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
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
