An open, imaginative work of YA science fiction.
Human teens attempt to preserve their home on an alien world in Wright’s YA debut.
On the distant moon Sahara, where night lasts 27 hours and is lit by the blue-green glow of a nearby gas giant, human colonists do battle with the chimeras native to this strange world. Rumor has been training to fight them since his mother was killed years ago, but during an overwhelming attack on his settlement, he isn’t able to save his father. Nyx is deaf, though the moon beneath her feet speaks to her in strange ways, encouraging her to abandon her settlement and live among the rebels of the forest. Jude is one of these rebels, seeking peace between the humans and chimeras, which are beings with “great wings and long fingers and mountainous crags of teeth connected to jaws that could crush stars and inhale comets.” Braeden is the son of his settlement’s leader and suspects that the cause of the attacks might have something do with the chimera that his parents imprisoned in their basement. As the enemy prepares for another attack, these four teens will have to find a way to put a stop to the conflict, which will likely end in the annihilation of humans from Sahara’s surface. They only have 27 hours to complete this task, and given the way things have been going, it will be a miracle if any of them survive the long night. Wright writes in a snappy prose that serves the book’s tense action sequences: “The gargoyle launched, clawing the air where he’d just stood. It landed on the other side of him, sliding in the loose gravel as Rumor rolled and came up to a crouch, his blades ready.” The pacing is swift, and the storyline leaps among the perspectives of the four main characters in a way that gradually builds the reader’s understanding of the situation. In addition to its captivating humans-versus-monsters premise, the book features an admirably broad treatment of gender and sexuality—LGBT and asexual characters serve as the norm rather than the exception—in this futuristic world. Readers will come away hoping that further installments are in the works.
An open, imaginative work of YA science fiction.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63375-820-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Aspiring filmmaker/first-novelist Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angst—the right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists, though some might object to the sexuality, drinking, and dope-smoking. More sophisticated readers might object to the rip-off of Salinger, though Chbosky pays homage by having his protagonist read Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden, Charlie oozes sincerity, rails against celebrity phoniness, and feels an extraliterary bond with his favorite writers (Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, etc.). But Charlie’s no rich kid: the third child in a middle-class family, he attends public school in western Pennsylvania, has an older brother who plays football at Penn State, and an older sister who worries about boys a lot. An epistolary novel addressed to an anonymous “friend,” Charlie’s letters cover his first year in high school, a time haunted by the recent suicide of his best friend. Always quick to shed tears, Charlie also feels guilty about the death of his Aunt Helen, a troubled woman who lived with Charlie’s family at the time of her fatal car wreck. Though he begins as a friendless observer, Charlie is soon pals with seniors Patrick and Sam (for Samantha), stepsiblings who include Charlie in their circle, where he smokes pot for the first time, drops acid, and falls madly in love with the inaccessible Sam. His first relationship ends miserably because Charlie remains compulsively honest, though he proves a loyal friend (to Patrick when he’s gay-bashed) and brother (when his sister needs an abortion). Depressed when all his friends prepare for college, Charlie has a catatonic breakdown, which resolves itself neatly and reveals a long-repressed truth about Aunt Helen. A plain-written narrative suggesting that passivity, and thinking too much, lead to confusion and anxiety. Perhaps the folks at (co-publisher) MTV see the synergy here with Daria or any number of videos by the sensitive singer-songwriters they feature.
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-02734-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: MTV Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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