A patchy tale flickering repeatedly from light to dark and back.
Alex’s ability to talk with ghosts puts him in famous company when he and his mom move to Hannibal, Missouri.
Alex, 13, is driven by bitter determination to keep his lifelong ability secret, since it’s already led to a diagnosis of schizophrenia that drove his parents apart and cost his mother a decent job, but it’s not easy. For one thing, his new friend, Bones, is a positively obsessed amateur ghost hunter, and for another, ghosts just won’t leave him alone no matter how rudely he treats them. Notable among the latter is Mark Twain himself, as acerbic and wily as he was in life, who is on the verge of involuntarily degenerating into a raging poltergeist unless Alex can find the unspecified, titular treasure. Alex’s search takes him through Clemens’ writings and tragic private life as well as many of the town’s related attractions on the way to a fiery climax in the public library. Meanwhile, Alex has an apotheosis of his own, deciding that lying to conceal his ability and his unhappy past isn’t worth the sacrifice of a valued friendship. Conveniently for the plot’s needs, Clemens and other ghosts can interact with the physical world at will. Wolfe parlays Alex’s ingrained inability to ignore ectoplasmic accosters into some amusing cross-conversations that help lighten his protagonist’s hard inner tests. The cast, living and otherwise, presents as white.
A patchy tale flickering repeatedly from light to dark and back. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: June 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-940924-29-8
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Dreaming Robot
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Not a total nonstarter, though the nonsensical premise fully qualifies as a literary lead balloon.
Shovels full of throwaway gags and silly aliens fail to lighten this overstuffed and entirely predictable debut.
Handed a planetary lease signed by Adam and Eve, 13-year-old Giles learns that since humanity has done a lousy job of caring for the Earth, everyone will be transported to the concrete wasteland of Desoleen to make way for new owners unless he removes all the trash and graffiti from Manhattan Island in 24 hours and adds five million leaves to clear the air. Fortunately he has allies—notably cute, blue-skinned lawyer (soon girlfriend) Tula and gelatinous genius inventor (and shoe fetishist) Melissa Sprinkles. The latter provides both deceptively tiny “flyplanes” with magic paint-removing rays and street-cleaning droids that replicate themselves into an army using the trash they pick up and then turn into giant trees. Unfortunately, purple hyperbrat Princess Petulance is hot to trot from her own despoiled planet and so stands ready to sabotage the clean-up in any cheating way she can. Mihaley squeezes in sibling issues, the requisite bully (who ends up totally pwned by Giles’ new techno toys) and aptly named alien life forms like a “wino tree” before thoroughly contrived last-minute treachery is scotched thanks to hordes of children inspired to finish the makeover by Giles’ wheelchair-bound eco-blogger buddy Navida.
Not a total nonstarter, though the nonsensical premise fully qualifies as a literary lead balloon. (Science fiction/fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: April 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-61891-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
The premise is better than the execution, but readers who aren’t bothered by arbitrary notions and unlikely situations will...
A teenager takes up alchemy where his suddenly vanished mom left off and falls afoul of police, vicious thugs and a digital intelligence determined to separate him into generic components.
Battling grief and a loser mentality (the latter reinforced by widespread derision after a quixotic attempt to save a duck frozen into a pond), Steve is electrified when his eccentric great-aunt Shannon transforms an ordinary “clock” into a “lock.” She informs him that he, too, can use words to work transformations—and perhaps discover what happened to his mother. Stronger on action than logic, the plot then proceeds to evolve into a wild tangle. On the one hand, Steve is pursued by police for a series of kidnappings and house trashings that are actually the work of rival alchemist John Dee and his murderous crew, and on the other, he travels back and forth between this plane and a “World of Pieces” where everything is made of numbers and a hypnotic voice urges him to dissolve into a protean liquid. Bunn works a predictable transformation on Steve, who rescues everybody, and caps his debut with a tidy, melodramatic, thoroughly contrived happy ending.
The premise is better than the execution, but readers who aren’t bothered by arbitrary notions and unlikely situations will enjoy the nonstop action. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-938463-60-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bitingduck Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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