Readers young and old will adore the buoyancy of this dystopian adventure.
A middle-grade fantasy about two boys who are separated from their parents during the reign of a petty despot.
In the Lands of Yonder is the town of Middlemost, where everyone is welcome. Adele and Kale Brandiwygn live there with their identical twin infants, Charles and James. They tell the kids apart by putting bracelets on them, labeled “C” and “J.” One day, Count Wilhelm Scream arrives in the Lands, declaring himself Supreme Ruler. He lives in Castle Mirkstone and dispatches a Special Police force to enslave anyone who disagrees with him. Naturally, the citizens of Middlemost try to resist the Count, and they hold secret meetings to strategize. The Brandiwygns host one such gathering; during it, the Special Police break in and haul the rebels toward wagons that will bring them to a prison on Mount Count. Other Middlemost folk, including Zach and Becky Zuckerman, watch in horror. Adele and Kale hurl their babies into the crowd before they’re captured, and the Zuckermans catch them. Twelve years later, Charles and James are now known as Casper and Jasper, and they live with the Zuckermans in Inglenook. Adele and Kale have been toiling away in separate camps, maintaining hope for the family’s reunion someday. The twins soon go on an adventure, battling various supernatural creatures along the way, to make that happen. In this darkly mirthful tale, Jacobs (Second Helpings at the Serve You Right Café, 2015) embraces the difficult task of depicting a fascist society for a young audience. Many of her concepts—such as the textbook Adele must teach, Science and Other Lies—earn a laugh, but underneath it all is the idea that people like the Count can and do ruin real countries. However, the fact that the characters battle against him and his policies will remind readers that “the life of the mind confers a peculiar kind of liberty,” as the Brandiwygns learn in captivity. Jacobs’ prose is exceptionally bouncy in tone: “The boys were bright as comets and tough as tungsten.” Throughout, the twins’ fights with trolls and man-eating marshmallows, among other monsters, remain engaging.
Readers young and old will adore the buoyancy of this dystopian adventure.Pub Date: June 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-949048-00-1
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Linden Tree Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
