A finale that requires homework of its readers.
Telekinesis, flying teens, reinhabited bodies, giants and more: The Society of Extranaturals returns for the conclusion to the Twelve-Fingered Boy trilogy.
Right from the get-go readers are plunged almost too quickly into the action of Jacobs’ finale. Awakened by a din of screams and crashing trees outside their bunker, Shreve and Jack, heroes of the previous two installments, rally their troops to battle the Conformity, a conglomeration of thousands of innocent human victims fused together into a brown, jellylike bipedal mass by “some massive and unknown telekinetic power.” The Conformity stands stories tall, wreaks havoc wherever it walks and sucks up other humans into its body as it goes. Not only is the action hard to follow from the first page, but it’s interspersed with confusing, often unattributed dialogue that is either spoken or telepathically sent, the latter set apart in bolded italics rather than with quotation marks. Just when readers have almost wrapped their heads around the flying teen heroes, strange communication signals and extensive back story and have settled into this otherwise fairly fast-paced third, Jacobs confoundingly switches gears midway through and adds multiple narrators. All this said, the novel isn’t without genuine action and exciting thrills, it’s just hard to penetrate through the ether to get to the good stuff.
A finale that requires homework of its readers. (Supernatural thriller. 13-15)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7613-9009-1
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Carolrhoda Lab
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
There’s some originality here, though it’s hard to unearth amid all the melodrama
An illegitimate girl who hopes to find her creative passion may be connected to another kingdom’s magical history.
At 10, white, orphaned Brienna was brought to Magnalia House. For the last seven years she’s studied to become an arden, an apprentice passion, with the goal of finding her patron. The arden-sisters study art, dramatics, music, wit, and knowledge; Brienna, who has no true vocation, has eccentrically studied in all the fields. Though she doesn’t truly belong among the talented (and somewhat racially diverse) noble girls of Magnalia House, they are her beloved friends. Perhaps once she’s passioned, she can even act on her romantic feelings for the white knowledge master. But Brienna’s having strange visions lately; could they be ancestral memories of an unknown forbear from the neighboring country? What with romance, jealousy, family drama, betrayals, ancient magical history, and characters with multiple secret identities, there’s a nigh-constant pitch of throbbing…well, passion. A voice is like “tamed thunder,” and hair is like “a stream of silver.” Malapropisms abound (“punctures of laughter”; “her beauty warbled by the mullioned windows”). Oddly, most of the shocking revelations of back story are openly detailed in the lengthy family trees at the novel’s opening.
There’s some originality here, though it’s hard to unearth amid all the melodrama . (Fantasy. 13-15)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-247134-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
Seventeen-year-old Will is a local in Walfang; Gretchen is "summer people," but she's Will's best friend anyway. They used...
A dreamy, hair-raising mystery in a Long Island fishing village–cum–upscale resort evokes the traditional horrors of coastal communities.
Seventeen-year-old Will is a local in Walfang; Gretchen is "summer people," but she's Will's best friend anyway. They used to be three musketeers, along with Will's brother Tim, until a year ago when Tim died in a boating accident that should have killed both boys. Now Will and Gretchen try to renew their friendship in one of the creepiest summers either can remember. Will is drawn to Asia, a beautiful stranger with "green sea glass eyes." Gretchen worries about the local mad teenager who babbles portents about “seekriegers” and sings sea shanties. A 400-year-old gold doubloon turns up in a donation box, and an antique bone recorder—the spitting image of one found on Tim's body—appears in the local antique shop. Most frightening of all, Gretchen's sleepwalking, always worrying, has gotten downright dangerous. The more Will investigates, the more he sees connections with generations-old local mysteries—and possibly, incomprehensibly, stories far older than that. Walfang is exquisitely realized (occasionally too much so; narrative flow sometimes takes a backseat to painting Walfang with not-always-necessary detail); characters are defined as much by their place in society as by their behavior.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-375-84245-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
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