An adventurous tale of resourceful but vulnerable kids that respects its young audience.
After an attack on an interplanetary economic summit, a boy fights for his life with street kids on a corrupt planet in Sasaki’s (Amazing Grace, 2018, etc.) YA sci-fi novel.
In the 24th century, space-going humanity has spread to planets far and wide. Hiro Philippe Al-Fadi of the planet Westrom is the son of a high-ranking ambassador to alien races. His father is also the co-chairman of the upcoming 2315 Economic Summit of the USS, a galactic gathering of rich, powerful, and potentially treacherous factions. Hiro, who’s more interested in the latest video games, grudgingly accompanies his parents to the summit venue—the planet Plaisir, an adult-oriented gambling, sex, and convention mecca. Hiro finds the place tacky and distasteful (“One could buy anything on Plaisir but at the cost of someone else’s innocence or dignity or even life. It was horrible”), but he quickly makes friends with the only other kid at the summit: diminutive Jude Luis Stefansson, the son of another ambassador. When explosions tear their hotel-casino apart and Jude’s longtime personal bodyguard turns against them, the two become fugitives on the run from powerful conspirators in Plaisir’s hierarchy. The boys hide with a gang of unwanted children who roam the shadows and avoid robot exterminators and deathtraps. Author Sasaki offers a violent adventure with a young protagonist who initially seems like an affluent gamer in over his head, but who surprisingly quickly evolves into a kid-of-action, not unlike an adolescent Han Solo. His Mission: Impossible-like schemes to turn the tables and get justice sometimes get sidetracked, though, by wordy bickering and flashbacks of other kids’ traumatic childhoods. Although the fearful conspiracy grows and grows, the sadistic villains at the center of it remain undeveloped stick figures in thickets of intrigue. Still, Sasaki tempers the derring-do with emotional moments of loss and sacrifice as Hiro and Jude learn the hard way about poverty and depravity in their society.
An adventurous tale of resourceful but vulnerable kids that respects its young audience.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Oddoc Books
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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