With eco-thrillers rapidly becoming the new vampire romance, it takes a special one to stand out. Laura Brown’s diary of her life in the year after the Great Storm, the year England rations carbon use, transcends the genre’s didacticism. While London suffers floods, droughts, riots and disease, Laura’s self-centeredness—she just wants to play with her band and date cute Ravi from next door—keeps her story grounded. The everyday matter of young-adult fiction, from dating to parental divorce to failing grades, are equally meaningful when set against a backdrop of cholera and black markets. The diary format contributes to readers’ sense of the frenetic pace of Laura’s collapsing world, and the solidly realized London setting provides contrast to the Blitz Spirit of World War II. While the adults of London revert to crazed, self-obsessed philosophies, the teenagers just try to create a present and a future in a world destroyed. None of these Londoners is perfect, least of all Laura, but in a hellish year they all learn to get over themselves. Enough, at least. (Science fiction. 13-15)
Pub Date: April 22, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2190-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2009
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A century before the events of Clare’s Mortal Instruments trilogy, another everyday heroine gets entangled with demon-slaying Shadowhunters. Sixteen-year-old orphaned Tessa comes to London to join her brother but is imprisoned by the grotesque Dark Sisters. The sisters train the unwilling Tessa in previously unknown shapeshifter abilities, preparing her to be a pawn in some diabolical plan. A timely rescue brings Tessa to the Institute, where a group of misfit Shadowhunters struggles to fight evil. Though details differ, the general flavor of Tessa’s new family will be enjoyably familiar to the earlier trilogy’s fans; the most important is Tessa’s rescuer Will, the gorgeous, sharp-tongued teenager with a mysterious past and a smile like “Lucifer might have smiled, moments before he fell from Heaven.” The lush, melodramatic urban fantasy setting of the Shadowhunter world morphs seamlessly into a steampunk Victorian past, and this new series provides the setup for what will surely be a climactic battle against hordes of demonically powered brass clockworks. The tale drags in places, but this crowdpleaser’s tension-filled conclusion ratchets toward a new set of mysteries. (Steampunk. 13-15)
Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4169-7586-1
Page Count: 496
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
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Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION
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