Readers will find heroines with more gumption, more interesting worlds, and possibly better shoes elsewhere
A high school sophomore from deep space struggles to adjust to her new life on Earth.
Amy lives with her mother and father on a mining colony. When her father loses his job after a fuel-line accident, the three of them are deported to Earth. Amy is desolate over leaving her best friend, Jemmah, behind but departs on the 30-year trip in cryogenic stasis. At her new school in Kokomo City, Amy encounters physical and social challenges. She is weak from the change in gravity and has no classes with anyone her age, and everyone is constantly plugged into the internet via their “net gear” glasses. Meanwhile, a nameless boy is burdened by an invisible darkness, an archaeologist is mysteriously murdered, and a ship full of humans travels toward an enigmatic Artifact. The premise is intriguing, and the art is evocative, especially when it conveys loneliness, disorientation, and melancholy. However, sci-fi fans may be disappointed by a future in which the tech is all too familiar and uninspired by the passive heroine who mopes around in curve-hugging outfits and shoes so pointy that her feet seem nonexistent. Amy is white, but this future is diverse, with multiracial supporting characters (Amy’s “reintegration manager” displays cartoonishly stereotypical Asian features).
Readers will find heroines with more gumption, more interesting worlds, and possibly better shoes elsewhere . (Graphic science fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-50670-648-1
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Dark Horse
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
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