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DOGCHILD

Uncompromisingly brutal and black hole–dense; howls to a niche audience.

The Call of the Wild meets Mad Max in this blood-soaked, nihilistic thriller.

Brooks’ latest follows a traumatized protagonist struggling to find the right words amid copious casualty and senseless causality. The apocalypse has come and gone; the surviving world consists of two enclaves—that of the enemy Dau and the town, a walled, seaside citadel—and a no man’s land populated by wild dogs. Born to teenage parents on a wagon trail, captured and raised by a dog pack, and rehumanized by his uncle, first-person narrator Jeet has always struggled to resolve his dogchild double consciousness: His is a canine soul in a human body. Gun Sur, the town’s authoritarian Marshal, charges Jeet with recording the entirety of known history prior to a pending battle. When Chola Se, another dogchild, is abducted, delivered to the Dau, and brutalized by Pilgrim (Gun Sur’s second-in-command) upon her return, the dogchildren must untangle the Gordian knot of her ordeal, sorting out multiple murders, double- and triple-crossings, and the inconceivable contours of the looming showdown. Racial signifiers are limited to skin tone; Jeet has brown skin, and many character names evoke a South Asian feel. Jeet’s unconventional prose, lacking quotation marks, eschewing apostrophes, and employing novel compound words such as “Ime” and “weare,” eventually wears smooth. Chola Se’s gang rapes followed by a questionable consensual sex scene feel like a plot device for inflating the stakes, troubling an otherwise egalitarian tale.

Uncompromisingly brutal and black hole–dense; howls to a niche audience. (Survival thriller. 15-18)

Pub Date: June 16, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-5362-0974-7

Page Count: 480

Publisher: Candlewick

Review Posted Online: March 10, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020

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REDEMPTION PREP

Only marginally intriguing.

In a remote part of Utah, in a “temple of excellence,” the best of the best are recruited to nurture their talents.

Redemption Preparatory is a cross between the Vatican and a top-secret research facility: The school is rooted in Christian ideology (but very few students are Christian), Mass is compulsory, cameras capture everything, and “maintenance” workers carry Tasers. When talented poet Emma disappears, three students, distrusting of the school administration, launch their own investigation. Brilliant chemist Neesha believes Emma has run away to avoid taking the heat for the duo’s illegal drug enterprise. Her boyfriend, an athlete called Aiden, naturally wants to find her. Evan, a chess prodigy who relies on patterns and has difficulty processing social signals, believes he knows Emma better than anyone. While the school is an insidious character on its own and the big reveal is slightly psychologically disturbing, Evan’s positioning as a tragic hero with an uncertain fate—which is connected to his stalking of Emma (even before her disappearance)—is far more unsettling. The ’90s setting provides the backdrop for tongue-in-cheek technological references but doesn’t do anything for the plot. Student testimonials and voice-to-text transcripts punctuate the three-way third-person narration that alternates among Neesha, Evan, and Aiden. Emma, Aiden, and Evan are assumed to be white; Neesha is Indian. Students are from all over the world, including Asia and the Middle East.

Only marginally intriguing. (Mystery. 15-18)

Pub Date: April 14, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-06-266203-3

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020

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THE STARS WE STEAL

A thrilling romance that could use more even pacing.

For the second time in her life, Leo must choose between her family and true love.

Nineteen-year-old Princess Leonie Kolburg’s royal family is bankrupt. In order to salvage the fortune they accrued before humans fled the frozen Earth 170 years ago, Leonie’s father is forcing her to participate in the Valg Season, an elaborate set of matchmaking events held to facilitate the marriages of rich and royal teens. Leo grudgingly joins in even though she has other ideas: She’s invented a water filtration system that, if patented, could provide a steady income—that is if Leo’s calculating Aunt Freja, the Captain of the ship hosting the festivities, stops blocking her at every turn. Just as Leo is about to give up hope, her long-lost love, Elliot, suddenly appears onboard three years after Leo’s family forced her to break off their engagement. Donne (Brightly Burning, 2018) returns to space, this time examining the fascinatingly twisted world of the rich and famous. Leo and her peers are nuanced, deeply felt, and diverse in terms of sexuality but not race, which may be a function of the realities of wealth and power. The plot is fast paced although somewhat uneven: Most of the action resolves in the last quarter of the book, which makes the resolutions to drawn-out conflicts feel rushed.

A thrilling romance that could use more even pacing. (Science fiction. 16-adult)

Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-328-94894-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: HMH Books

Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019

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