A paranormal romance confirms that, indeed, hell is hell.
A convoluted sequence of events finds university-bound foster kid Lela, 17, dead. She wakes up in a paradisaical countryside—which she rejects in order to enter the Suicide Gates to save her best friend, Nadia, who killed herself a week before. Within the gates, hapless embodied souls wander aimlessly in an urban landscape of utter misery, kept in by Guards and threatened by Mazikin, who steal their bodies and condemn their souls to who-knows-where. Lela quickly draws the attention of both Guards and Mazikin, persuading the incredibly hot Malachi, human Captain of the Guard, to help her rescue Nadia. Fine’s gloomy city of suicides and the rules that govern it will draw readers in, though the motives of the thoroughly evil Mazikin are unclear. Her theology is equally fuzzy; readers who want to find the overt Christianity implied by the concept may need to wait for subsequent volumes. Theology be damned, though: Lela and Malachi are both likable protagonists, and readers will be happy (though not surprised) to find them drawn together; the supporting cast among the Guards is also strong. A touch of homoerotic creepiness to hammer home the evil of the Mazikin will distress many readers. This flaw notwithstanding, this trilogy opener has a lot going for it. (Paranormal romance. 14 & up)
Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Amazon Children's Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
“Death is a period / at the end of a sentence,” concludes Annaleah, the 16-year-old protagonist of Schutz’s captivating fictional follow-up to her verse memoir (I Don’t Want To Be Crazy, 2006). And much like the resolute finality fixed in that tiny dot, Annaleah spends a great deal of this free-verse novel stuck contemplating the harsh reality that her sometime boyfriend, Brian—a seemingly healthy, dark-haired, cloudy-blue–eyed 17-year-old—has just dropped dead on the basketball court. Reeling from both physical loss and lack of closure to the meaning of their clandestine relationship, Annaleah finds herself routinely visiting and addressing the deceased Brian, until a chance graveside encounter yields advice that finally begins to hit home: “Nothing grows here,” says Brian’s grandmother, “besides grass.” At first blush appearing to pull out all the melodramatic stops in classic teen fashion, these refreshingly spare lines tackle tough relational issues—intimacy, risk, abandonment—with aplomb, making for a moving tale that also effectively shows teens how life can go on. (Fiction/poetry. 14 & up)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 970-0-545-16911-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: PUSH/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
A boarding-school story set in the aftermath of the Rhodesian Civil War examines evil from all sides and provides no easy answers. The Haven School for boys is anything but for narrator Robert Jacklin. When the boy arrives from England at 13, the son of a liberal intellectual attached to the British Embassy, he initially makes friends with one of the school's few black students, but he quickly learns that safety and acceptance are among the school's white elite. Over the course of the next five years he changes from likable milquetoast into a thug's accessory, understanding and hating but choosing to ignore his moral compromise. Wallace, in his debut, draws on his own childhood in post-revolutionary Zimbabwe to inform this grimly magnetic snapshot of petty evil. In many regards, it's a classic boarding-school novel, full of A Separate Peace–like inevitability; narrator Robert is liberal with "had I but known" statements foreshadowing some kind of doom. But as Robert's mentor in brutality becomes ever more unhinged, the tension ratchets up and the book turns into a first-rate, surprisingly believable thriller. In its portrayal of race relations in a wounded country as well as of the ugly power dynamics of a community of adolescent boys, this novel excels, bringing readers up to the grim, uncertain present with mastery. (Historical fiction. 14 & up)
Pub Date: April 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2342-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
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