A familiar plot takes a winding, ultimately rewarding path.
Springer (Zachary, 2017, etc.) presents book two in his sci-fi series about genetically enhanced teenagers.
Zachary sleeps little, ages quickly, and uses a wheelchair while living in a facility that trains children to be soldiers. Although Zachary would love to play baseball like a nondisabled kid, his fate is intertwined with those of the others in the facility he calls home, which doesn’t include any time on the field. The children may get treated to occasional movie night screenings of Avatar or Caddyshack, but their focus is on military tactics and the development of supernatural powers. The children learn from adults called Ascendants who help them develop gifts that range from telepathy to the ability to change the molecular structure of an object. This training culminates in a contest that pits two teams of children against each other. It will require quick thinking as well as the use of the powers the children have been working so hard to harness. One team is led by Zachary, who by that point no longer uses his wheelchair, while the other is led by his rival, a sinister youngster named Victor. Will Zachary and his team learn to harness their burgeoning abilities and work together? The idea of gifted youngsters joining forces may be a well-trod path, but the novel incorporates many nuanced issues (sometimes ham-handedly: Zachary uses a wheelchair, but he only realizes his goals upon leaving it). The Ascendants have their own special powers, but they are far from content with their situation. While the dialogue isn’t always inspired (“Teamwork will be the key to winning”), a substantive plot keeps the pages turning. Whether or not Zachary and his team win the competition (and whether or not teamwork is the key to that victory) takes a back seat to the uncanny, imaginative details of the world in which such a competition exists. Who exactly is this emperor everyone is serving and what are his plans? Such questions keep the story thrumming until the very end.
A familiar plot takes a winding, ultimately rewarding path.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68433-017-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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