Russell (Blue Lightning, 1997, etc.) pens a fantasy with biblical overtones, in which a timid, bookish 14-year-old must save the world from the devil. Fischer reluctantly accompanies his adventurous cousin David to spy on vagrants. They find two strange characters who possess some beautiful, glowing stones. Entranced by the stones, Fischer grabs some from the sleeping pair, and runs. The boys use two stones to make wishes, but Fischer doesn’t realize he still has one, hidden in his pocket. Thereupon they begin a chase with Thistle, who tells Fischer they must find her father, Solomon, keeper of the stones, or evil will consume the world. Fischer, David, and Thistle, pursued by Belial and his minions, set out on the journey. Fischer learns that he’s stronger than David, but he may not be stronger than Belial, who plays upon Fischer’s weaknesses in an attempt to trick him into giving up his stone. Torrential rain and hail follow them, portentous of the disasters to come if Fischer loses his battle. While filling her story with credible characters and a vividly realized contemporary setting, Russell neatly ties her inspiration to a still-unexplained event in 1811, when strange disasters occurred. Every chapter begins with a quotation from the Bible, lending structure to this intriguing, exciting tale. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7894-2568-8
Page Count: 231
Publisher: DK Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1999
Envisioning a nightmarish future in which children deemed small or otherwise defective are worked to death breaking rocks, and the constant rain is so acid it raises blisters, Rapp (Buffalo Tree, 1997) crafts another lurid shocker. Learning that the coffin maker who has housed her is about to sell her off, 11-year-old Whensday, also known as “33” for the tattoo on her arm, sneaks away. Cataloging the disease, excrement, blood, vomit, mutations, slime, and general filth with matter-of-fact bluntness, she takes temporary shelter from the rain with Honeycut, a huge, dimwitted teenager; tries to escape with another fugitive who dies of ebola-like Blackfrost; is raped by an officer of the brutal local militia; and sees Honeycut stoned to death for killing the man. Whensday tells her tale in a colorful idiolect, mixing dreams and scatological exchanges with Oakley, a tough-talking younger friend. Certain she’s about to die since she can’t stop vomiting, Whensday is rescued by a hidden community of women who clean her up and tell her she’s pregnant—a happy ending, under the circumstances. Often gripping, sometimes blackly funny in a squalid way, this will remind readers of Russell Hoban’s Ridley Walker (1980) and other tales of post-apocalyptic devastation. (Fiction. 13-15)
Pub Date: Nov. 30, 1999
ISBN: 1-886910-42-1
Page Count: 250
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
Despite the title, Hite’s latest is no sci-fi, futuristic effort, but a modern novel with a first-person narrative with echoes of such classics as Catcher in the Rye. Cecil lives in “historic” Bricksburg, a Virginia backwater made up of colorful eccentrics, where the biggest excitement is over who altered a local sign to read “Welcome to Hysteric Pricksburg.” Such vandalism is of felony proportions, and the leading suspect happens to be Cecil’s best friend, Isaac, who maintains his innocence as well as his cool. Throw in Cecil’s romantic struggle between the town’s fickle bombshell and the girl-next-door, Isaac’s younger sister, and this has all the makings of a conventional read; it transcends such labels with the addition of Hite’s keen sense of the absurd, Cecil’s mature, witty observations and his morose pronouncements about life on Earth. Cecil’s ongoing discourse on the problems of the universe grow trying, but readers will relate to—and laugh over—his simple struggle to find his way. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8050-5055-8
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
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