A fast-paced gaming story with substance.
Players of a popular online game are hot off a win at the Affinity Invitational Tournament in this second series entry.
Hannah, Larkin, Josh, and Wheatley have gone pro and are playing together under the team name The Weird Ones. Making money playing video games might seem like a dream come true, but the pressure that comes with their new celebrity status is taking a toll. Hannah and Larkin are livestreaming their gameplay, and other users aren’t always kind. Hannah isn’t sure that she wants to continue but doesn’t want to let her friend down. Josh is struggling with feeling left out as his parents restrict his participation, and Wheatley—an AI persona who has taken on a mind of his own—has been missing under suspicious circumstances since the last game of the tournament. The Weird Ones are taking an upcoming gaming conference as the opportunity to confront the game creators and demand they bring Wheatley back. Roadblocks abound as Josh’s anti-gaming parents forbid him from attending and malicious Wheatley wannabees are flooding the Affinity gameplay. The friends need to put aside their personal struggles to find Wheatley and win more matches. The realistic portrayals of racism and inappropriate behavior toward girls and women in the gaming world are commendable. Hannah and Larkin are White, and they are mentored by Glitz, a prominent Black gamer; the previous volume established Josh as Chinese American. Final art not seen.
A fast-paced gaming story with substance. (game manual) (Fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9780593433447
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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