The book closes with drama enough for a sequel; action-happy readers will be hoping for it
A steampunk thriller uses Victorian science as a framework for cinematic monster goofiness in 1838 London.
It's been six months since 15-year-old Julius Caesar Higgins' last time-travel adventure (Julius and the Watchmaker, 2014), but it seems he has to save the world yet again. Together with his guttersnipe BFF, Emily, Julius has to defeat a passel of villains perfect for animation: tiny, odd-faced Mr. Tock; a pair of comical-but-dangerous thugs, one short and solid, the other tall and "thin as a workhouse dog" with a face "like a stalactite"; Abigail, the murderous automaton made of forks and knives and pocket watches, like a 10-foot praying mantis crossed with a spider; and countless ambulatory, zombifying, soul-catching orchids that pull themselves from their pots and chase their victims. In a twist, they travel through time and temporarily look like “native” children in a village in Brazil, “gone all brown.” (The characters otherwise all appear to be white; Emily speaks in exaggerated, spelled-out lower-class English: "Frough wot?"; "I wasn't planning on nicking naffing.") There they visit Charles Darwin, who in history at this point was visiting local botanical gardens and documenting insects but who here is ineffectually rescuing nonverbal native children from the soul-catchers, which leave their hosts planted husks, like some sort of Anne Geddes or Giuseppe Arcimboldo portrait gone horrifically wrong. Julius’ self-talk, printed in italics, peppers the text: “Concentrate, Higgins.”
The book closes with drama enough for a sequel; action-happy readers will be hoping for it . (Steampunk. 11-13)Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-925240-17-7
Page Count: 337
Publisher: Text
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones.
An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named “Jack Gantos.”
The gore is all Jack’s, which to his continuing embarrassment “would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames” whenever anything exciting or upsetting happens. And that would be on every other page, seemingly, as even though Jack’s feuding parents unite to ground him for the summer after several mishaps, he does get out. He mixes with the undertaker’s daughter, a band of Hell’s Angels out to exact fiery revenge for a member flattened in town by a truck and, especially, with arthritic neighbor Miss Volker, for whom he furnishes the “hired hands” that transcribe what becomes a series of impassioned obituaries for the local paper as elderly town residents suddenly begin passing on in rapid succession. Eventually the unusual body count draws the—justified, as it turns out—attention of the police. Ultimately, the obits and the many Landmark Books that Jack reads (this is 1962) in his hours of confinement all combine in his head to broaden his perspective about both history in general and the slow decline his own town is experiencing.
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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