An appealing, space-age Robin Hood/Huckleberry Finn combo.
In Miltenberg’s (Thank God, 2013, etc.) middle-grade SF novel, a student’s inability to follow instructions during an intergalactic “Career Day” lands him on Earth.
Ryon XYQZ-4973 is proud to be the worst student in the Rigel-Z star system. He regularly finds himself facing disciplinary action from his crabby teacher robot for various offenses, including hacking the school’s system to change his and his classmates’ grades and turning a space-bus invisible. Unsurprisingly, Ryon doesn’t follow the rules during a class trip to the Grand Central Pan Galactic Port Authority Library Museum and Gift Shop; as a result, he’s accidentally transported to Earth. He’s soon taken in by Melissa and Grant Brooks as their ninth foster child. Someone mishears his name as Ryan O’Ryan, and he doesn’t bother to correct them. Instead, he makes several unsuccessful attempts to use his “smartwear”—a full-body suit comprised of “nano-machines”—to return home, and he eventually resigns himself to staying with the Brooks family for the immediate future. He continues creating havoc, however, much to his foster siblings’ amusement—and soon, he even finds himself saving the world. He also stops trying to get home, as he’s happy to simply be “the worst student on Earth.” Miltenberg’s sense of humor makes this book a delightful read. For example, as part of an onion-themed recurring gag, the children attend “Los Miserobles Middle School, Home Of The Fierce Crying Onions,” complete with a giant onion mascot. That said, some other jokes feel crass, such as a character with the surname “Nonads.” Ryon’s humorous predicaments are often the result of good-hearted ambitions gone awry, which makes him a lovable, relatable character. Over the course of the story, Miltenberg tastefully dips into some serious topics, as well, such as immigration, and includes real-life science facts.
An appealing, space-age Robin Hood/Huckleberry Finn combo.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-69784-615-7
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Above-average formula fiction, making full display of the author’s strong suits: sense of place, compassion for characters...
Female rivalry is again the main preoccupation of Hannah’s latest Pacific Northwest sob saga (Firefly Lane, 2008, etc.).
At Water’s Edge, the family seat overlooking Hood Canal, Vivi Ann, youngest and prettiest of the Grey sisters and a champion horsewoman, has persuaded embittered patriarch Henry to turn the tumbledown ranch into a Western-style equestrian arena. Eldest sister Winona, a respected lawyer in the nearby village of Oyster Shores, hires taciturn ranch hand Dallas Raintree, a half-Native American. Middle sister Aurora, stay-at-home mother of twins, languishes in a dull marriage. Winona, overweight since adolescence, envies Vivi, whose looks get her everything she wants, especially men. Indeed, Winona’s childhood crush Luke recently proposed to Vivi. Despite Aurora’s urging (her principal role is as sisterly referee), Winona won’t tell Vivi she loves Luke. Yearning for Dallas, Vivi stands up Luke to fall into bed with the enigmatic, tattooed cowboy. Winona snitches to Luke: engagement off. Vivi marries Dallas over Henry’s objections. The love-match triumphs, and Dallas, though scarred by child abuse, is an exemplary father to son Noah. One Christmas Eve, the town floozy is raped and murdered. An eyewitness and forensic evidence incriminate Dallas. Winona refuses to represent him, consigning him to the inept services of a public defender. After a guilty verdict, he’s sentenced to life without parole. A decade later, Winona has reached an uneasy truce with Vivi, who’s still pining for Dallas. Noah is a sullen teen, Aurora a brittle but resigned divorcée. Noah learns about the Seattle Innocence Project. Could modern DNA testing methods exonerate Dallas? Will Aunt Winona redeem herself by reopening the case? The outcome, while predictable, is achieved with more suspense and less sentimental histrionics than usual for Hannah.
Above-average formula fiction, making full display of the author’s strong suits: sense of place, compassion for characters and understanding of family dynamics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-36410-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2008
Kin “[find] each other’s lives inscrutable” in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.
Inseparable identical twin sisters ditch home together, and then one decides to vanish.
The talented Bennett fuels her fiction with secrets—first in her lauded debut, The Mothers (2016), and now in the assured and magnetic story of the Vignes sisters, light-skinned women parked on opposite sides of the color line. Desiree, the “fidgety twin,” and Stella, “a smart, careful girl,” make their break from stultifying rural Mallard, Louisiana, becoming 16-year-old runaways in 1954 New Orleans. The novel opens 14 years later as Desiree, fleeing a violent marriage in D.C., returns home with a different relative: her 8-year-old daughter, Jude. The gossips are agog: “In Mallard, nobody married dark....Marrying a dark man and dragging his blueblack child all over town was one step too far.” Desiree's decision seals Jude’s misery in this “colorstruck” place and propels a new generation of flight: Jude escapes on a track scholarship to UCLA. Tending bar as a side job in Beverly Hills, she catches a glimpse of her mother’s doppelgänger. Stella, ensconced in White society, is shedding her fur coat. Jude, so Black that strangers routinely stare, is unrecognizable to her aunt. All this is expertly paced, unfurling before the book is half finished; a reader can guess what is coming. Bennett is deeply engaged in the unknowability of other people and the scourge of colorism. The scene in which Stella adopts her White persona is a tour de force of doubling and confusion. It calls up Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the book's 50-year-old antecedent. Bennett's novel plays with its characters' nagging feelings of being incomplete—for the twins without each other; for Jude’s boyfriend, Reese, who is trans and seeks surgery; for their friend Barry, who performs in drag as Bianca. Bennett keeps all these plot threads thrumming and her social commentary crisp. In the second half, Jude spars with her cousin Kennedy, Stella's daughter, a spoiled actress.
Kin “[find] each other’s lives inscrutable” in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53629-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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