Sweet teen reading for fans of X-Men, Star Trek and all things geeky.
This teen sci-fi debut features a nerdy heroine who can add and subtract objects from reality.
For Josie Harper’s 17th birthday, her boyfriend dumps her. Worse, she hasn’t seen her father in a month, and her summer internship at a physics lab has fallen through. She misses her deceased brother, Nick, and nothing seems right, until the darkly handsome Reid Wentworth arrives at Oceanside High on his motorcycle. He gets Josie away from her overprotective mother to explain that he—and she, now that she’s of age—have the power to Push reality; they can create inanimate objects at will, contingent on being able to visualize them. They can also Retract objects that have been Pushed, making Reid and Josie Anomalies. The catch is that both gifts draw from a finite reservoir of energy, and depleting it brings mental and physical degeneration. Reid then informs Josie that the Schrodinger Consortium wants to kill them (and others like them, called Oculi), but as a member of the Resistance, he can protect and train her. Josie is reluctant to trust Reid and his partner, Santos, but the more she contemplates her father’s absence and her mother’s work as a neurological researcher, she realizes her life isn’t quite what she thinks it is. Debut author Kuper’s sleek prose—saturated with pop-culture references—invites both nerds and the uninitiated into the world of the Oculi. “Thank Thor,” Josie says, as well as adorably dorky things like “even though he could be an underwear model, I would’ve rather made out with a Romulan.” Nods to quantum theory abound, too, with normal, non-Pushers called “Plancks,” after the physicist. The chemistry between Reid and Josie is solid, despite an underwhelming secret connection. Problematic, however, is Reid’s assertion that “We can’t Push anything with a soul,” meaning anything living or dead; Josie eventually Pushes trees and yet later cannot Push a viral serum. Aside from these slippery details, the narrative redeems itself through great twists and the positive message that reality is ours to shape.
Sweet teen reading for fans of X-Men, Star Trek and all things geeky.Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-1622664054
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wrought with admirable skill—the emptiness and menace underlying this Utopia emerge step by inexorable step: a richly...
In a radical departure from her realistic fiction and comic chronicles of Anastasia, Lowry creates a chilling, tightly controlled future society where all controversy, pain, and choice have been expunged, each childhood year has its privileges and responsibilities, and family members are selected for compatibility.
As Jonas approaches the "Ceremony of Twelve," he wonders what his adult "Assignment" will be. Father, a "Nurturer," cares for "newchildren"; Mother works in the "Department of Justice"; but Jonas's admitted talents suggest no particular calling. In the event, he is named "Receiver," to replace an Elder with a unique function: holding the community's memories—painful, troubling, or prone to lead (like love) to disorder; the Elder ("The Giver") now begins to transfer these memories to Jonas. The process is deeply disturbing; for the first time, Jonas learns about ordinary things like color, the sun, snow, and mountains, as well as love, war, and death: the ceremony known as "release" is revealed to be murder. Horrified, Jonas plots escape to "Elsewhere," a step he believes will return the memories to all the people, but his timing is upset by a decision to release a newchild he has come to love. Ill-equipped, Jonas sets out with the baby on a desperate journey whose enigmatic conclusion resonates with allegory: Jonas may be a Christ figure, but the contrasts here with Christian symbols are also intriguing.
Wrought with admirable skill—the emptiness and menace underlying this Utopia emerge step by inexorable step: a richly provocative novel. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 978-0-395-64566-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1993
Somberly beautiful.
A girl goes in search of her missing sister and discovers a strange hidden world of dreams.
Corin, who’s 18 and dark-skinned, strives to protect her 12-year-old sister, Elly. But life as a thief is full of struggle, poverty, and loss, even without Corin’s avoidance of other relationships. Elly clings to the promise of fairy tales, like the one that says a princess lies sleeping in an underground castle after pricking her finger on a spindle. After the sisters fight and Elly runs off, Corin searches for her in Gyldan’s old network of tunnels—and finds the tale is true: Cursed Princess Amelia, golden-haired, with eyes like “sea glass” and porcelain skin, lies asleep, surrounded by flowers. Corin enters the princess’ dreamworld—the place “where your subconscious desires come to life.” She meets Briar Rose, Amelia’s alter ego, who experienced her share of sadness and wanted to fall asleep. Also in the dreamworld is green-skinned Malicine, the nonbinary demon who, despite having placed the curse of eternal slumber on Amelia, is mostly friendly. All three are running from things they can’t face, though the dreamworld may not give them a choice. Pham’s debut, a Sapphic reimagining of “Sleeping Beauty,” explores mental health and asks a lot of readers as it seesaws between emotional confrontations, time jumps, and scenes where one character inhabits the memories of another, all of which demand intense engagement. Still, the ending is earned as well as positive.
Somberly beautiful. (content note) (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9798217113026
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Kokila
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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