Those willing to accept the premise of this effort are in for an exhilarating if somewhat shallow ride.
When a 17-year-old tackles the first-ever descent of a tumultuous Colombian river, he encounters both raging rapids and raging war.
Rex is the grandson of a world-class kayaker who inexplicably turned his back on El Furioso 60 years before. Armed with his grandfather’s journal—but very little advice from the taciturn man—and plenty of kayaking ability but astonishingly little world experience, Rex travels to Colombia, where he meets Myriam, also 17. The tale shifts between his first-person narration and alternating chapters told from her third-person point of view. She’s an indígena, one of a small group of locals caught in the brutal, cocaine-fueled war among guerrilla fighters, paramilitary groups and the ineffectual Colombian army. In spite of numerous warnings and the desertion of his team, Rex takes on El Furioso solo, with dire consequences. Kayaking action and encounters with the various military groups are vivid and thrilling. Less effective are some of the transitions between the two narratives, when showing periodically deteriorates to telling. Readers must suspend belief that Rex would travel alone to war-torn Colombia to take on a wild river with just a pair of ill-prepared teammates—without someone recognizing the foolhardy nature of the venture.
Those willing to accept the premise of this effort are in for an exhilarating if somewhat shallow ride. (Adventure. 12 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-77049-257-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
An auspicious ending may seem a bit unlikely to some, but this novel has many appealing aspects that will draw readers in.
Fifteen-year-old Zeke gets a job and becomes involved with community organizers who aim to unionize local food-service workers in this novel in verse for reluctant readers.
Zeke hates their lives in the city with Paul, his alcoholic mom’s abusive boyfriend, a hypocritical Christian, and he misses his old home in small-town Wisconsin. Spurred to action by the idea of making enough money for them to move back, he takes a job at Casa de Pizza, where he comes to understand the desperate circumstances many of his minimum-wage–earning co-workers face. Zeke keeps the job secret, fearing Paul will try to steal his earnings. Pagelong free-verse poems evocatively describe Zeke’s experiences and quickly propel the story forward. The dynamics between the employees at Casa de Pizza (Zeke and several others are white, Timothy is black, Hannah is originally from Oaxaca) will be recognizable to teens who’ve worked in food service. Readers will easily sympathize with the all-too-true-to-life situations with which the characters are coping—racism and sexual harassment, Zeke’s awful home life, and a co-worker’s eviction with her children among them. Though short, this story develops the characters’ personalities, sketches in the history of the labor movement, and includes a subdued romantic subplot, effectively balancing these various elements.
An auspicious ending may seem a bit unlikely to some, but this novel has many appealing aspects that will draw readers in. (Fiction. 12-18)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5383-8260-8
Page Count: 202
Publisher: West 44 Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A rare second volume that surpasses the first, with, happily, more intrigue and passion still to come.
A heady blend of courtly double-crossing, Faerie lore, and toxic attraction swirls together in the sequel to The Cruel Prince (2018).
Five months after engineering a coup, human teen Jude is starting to feel the strain of secretly controlling King Cardan and running his Faerie kingdom. Jude’s self-loathing and anger at the traumatic events of her childhood (her Faerie “dad” killed her parents, and Faerie is not a particularly easy place even for the best-adjusted human) drive her ambition, which is tempered by her desire to make the world she loves and hates a little fairer. Much of the story revolves around plotting (the Queen of the Undersea wants the throne; Jude’s Faerie father wants power; Jude’s twin, Taryn, wants her Faerie betrothed by her side), but the underlying tension—sexual and political—between Jude and Cardan also takes some unexpected twists. Black’s writing is both contemporary and classic; her world is, at this point, intensely well-realized, so that some plot twists seem almost inevitable. Faerie is a strange place where immortal, multihued, multiformed denizens can’t lie but can twist everything; Jude—who can lie—is an outlier, and her first-person, present-tense narration reveals more than she would choose. With curly dark brown hair, Jude and Taryn are never identified by race in human terms.
A rare second volume that surpasses the first, with, happily, more intrigue and passion still to come. (map) (Fantasy. 14-adult)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-31035-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
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