For readers who like (or at least don’t mind) continual authorial asides, a sturdy middle volume.
Still struggling to keep up with his wizardly fellow campers, Clay finally discovers his particular talent when the arrival of a large cruise ship touches off a round of assaults and rescues on remote Price Island.
It seems there’s a secret sleeping at the heart of the island’s all-too-active volcano, and Brett Perry, genially vicious owner of the luxury liner Imperial Conquest, has come to seize it for the nefarious Midnight Sun society. Against his horde of well-armed thugs, it would seem that his chubby 12-year-old son, Brett Jr.—plus Clay, airy kleptomaniac Leira (spell it backward), and other residents of Earth Ranch—stands no chance of mounting any effective resistance. But when there is magic in the air and also a new ally who has the young folk envisioning a “Titanic meets Godzilla” scenario, anything becomes possible. More intrusive than ever, “Bosch” not only lays in fussy digressions and many wordy footnotes, he even dedicates the story to himself (with his real name) and inserts himself directly as a character from his earlier Secret series. Along with making his protagonist look a lot ridiculous and, by the end, a little bit heroic, the author strews the tale with fart jokes and gross goo, oblique references to Harry Potter (“expel-your-anus!”), and other crowd-pleasing elements.
For readers who like (or at least don’t mind) continual authorial asides, a sturdy middle volume. (“backmatter”; map and illustrations, not seen) (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-32042-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Clay is Everykid enough (“almost handsome, in a dried-snot-on-his-sleeve sort of way”) to keep readers hanging around to see...
Very little is as it seems at a survival camp for “troubled” teens in this trilogy opener.
Still deeply upset nearly two years after the disappearance of his stage-magician older brother, Clay writes “Magic sucks!” in a notebook after turning in a blank paper on Shakespeare’s Tempest. He’s astounded to find the sentiment painted on a wall at school the next day—with his signature. The resultant fallout lands him on a remote Pacific island, where he encounters peers named Leira (spell it backward) and Mira, a grotesque puppet dubbed “Caliban” and a llama with a sign on its neck reading “Hola. Cómo se llama? Yo me llamo Como C. Llama.” He also discovers not one but two libraries of rare books—one stocked with oddly behaving grimoires. After climbing a live volcano and sliding back down on a board, he discovers (as he had been suspecting for some time) that it’s all been a setup—further developments to come. “Bosch,” a confirmed Lemony Snicket bandwagoneer, repeatedly interrupts with authorial rants, pleas and footnotes. The Shakespearean parallels aren’t particularly integral to the plot, and the twists, Como’s sign apart, are more inscrutable than clever. The book comes complete with multiple appendices and Ford’s illustrations (not seen for review).
Clay is Everykid enough (“almost handsome, in a dried-snot-on-his-sleeve sort of way”) to keep readers hanging around to see what happens to him next. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-316-32038-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Thrilling steamship adventure overcomes wobbly worldbuilding
A pirate ship plies the garbage-strewn and poisonous seas of a late 21st century finally recovering from the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano.
Toby is the 14-year-old chief engineer of the Phoenix in a world with poisonous oceans, where the sun has emerged at last from the starving decades of the Darkness and where England has been long overthrown by the military dictatorship of St. George. Despite the backbreaking work of finding salvage in the deadly, acid waters, Toby's life isn't so bad: he loves his job; his best friend is an animatronic AI parrot; and he's just met someone his own age for the first time. Hiko is a scruffy young stowaway who earns a berth helping Toby rescue the Phoenix in a deadly storm. But the storm is just the beginning of bad luck for the (mostly lovable) pirate crew. They must escape the Phoenix's nemesis, the killers that crew pirate captain Nell's Banshee, while repairing their own ship in a possibly hostile port. Copious violence ensues (though remarkably little death), and Toby must seek an alliance with Capt. Nell's remarkably pretty and remarkably vicious 15-year-old daughter if the day’s to be saved for the multiethnic and multinational crew (of the main characters, only half-Japanese, half-unspecified Hiko has an identifiable ethnicity). Although the resources and agriculture described are often inconsistent with the 40-year, tree-killing Darkness, mostly solid plotting and a deft setup for Volume 2 should keep many readers happy.
Thrilling steamship adventure overcomes wobbly worldbuilding . (Science fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5107-0734-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
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