connected on a 24-hour basis through brain implants to a vast computer network, they have become their medium. “The braggest thing about the feed . . . is that it knows everything you want and hope for, sometimes before you even know what those things are.” Titus is a master at navigating this world where to consume is to live, but when he meets Violet, a distinctly unusual girl whose philology-professor father has chosen to homeschool her instead of sending her to School™, he begins, very tentatively and imperfectly, to question this equation. Thrown together when their feeds are hacked at a party and they are temporarily disconnected, their very hesitant romance is played out against the backdrop of an utterly hedonistic world of trend and acquisition, a world only momentarily disturbed by the news reports of environmental waste and a global alliance of have-not nations against the obliviously consuming US. Anderson (Handel, Who Knew What He Liked, 2001, etc.) has crafted a wickedly clever narrative in which Titus’s voice takes on perfectly the speech patterns of today’s more vapid teens (“ ‘Oh, unit,’ I was like, ‘is this malfunction?’ ”). When Violet’s feed begins to fail, and with it all her life functions, she decides to rebel against all that the feed stands for—the degradation of language, the self-absorption, the leaching of all culture and independent thought from the world—and Titus must make his choice.
The crystalline realization of this wildly dystopic future carries in it obvious and enormous implications for today’s readers—satire at its finest. (Fiction. YA)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-7636-1726-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002
A thrilling, beautifully written page-turner.
A young woman pursues a dangerous quest in late-1800s Egypt in this sequel to What the River Knows (2023).
After Inez Olivera was nearly murdered while assisting with her uncle’s archaeological expedition in Egypt, Tío Ricardo is eager to ship her home to safety in Argentina. But Inez burns with the need to stay and make sure that those who committed crimes against her family are held responsible. Unfortunately, the law precludes Inez, as a young unmarried woman, from accessing her inheritance (needed to fund her quest for justice) without her guardian uncle’s permission. Whitford Hayes, a former British soldier and her tío’s aide-de-camp, proposes marriage, which could solve her problems. But can Inez trust the secretive Whit? More danger and intrigue lurk at every turn in this exciting duology closer, which fully addresses the first entry’s jaw-dropping cliffhanger. The well-paced plot encompasses many fresh, new adventures and betrayals in this reimagined historical setting in which ancient magic abounds and not everyone or everything is what it seems. Even more captivating, however, is the complicated, nuanced love story between Whit and Inez. Their chemistry sizzles, but their relationship is achingly layered with both profound loyalty and deep deception. As their journey unearths new enemies and priceless archaeological finds, the duo must try to trust each other enough to survive.
A thrilling, beautifully written page-turner. (cast of characters, map, timeline) (Historical fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781250822994
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
A gripping post-apocalyptic survival story featuring a multinational cast and just the right amount of introspection.
It’s 2072, and a group of teens has one chance at surviving the end of the world: a prototype spaceship.
Eighteen-year-old Leigh Chen, daughter of the president of the United States, knows a volcano will soon erupt, leading to the destruction of Earth’s atmosphere. She also knows the Global Fleet Planning Commission has a plan: to rebuild on a new planet, 5.4 light-years away. While Leigh and other children of GFPC members are touring a launch site in California, the eruption unexpectedly begins. Approximately 50 teenagers from around the world find themselves on a journey that will last many lifetimes, relying on an unfinished ship and a minimal supply of food. On their side is Eli, White American daughter of the spaceship’s intended pilot. Eli forms a small leadership council to run the ship that includes Chinese American Leigh along with members from Kenya, Russia, Bolivia, and Egypt. As fault lines in the group quickly become apparent, Leigh busies herself with smoothing over conflicts among the survivors. But as they begin to repeat the mistakes of their parents, she must confront a question from her almost-friend, Anis Ibrahim: What does she really stand for? Part survival story and part exploration of the tenuous ties of cooperation, this memorable page-turner is a successful foray into science fiction for Redgate.
A gripping post-apocalyptic survival story featuring a multinational cast and just the right amount of introspection. (Science fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-368-06472-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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