Kincaid’s sequel to Insignia (2012) moves beyond derivative fun to real depth.
Ever-rebellious Tom Raines has advanced with his pals Vik and Wyatt to Middle Company at the Pentagonal Spire. They’ve reached the level where they need to cultivate corporate sponsors in order to join the elite virtual warriors who conduct the ongoing space-based war between the Russo-Chinese and Indo-American alliances for control of the moon. Tom may be preternaturally great at virtual-war skillz, but he is horrible at sucking up and almost immediately alienates every single multinational corporate head he needs to impress. Meanwhile, Tom continues to pursue his odd but intense secret relationship with crack Russo-Chinese combatant Medusa and begins to suspect that Yuri, their Russian friend at the Spire, whom Wyatt “unscrambled” in the first book, may not be as innocent as they had thought. Kincaid lays a lot down, twining her increasingly complex plot and characterizations with Tom’s growing awareness of the poisonous “military-industrial-media complex.” As Eisenhower feared, it has made war a way of life that enriches a very few and impoverishes the many—one corporate head has bought Yosemite as his own private playground, one of many unsubtle but all-too-plausible symbols Tom contemplates. Action fans, fear not: For all the deep thinking Tom and readers undertake, pace, adventure and fun are not compromised one whit. A surprisingly and satisfyingly rich middle volume in a trilogy that exceeds popcorn expectations. (Science fiction. 13-16)
Pub Date: July 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-209302-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
An enjoyable, if predictable, romantic holiday story.
Is an exuberant extended family the cure for a breakup? Sophie is about to find out.
When Sophie unexpectedly breaks up with her boyfriend, she isn’t thrilled about spending the holidays at her grandparents’ house instead of with him. And when her grandmother forms a plan to distract Sophie from her broken heart—10 blind dates, each set up by different family members—she’s even less thrilled. Everyone gets involved with the matchmaking, even forming a betting pool on the success of each date. But will Sophie really find someone to fill the space left by her ex? Will her ex get wind of Sophie’s dating spree via social media and want them to get back together? Is that what she even wants anymore? This is a fun story of finding love, getting to know yourself, and getting to know your family. The pace is quick and light, though the characters are fairly shallow and occasionally feel interchangeable, especially with so many names involved. A Christmas tale, the plot is a fast-paced series of dinners, parties, and games, relayed in both narrative form and via texts, though the humor occasionally feels stiff and overwrought. The ending is satisfying, though largely unsurprising. Most characters default to white as members of Sophie’s Italian American extended family, although one of her cousins has a Filipina mother. One uncle is gay.
An enjoyable, if predictable, romantic holiday story. (Fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-368-02749-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
A glossy repackaging of a jejune tale.
A reissue of the 2016 novel published as Consider.
Alexandra Lucas and her boyfriend, Dominick, are about to start their senior year of high school when 500 vertexes—each one a doorway-shaped “hole into the fabric of the universe”—appear across the world, accompanied by holographic messages communicating news of Earth’s impending doom. The only escape is a one-way trip through the portals to a parallel future Earth. As people leave through the vertexes and the extinction event draws nearer, the world becomes increasingly unfamiliar. A lot has changed in the past several years, including expectations of mental health depictions in young adult literature; Alex’s struggle with anxiety and reliance on Ativan, which she calls her “little white savior” while initially discounting therapy as an intervention, make for a trite after-school special–level treatment of a complex situation; a short stint of effective therapy does finally occur but is so limited in duration that it contributes to the oversimplification of the topic. Alex also has unresolved issues with her Gulf War veteran father (who possibly grapples with PTSD). The slow pace of the plot as it depicts a crumbling society, along with stilted writing and insubstantial secondary characterization, limits the appeal of such a small-scale, personal story. Characters are minimally described and largely racially ambiguous; Alex has golden skin and curly brown hair.
A glossy repackaging of a jejune tale. (Science fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-72826-839-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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