An engaging tale of reemerging dinosaurs and superb tween heroes.
In this middle-grade SF/fantasy debut, a group of bright kids makes a world-changing discovery in Mexico.
Ben, Ariel, and three of their friends, who live in Israel, are spending their summer vacations with their scientist parents in Yucatán. Ariel’s father leads a team researching Mayan priests, but it’s the 12-year-old kids who unearth a significant find. While off on their own, they enter a cave leading to a cylindrical machine. This seven-seater, which apparently runs on automatic pilot, takes the gang, which includes Amir, Gaia, and Abigail, to a room of amazing sights. Most astonishing is a collection of dinosaurs, from reptilian creatures in aquariums to Pterosaur eggs. The friends’ parents soon join Ben and the others, and the group surmises that the kids “activated” this special room telepathically. So when the Pterosaur babies hatch, the youngsters wear EEG helmets to link their brainwaves with the dinosaurs’. Each tween chooses, names, and ultimately rides a Pterosaur, as the five reptiles soon learn how to fly. Though the parents wisely keep this discovery a secret as long as possible, dangerous people track them down and demand specifics on the dinosaurs. Leo’s series opener features a diverse cast of adolescents, including Native American Gaia and Russian immigrant Abigail. They’re each intelligent and much more levelheaded than the adults. The parents, for example, often bicker and grumble—scenes that the tale plays for laughs, such as a scientist telling her peers they’re “acting like babies.” The author shrouds the narrative in ambiguity as characters piece together myriad theories from a “series of assumptions,” hoping to explain everything that’s in the room. This entails a wide range of entertaining possibilities, like aliens and varying religions. An added menace amps up the story’s latter half when an environmental message slowly comes to light. Nevertheless, most readers will guess who the villains are well before the reveal.
An engaging tale of reemerging dinosaurs and superb tween heroes.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 325
Publisher: Ultra Particle
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A spectacular return to a magical world.
Following the events of Impossible Creatures (2024), a devoted Guardian teams up with a brave princess to fight her power-hungry uncle and save the Archipelago’s dragons from a strange new threat.
Jacques the dragon summons Christopher Forrester back to the Archipelago from the human world: Dragons are dying, and no one knows why. Meanwhile, on the island of Dousha, Princess Anya’s grandfather, King Halam, has been murdered, and her father accused—though she knows he’s innocent. When Christopher and Anya take refuge on the islet of Glimt, the Berserker Nighthand helps them see how their twin missions to save the dragons and free Anya’s father are connected. They work together to create an antidote for the poison that’s killing the dragons and to keep Anya and her father safe from her murderous uncle. Meanwhile, Nighthand and Irian, the part-nereid ocean scholar, pursue their own important secret mission. Divided into three parts—“Castle,” “Dragons,” and “Revenge”—and containing elements of fairy tales, fantasy, and Shakespeare, this story continues the storyline established in the series opener, yet because it introduces new characters and obstacles, it could also stand alone. Dark-blond Anya (“five feet tall and all of it claws”) is a match for white-presenting Christopher, who, though he still misses Mal, finds that “it made a difference to have someone to move through the world with again. A friend changed the feel of the universe.” Mackenzie’s delicate, otherworldly art adorns the text.
A spectacular return to a magical world. (map, bestiary) (Fantasy. 10-15)Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780593809907
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
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