A violent, madcap, frequently entertaining scramble.
After years hiding out in plain sight, a royal heir sparks a revolution in his conquered city.
Despite brutal repression, rebellion is already simmering in Khul, renamed “Slave City” after the bloody invasion by the lighter-skinned Policy Makers six years before. When the arrival of the Policy Makers’ imperial Roc and his 13-year-old daughter, Fidelis, on a state visit sets off a coup attempt by his own subordinates, events escalate. The whirl of intrigue and increasing tensions catches up young Avtar—disguised since the murder of his royal parents as a flour-covered “Ghosty Boy” in the castle bakery—and culminates in a wild series of attacks, betrayals, chases, revelations, encounters on hidden staircases and improbable alliances. Just for fun, Jones also stirs in a flatulent lap dog and a prank that sends most of the Roc’s entourage hustling for the toilets, as well as providing amusing interchanges aplenty (“ ‘Did he really call me an untrusting cow?’…‘Who’d call you untrusting?’ he asked. ‘Or a cow?’ he added, just in time”). There are also a massive climactic storm and so many extremely convenient coincidences that it’s obvious some unseen supernatural player is at work. Sequels are certain, since the closing détente leaves almost everything unresolved.
A violent, madcap, frequently entertaining scramble. (Fantasy. 11-14)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-9084-5812-4
Page Count: 349
Publisher: Inside Pocket
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
In an unnamed country (a thinly veiled Philippines), three teenage boys pick trash for a meager living. A bag of cash in the trash might be—well, not their ticket out of poverty but at least a minor windfall. With 1,100 pesos, maybe they can eat chicken occasionally, instead of just rice. Gardo and Raphael are determined not to give any of it to the police who've been sniffing around, so they enlist their friend Rat. In alternating and tightly paced points of view, supplemented by occasional other voices, the boys relate the intrigue in which they're quickly enmeshed. A murdered houseboy, an orphaned girl, a treasure map, a secret code, corrupt politicians and 10,000,000 missing dollars: It all adds up to a cracker of a thriller. Sadly, the setting relies on Third World poverty tourism for its flavor, as if this otherwise enjoyable caper were being told by Olivia, the story's British charity worker who muses with vacuous sentimentality on the children that "break your heart" and "change your life." Nevertheless, a zippy and classic briefcase-full-of-money thrill ride. (Thriller. 12-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-75214-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: David Fickling/Random
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
Much rousing sturm und drang, though what’s left after the dust settles is a heap of glittering but disparate good parts...
Scott tops off his deservedly popular series with a heaping shovelful of monster attacks, heroic last stands, earthquakes and other geological events, magic-working, millennia-long schemes coming to fruition, hearts laid bare, family revelations, transformations, redemptions and happy endings (for those deserving them).
Multiple plotlines—some of which, thanks to time travel, feature the same characters and even figures killed off in previous episodes—come to simultaneous heads in a whirl of short chapters. Flamel and allies (including Prometheus and Billy the Kid) defend modern San Francisco from a motley host of mythological baddies. Meanwhile, in ancient Danu Talis (aka Atlantis), Josh and Sophie are being swept into a play to bring certain Elders to power as the city’s downtrodden “humani” population rises up behind Virginia Dare, the repentant John Dee and other Immortals and Elders. The cast never seems unwieldy despite its size, the pacing never lets up, and the individual set pieces are fine mixtures of sudden action, heroic badinage and cliffhanger cutoffs. As a whole, though, the tale collapses under its own weight as the San Francisco subplots turn out to be no more than an irrelevant sideshow, and climactic conflicts take place on an island that is somehow both a historical, physical place and a higher reality from which Earth and other “shadowrealms” are spun off.
Much rousing sturm und drang, though what’s left after the dust settles is a heap of glittering but disparate good parts rather than a cohesive whole. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 22, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-385-73535-3
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
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