Chock-full of sharp tonal contrasts, this tale should appeal to readers with a hunger for alien adventure and an...
A debut novel fuses a serious issue—the stigma of mental illness—with sci-fi to chronicle a girl’s unusual coming-of-age.
On the surface, Courtney Hoffman seems like an average 15-year-old girl: she holds down a decently high spot in the high school hierarchy, serving as vice captain of the soccer team. But she also experiences nightmares stemming from when her now-dead grandfather, who believed in aliens, supposedly tried to drown her. Turns out, these aren’t dreams after all—aliens visit Courtney at night, trying to communicate with her (“Slowly I cracked my eyes open. Silhouetted in the light were three alien creatures. Their long, lanky bodies shuffled awkwardly toward my bed. This isn’t supposed to be happening!”). But how can she figure out what they want when her mother keeps threatening to lock her up in a psychiatric hospital? With the help of an older girl named Agatha Kirlich, who possesses an extravagant goth wardrobe, and a brother who is also visited by the aliens, Courtney uncovers clues that lead her to an ancient group known as the Knights of the Magi. Courtney’s destiny lies with the Knights and their quest to keep the dangerous pathways between universes closed off—but their mortal enemies, the Soldiers of Bilim, are determined to stop her from fulfilling it. Stefani takes readers along on a wild ride through portals to other worlds that delivers plenty of amusing adolescent dialogue; Courtney and Agatha’s interactions crackle with chemistry and eccentricity. In contrast to these funny moments, the earlier parts of the book, before Courtney realizes the aliens are real—when she legitimately believes that she is losing her mind—are pretty dark. The character of Courtney’s mom is unsympathetic and cruel to the point of feeling like a coldhearted cartoon; she treats her daughter’s potential mental illness as an inconvenience that must be forcibly submerged by Courtney or she’ll be shuttered in an institution as punishment. Once Courtney’s conflict with her mother takes a back seat to her escapades with Agatha and the aliens, the plot picks up speed and becomes a lot more enjoyable.
Chock-full of sharp tonal contrasts, this tale should appeal to readers with a hunger for alien adventure and an understanding of how it feels to be considered crazy.Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-940716-34-3
Page Count: 328
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.
In this YA graphic novel, an alienated Métis girl learns about her people’s Canadian history.
Métis teenager Echo Desjardins finds herself living in a home away from her mother, attending a new school, and feeling completely lonely as a result. She daydreams in class and wanders the halls listening to a playlist of her mother’s old CDs. At home, she shuts herself up in her room. But when her history teacher begins to lecture about the Pemmican Wars of early 1800s Saskatchewan, Echo finds herself swept back to that time. She sees the Métis people following the bison with their mobile hunting camp, turning the animals’ meat into pemmican, which they sell to the Northwest Company in order to buy supplies for the winter. Echo meets a young girl named Marie, who introduces Echo to the rhythms of Métis life. She finally understands what her Métis heritage actually means. But the joys are short-lived, as conflicts between the Métis and their rivals in the Hudson Bay Company come to a bloody head. The tragic history of her people will help explain the difficulties of the Métis in Echo’s own time, including those of her mother and the teen herself. Accompanied by dazzling art by Henderson (A Blanket of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) and colorist Yaciuk (Fire Starters, 2016, etc.), this tale is a brilliant bit of time travel. Readers are swept back to 19th-century Saskatchewan as fully as Echo herself. Vermette’s (The Break, 2017, etc.) dialogue is sparse, offering a mostly visual, deeply contemplative juxtaposition of the present and the past. Echo’s eventual encounter with her mother (whose fate has been kept from readers up to that point) offers a powerful moment of connection that is both unexpected and affecting. “Are you…proud to be Métis?” Echo asks her, forcing her mother to admit, sheepishly: “I don’t really know much about it.” With this series opener, the author provides a bit more insight into what that means.
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.Pub Date: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55379-678-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HighWater Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
