Despite third-act flaws, an exciting YA Christian thriller.
Capitalizing on The Hunger Games’ teen-vs.-totalitarianism formula while adding a religious spin, this action-packed first novel follows a teenager fleeing authorities in a repressive future society.
Sixteen-year-old Chrissie, a fledgling Christian, embarks on her titular run after the atheistic government of the New Republic mandates that her deformed baby be aborted. Despite the book’s clearly religious focus, the story never falls into ham-handed preachiness or unsatisfying deus ex machina (aside from one character’s return from an Obi-Wan Kenobi death). Instead, the novel handles its convictions in a method accessible to any reader. Since Chrissie wants to keep her baby, its mandated abortion is abhorrent to all political views, and even an atheist could agree that religious persecution is wrong. (The latter theme also benefits from Mahan’s drawing historic parallels to the persecution of early Christians.) Mahan shows the same deftness with her thriller writing as she does with the religious threads. Chrissie’s tense flight evokes paranoia as the authorities employ clairvoyants and offer a reward for finding her. Her protectors are futuristic presentations of biblical figures like Moses and Samson, while the bad guys are nasty, ruthless supervillains, making for great comic book–like action. The only real nits to pick come in the last third of the book. In captured Chrissie’s re-education center, a “was it all in your head” twist isn’t given enough time to toy with the audience. Elsewhere, the execution-happy New Republic shifts in its attitudes toward her baby, Daniel, conveniently opting to keep him alive to milk his powers. A clumsily written final chapter sets up a sequel.
Despite third-act flaws, an exciting YA Christian thriller.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1629025018
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Tate Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
