The tears of an alien clown and a startling angle distinguish this engaging SF tale.
In this YA SF series opener, a teenager—already stressed by his mother’s disappearance—finds life getting more complicated with the arrival of a shape-shifting alien.
The premise of Blume’s tale sounds like a whimsical, 1970s live-action Disney feature (not good news unless it’s Escape to Witch Mountain). But then the story takes an extreme twist at midpoint. Weird science spins 14-year-old Oliver Tarsul’s life out of control. His mother’s dimension-leaping quantum device causes her vanishing and possible death. Her husband, Jon Jariwala, Oliver’s nice but absent-minded-professor–type stepdad, focuses his energies on comprehending her notes and rebuilding the machine to try to return her. Meanwhile, there is a side effect—a shape-shifting alien called Dindet, actually a gelatinous colloid but presenting itself as a sort of little girl clown/jester. She pops in from her realm to haunt Oliver. Jon, taking the creature in stride (especially since Dindet’s advanced math knowledge could help bring his wife back), has the alien enrolled in Oliver’s school as a foreign-exchange student living under their roof. Oliver, of course, is embarrassed and shocked by having to cohabit and attend class with the bizarre clown. Seriocomic antics (including a visit to Dindet’s riotous dimension and gladiatorial games) get darker at midpoint when the author drops a bombshell involving Oliver and his brutal, alcoholic biological father. It is not so much the abrupt shifts in tone that will whipsaw the audience (there are clues aplenty that Oliver is in emotional turmoil; readers will just assume Dindet is the reason) as the contrast between the two narrative threads. A slapstick, first-contact story turns into a vivid portrayal of a troubled family. Imagine warping from E.T. the Extraterrestrial to a serious drama. The author’s matter-of-fact, nonjudgmental treatment of Oliver is commendable (so is the unforced, multicultural background material), and readers will wonder how this story might have played out minus the shape-shifting elements. Still, the alien stuff triggers the intriguing cliffhanger.
The tears of an alien clown and a startling angle distinguish this engaging SF tale.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73794-632-8
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Shaky Alien Publications
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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