For real super-villain fun, skip this and go back to Catherine Jinks’ Evil Genius (2007) and sequels.
Four teens and one preteen of disparate backgrounds find themselves forcibly recruited into a league of super-villains in this pallid series opener.
They are plucked from lives that range from fairly unsatisfying to downright unpleasant and taken to the secret headquarters of the League of Heroes’ sworn enemies, the Vindico. There, the super-villains use a variety of predictable tactics (humiliation, terror, the promise of power) to mold the unlikely kids into protégés. Though each kid has a separate potential superpower, they bond enough, given the bizarre circumstances, to work together against their mentors when one of them is threatened. What could be an enjoyable comic-book romp is fatally hamstrung by the author's regrettable tendency to tell, not show. The third-person narration shifts perspective from kid to kid and occasionally to the villains, a tactic that should develop distinct characters but here does not. With a couple of notable exceptions (a sarcastic-but-charismatic older boy virtually abandoned by his mother and a computer-genius girl reared in an unloving home), the kids’ back stories are largely uncompelling. Giving readers access to the thoughts and plots of the super-villains serves to leach rather than build tension, and a credibility-straining series of double-crosses causes the climax to drag rather than thrill. Finally, the super-villains’ motive for villainy underwhelms, resulting in huge suspension-of-disbelief problems.
For real super-villain fun, skip this and go back to Catherine Jinks’ Evil Genius (2007) and sequels. (Adventure. 10-14)Pub Date: June 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-25654-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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
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