From dust jacket (which purportedly contains clues to the pseudonymous author’s identity) to closing page of disguised...
Hidden messages, ambiguous clues, cryptic hints and double entendres crowd chockablock into this puzzle mystery.
Time, and Thymes, play central roles. In line to become the 25th Laird of Thyme, Justin is a 13-year-old scientific genius whose redoubtable mother, Lady Henny, is kidnapped in the wake of discussions with his (seemingly) amnesiac father about actually building a time machine. His ruminations about time travel (conveyed in handwritten notes between each chapter) dovetail with strange arrivals—notably a (seemingly) senile old man who may be long-missing grandpa Lyall Austin Thyme—and investigations that turn up a wealth of suspects in his mother's disappearance. Along with odd timepieces, red herrings galore and images of clue-bearing ransom notes, postcards and email messages, the author chucks in a comically diverse supporting cast. This is led by a sullen, lovesick gorilla and a new cook fresh from the “Café Roman à Clef” in Paris, who in one memorable scene serves up anatomically correct gingerbread men (“You not likings nuts?”). A kidnapper who remains unidentified and at large at the end, a newly minted time machine/motorcycle begging to be tried out and the strong “all is not as it seems” atmosphere throughout pave the way for sequels.
From dust jacket (which purportedly contains clues to the pseudonymous author’s identity) to closing page of disguised notes, a pleaser for fans of reading that requires decoding. (map, cast list) (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-9562315-9-8
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Inside Pocket
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones.
An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named “Jack Gantos.”
The gore is all Jack’s, which to his continuing embarrassment “would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames” whenever anything exciting or upsetting happens. And that would be on every other page, seemingly, as even though Jack’s feuding parents unite to ground him for the summer after several mishaps, he does get out. He mixes with the undertaker’s daughter, a band of Hell’s Angels out to exact fiery revenge for a member flattened in town by a truck and, especially, with arthritic neighbor Miss Volker, for whom he furnishes the “hired hands” that transcribe what becomes a series of impassioned obituaries for the local paper as elderly town residents suddenly begin passing on in rapid succession. Eventually the unusual body count draws the—justified, as it turns out—attention of the police. Ultimately, the obits and the many Landmark Books that Jack reads (this is 1962) in his hours of confinement all combine in his head to broaden his perspective about both history in general and the slow decline his own town is experiencing.
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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