It’s as if there’d been no interruption; this installment is sure to please Alex’s legions of fans
After ending his Alex Rider series with flashback volume Russian Roulette (2013), Horowitz revives his bestselling adventure series, sending his hero on a pursuit that is very, very personal.
Held captive by sadistic enemies in Scorpia Rising (2011), Alex was forced to watch the murder of his best friend and caregiver, Jack Starbright. Now safe, recovered from his wounds, and with his enemies dead, the white, English teen has moved to San Francisco with his foster family, the Pleasures, also white. He’s trying to live a normal life; he’s going to school, trying to fit in, not standing out even though he’d like nothing better than to trounce the local bullies. Then, out of the blue, he receives a truncated email: “ALEXX / I’M AL.” Immediately, against all odds, he knows that Jack’s alive and trying to reach out to him. His guardians don’t believe it, having seen the footage of Jack’s death. But Alex won’t give up—and it doesn’t take him long to slip away and start a globe-trekking search for the only person who has always been there for him. The time has come to be there for her, regardless of the consequences, with or without the help of his friends from MI6. This time, he’s on his own. In his usual breakneck fashion, Horowitz whisks Alex from one improbable situation to another, all of which Alex survives by using his wits and whatever else happens to be at hand.
It’s as if there’d been no interruption; this installment is sure to please Alex’s legions of fans . (Thriller. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5247-3930-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
It’s the haunting details of those around Kai that readers will remember.
Kai’s life is upended when his coastal village is devastated in Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami in this verse novel from an author who experienced them firsthand.
With his single mother, her parents, and his friend Ryu among the thousands missing or dead, biracial Kai, 17, is dazed and disoriented. His friend Shin’s supportive, but his intact family reminds Kai, whose American dad has been out of touch for years, of his loss. Kai’s isolation is amplified by his uncertain cultural status. Playing soccer and his growing friendship with shy Keiko barely lessen his despair. Then he’s invited to join a group of Japanese teens traveling to New York to meet others who as teenagers lost parents in the 9/11 attacks a decade earlier. Though at first reluctant, Kai agrees to go and, in the process, begins to imagine a future. Like graphic novels, today’s spare novels in verse (the subgenre concerning disasters especially) are significantly shaped by what’s left out. Lacking art’s visceral power to grab attention, verse novels may—as here—feel sparsely plotted with underdeveloped characters portrayed from a distance in elegiac monotone. Kai’s a generic figure, a coat hanger for the disaster’s main event, his victories mostly unearned; in striking contrast, his rural Japanese community and how they endure catastrophe and overwhelming losses—what they do and don’t do for one another, comforts they miss, kindnesses they value—spring to life.
It’s the haunting details of those around Kai that readers will remember. (author preface, afterword) (Verse fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-53474-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2015
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