A slow-moving sequel to Tolan’s Welcome to the Ark (1996) in which Elijah, a young African-American empath who has escaped from a juvenile mental health facility in the Adirondacks, becomes entangled in a domestic terrorist organization. This projected second in a trilogy about the Ark kids follows Elijah after the breakup of the Ark, the therapeutic group home for child prodigies. An Ark kid is a child with special psychic powers who can link with other Ark kids to form a powerful psychic web “to tame the violence in others.” When the reader first meets Elijah, he has become so wounded from feeling the violence in the world that he has utterly withdrawn into himself. Two things pull him out: a raven with which he has a mystic link (and whose message is decidedly unclear), and Amber, daughter of the leader of the Free Mountain Militia, in whom Elijah detects a fellow Ark kid. For a story that culminates with the foiling of a plot to broadcast a particularly deadly strain of smallpox throughout the world, this is awfully slow and muddled. Elijah and Amber spend a lot of time plumbing their feelings about violence together and separately, Amber’s sociopathic brother Kenny providing a near-lethal counterpoint to the philosophizing. The ravens (Elijah attracts a flock) swoop in and out, quorking mysteriously, Elijah alternately links psychically with animals and acts as the militia’s computer guru, Amber alternately entertains doubts as to the ethics of her father’s methodologies and regrets that she, as a girl, cannot join him more fully. While the topic may be timely, there’s too much talk and not enough action; its message, too, is unclear, as Elijah commits violence in order to prevent violence, his psychic web nowhere in evidence. Only for committed fans of part one. (Fiction. 10-15)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-688-17419-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2001
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
A grand finale, presented with a touch light enough to buoy all the self-actualization. Also: giant space worms!
Hotshot pilot Spensa Nightshade completes her apotheosis in this series closer, as human rebels and their alien allies mount a climactic assault on the galactic empire.
Having progressed from eating rats to being a cytonic superwarrior, Spensa is bonded by ties of loyalty and lust to former Skyward Flight leader, now Defiant Defense Force admiral, Jorgen—and also to a traumatized, planet-killing, interdimensional delver named Chet. Spensa would be well on her way to full-blown pacifism if the Superiority’s war of extermination against humans were not ramping up to a newly active phase. Nothing for it but a massive space battle, complete with dogfights, huge explosions, feints, betrayals, and tragic sacrifices…not to mention a swarm of ravenous, vacuum-dwelling vastworms eager to chow down on both sides. Though slowed by Spensa’s and others’ wrestling with conflicting impulses and weighing moral imperatives, the plot features more than enough large- and small-scale action set pieces to please space-opera fans. Better yet, the deliciously expansive cast includes not only humans and AIs but a broad array of aliens and semi-aliens from blue-skinned humanoids and a furry, haiku-reciting, fox-gerbil samurai with a (wait for it) laser sword to sentient crystals and empathic slugs. “The more different types of people we got into the flight, the stronger it would be,” Spensa reflects, and indeed, it’s collective action that proves decisive in the end.
A grand finale, presented with a touch light enough to buoy all the self-actualization. Also: giant space worms! (Science fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593309711
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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