Nineteen Eighty-Four meets V for Vendetta in a thrilling package.
Protagonist Lauren Fielding’s papers recount her terrifying experiences and revelations as a government experiment in Goelman’s unsettling dystopia.
It’s the fall of 2031, and a post–climate disaster U.S. is in the grip of the Department of Security, Defense, and Well-Being, empowered under the Emergency Act to protect the country at any cost, even the cost of its own citizens. Lauren is a young white teen with a cognitive disability that interferes with her capacity to disbelieve or distrust anyone. Because of the danger to which such naiveté is vulnerable, Lauren undergoes brain surgery to correct the issue, and while thrilled at first, Lauren steadily becomes more paranoid with each passing day as her new clarity of perception unmasks the dissembling corruption of the Department and her role within it. Told in a series of collected journal entries, therapy-session transcripts, and appended footnotes from Lauren’s older sister, Lauren’s memories of events and dialogue are more detailed than what is altogether believable, and the centering of a (fictional) mental disability simply to “cure” it is disappointingly stale. However, readers who enjoy the moral cartwheels of a nation flooded by fear and the chill of a troublingly plausible future punctuated by opportunistic and insidiously innovative scientists will find all the frissons they could ask for here.
Nineteen Eighty-Four meets V for Vendetta in a thrilling package. (Dystopian adventure. 13-17)Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62672-880-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Bound to be popular.
A suddenly trendy trope—conflict and romance between members of conquering and enslaved races—enlivened by fantasy elements loosely drawn from Arabic tradition (another trend!).
In an original, well-constructed fantasy world (barring some lazy naming), the Scholars have lived under Martial rule for 500 years, downtrodden and in many cases enslaved. Scholar Laia has spent a lifetime hiding her connection to the Resistance—her parents were its leaders—but when her grandparents are killed and her brother’s captured by Masks, the eerie, silver-faced elite soldiers of the Martial Empire, Laia must go undercover as a slave to the terrifying Commandant of Blackcliff Military Academy, where Martials are trained for battle. Meanwhile, Elias, the Commandant’s not-at-all-beloved son, wants to run away from Blackcliff, until he is named an Aspirant for the throne by the mysterious red-eyed Augurs. Predictably, action, intrigue, bloodshed and some pounding pulses follow; there’s betrayal and a potential love triangle or two as well. Sometimes-lackluster prose and a slight overreliance on certain kinds of sexual violence as a threat only slightly diminish the appeal created by familiar (but not predictable) characters and a truly engaging if not fully fleshed-out fantasy world.
Bound to be popular. (Fantasy. 13 & up)Pub Date: April 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59514-803-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
Returning fans, anyway, will pounce.
Houck kicks off a new story arc in the world of the Tiger’s Curse series with new tigers who live in a northerly setting.
The death of their widowed royal mother touches off a crisis in the Kievian Empire; neither Stacia nor Verusha Stepanov, 17-year-old sword-wielding twin sisters, wants to be named tsarina. But questions of succession get put on hold when a battle with a sorcerer inexplicably turns the two into nonspeaking Siberian tigers. Hints of a cure send them, along with a growing entourage of men to provide assistance (and, perforce, do all the talking), on a long trek. Though most of the cast sticks to genre type, Houck throws in a wild card in the form of hunky, inarticulate Nikolai, who joins the quest because he is enthralled by Verusha—and who also killed his whole family in an act of revenge. Occasional anachronistic dialogue (e.g., “Are you ready, ladies?”) disrupts the tale’s generally earnest tone, as do the clumsy attempts at banter. A third tiger, snarky and blind but conveniently able to see through others’ eyes, trots in late in the story. The events in this setup volume unfold with many a flashback and change in point of view and head toward no sort of resolution—only the cave-dwelling White Shaman of the Tundra’s advice that further journeys are in the offing. The central cast in this Russian-inspired fantasy world presents white; the Indigenous population includes nomadic reindeer herders.
Returning fans, anyway, will pounce. (Fantasy. 13-16)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798212221696
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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