A non-stop ride from beginning to end, this installment is well constructed, larded with frequent and often violent action...
In this sequel to Z. Rex (2009), Cole picks up the action with barely time to take a breath.
Thirteen-year-old Adam Adlar still has nightmares of trying to avoid the highly advanced, scientifically engineered dinosaurs that his father unwittingly helped create. Coming to New York City for Christmas vacation with his dad, he sets out from the hotel for a lunch date only to be kidnapped by the FBI. The next thing he knows, Adam’s on a boat in the Pacific Ocean, under attack by underwater creatures. Washing ashore on uncharted Raptor Island, scrambling to stay out of jaw- and claw-range from the locals (the island's name is no coincidence), Adam is lucky enough to run across other humans. Unfortunately, it turns out that they were also kidnapped, and not by anyone as benevolent as the FBI. With the raptor population on the island divided between two different types and one unusually intelligent velociraptor helping the humans trapped there, it seems that everyone is part of an experiment to see who will survive. Cole mercifully builds back story into his exposition to orient readers and then steps on it.
A non-stop ride from beginning to end, this installment is well constructed, larded with frequent and often violent action and reads even better than the first, leaving plenty of room for another book yet to come. (Science fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: June 9, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25254-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
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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