Fifth in the Apprentice Adept series (Out of Phaze, 1987), an overextended mega-yarn that now looks decidedly shabby and increasingly threadbare. Once again, young robot Mach of science-world Proton exchanges minds with young magician Bane of magic-world Phaze. This time the pair succeed in exchanging their girlfriends, too—but all this popping back and forth through the barrier that separates Phaze from Proton is causing the system to become unstable. The lads are unsure whom to throw their lot in with: The Adverse Adepts guarantee Bane's and Mach's rights to marry their respective loves, but also threaten to take over both Phaze and Proton; Stile, the Blue Adept, and his good-guy allies will set things to rights, magic and technology-wise, but refuse to countenance Bane's marrying a unicorn or Mach's an ameboid blob. To settle the matter, Mach squares off against Bane in a stylized games-playing contest: if Mach wins, they ally with the Adverse Adepts; if Bane wins, they go along with Stile. The first trilogy, featuring Stile and his quest to become Citizen and Blue Adept, was endlessly inventive and absorbing; the second time around—sons of—that magic has evaporated.
Pub Date: April 12, 1988
ISBN: 045056004X
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1988
A fable about the consolatory and strengthening powers of religion flounders about somewhere inside this unconventional coming-of-age tale, which was shortlisted for Canada’s Governor General’s Award. The story is told in retrospect by Piscine Molitor Patel (named for a swimming pool, thereafter fortuitously nicknamed “Pi”), years after he was shipwrecked when his parents, who owned a zoo in India, were attempting to emigrate, with their menagerie, to Canada. During 227 days at sea spent in a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger (mostly with the latter, which had efficiently slaughtered its fellow beasts), Pi found serenity and courage in his faith: a frequently reiterated amalgam of Muslim, Hindu, and Christian beliefs. The story of his later life, education, and mission rounds out, but does not improve upon, the alternately suspenseful and whimsical account of Pi’s ordeal at sea—which offers the best reason for reading this otherwise preachy and somewhat redundant story of his Life.
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-15-100811-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The previous books of this author (Devil of a State, 1962; The Right to an Answer, 1961) had valid points of satire, some humor, and a contemporary view, but here the picture is all out—from a time in the future to an argot that makes such demands on the reader that no one could care less after the first two pages.
If anyone geta beyond that—this is the first person story of Alex, a teen-age hoodlum, who, in step with his times, viddies himself and the world around him without a care for law, decency, honesty; whose autobiographical language has droogies to follow his orders, wallow in his hate and murder moods, accents the vonof human hole products. Betrayed by his dictatorial demands by a policing of his violence, he is committed when an old lady dies after an attack; he kills again in prison; he submits to a new method that will destroy his criminal impulses; blameless, he is returned to a world that visits immediate retribution on him; he is, when an accidental propulsion to death does not destroy him, foisted upon society once more in his original state of sin.
What happens to Alex is terrible but it is worse for the reader.
Pub Date: Jan. 8, 1962
ISBN: 0393928098
Page Count: 357
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1962
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
© 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.
