Casting a mentally ill character as the villain sounds an unsatisfactory note in an otherwise easy, fast-paced...
Tristan enters British Columbia’s Swallow Canyon on an expedition feeling a mix of trepidation and excitement.
His father and climbing teacher, Julian, disappeared there eight months before. Since then, Tristan’s mother has sunk into depression. Her in-home caregiver has charged the white teen with retrieving some item of Julian’s for his mother to grieve over in the absence of a body. Tristan’s guide, Brigit, also white, has another goal. Her depiction as the villain of the piece is an unfortunate choice. Mentally ill Brigit has gone off her medications and blames Julian for her mother’s death. Tristan is her pawn. The deeper they go into the canyon, the more layers Tristan uncovers about Julian’s last trip. It seems that Julian was, with Brigit’s mother, searching for gold. Tristan is a believably grieving, dutiful son—a sympathetic character trying to untangle a complicated web. Clues and revelations are well-plotted and the setting, cinematic. Descriptions of the extreme sport of canyoneering, a combination of rock climbing, cliff diving, and caving, are thrilling. In comparison, Brigit’s portrayal as an unbalanced predator lacks nuance.
Casting a mentally ill character as the villain sounds an unsatisfactory note in an otherwise easy, fast-paced adventure/mystery. (Mystery. 12-16)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4597-3963-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Dundurn
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers...
A harrowing tale of survival in the Killing Fields.
The childhood of Arn Chorn-Pond has been captured for young readers before, in Michelle Lord and Shino Arihara's picture book, A Song for Cambodia (2008). McCormick, known for issue-oriented realism, offers a fictionalized retelling of Chorn-Pond's youth for older readers. McCormick's version begins when the Khmer Rouge marches into 11-year-old Arn's Cambodian neighborhood and forces everyone into the country. Arn doesn't understand what the Khmer Rouge stands for; he only knows that over the next several years he and the other children shrink away on a handful of rice a day, while the corpses of adults pile ever higher in the mango grove. Arn does what he must to survive—and, wherever possible, to protect a small pocket of children and adults around him. Arn's chilling history pulls no punches, trusting its readers to cope with the reality of children forced to participate in murder, torture, sexual exploitation and genocide. This gut-wrenching tale is marred only by the author's choice to use broken English for both dialogue and description. Chorn-Pond, in real life, has spoken eloquently (and fluently) on the influence he's gained by learning English; this prose diminishes both his struggle and his story.
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers will seek out the history themselves. (preface, author's note) (Historical fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-173093-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
Not much forward momentum but a tasty array of chills, thrills, and chortles.
The victory of Jacob and his fellow peculiars over the previous episode’s wights and hollowgasts turns out to be only one move in a larger game as Riggs (Tales of the Peculiar, 2016, etc.) shifts the scene to America.
Reading largely as a setup for a new (if not exactly original) story arc, the tale commences just after Jacob’s timely rescue from his decidedly hostile parents. Following aimless visits back to newly liberated Devil’s Acre and perfunctory normalling lessons for his magically talented friends, Jacob eventually sets out on a road trip to find and recruit Noor, a powerful but imperiled young peculiar of Asian Indian ancestry. Along the way he encounters a semilawless patchwork of peculiar gangs, syndicates, and isolated small communities—many at loggerheads, some in the midst of negotiating a tentative alliance with the Ymbryne Council, but all threatened by the shadowy Organization. The by-now-tangled skein of rivalries, romantic troubles, and family issues continues to ravel amid bursts of savage violence and low comedy (“I had never seen an invisible person throw up before,” Jacob writes, “and it was something I won’t soon forget”). A fresh set of found snapshots serves, as before, to add an eldritch atmosphere to each set of incidents. The cast defaults to white but includes several people of color with active roles.
Not much forward momentum but a tasty array of chills, thrills, and chortles. (Horror/Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-3214-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
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