Powerful and awakening.
A 14-year-old Ashkenazi Jewish transgender boy harnesses supernatural powers and pursues his world-saving destiny.
Every week, A Izenson’s parents drag him to Save Our Sons and Daughters, a conversion-therapy group for families with transgender youth. Not many teens last long there before they disappear for “further treatment.” After Greek American group member Yarrow, one of A’s only friends, meets this fate, A sneaks over to Yarrow’s house to find out what happened. When he’s caught eavesdropping on Yarrow’s parents, a being made of garbage sweeps in to aid his escape. The creature describes itself as a golem, though its origins are a mystery. All the golem knows is that it awoke to help A fulfill his destiny to save Yarrow—and the world—before the end of Yom Kippur. At first, A is certain the golem has chosen the wrong person. But when he rescues his friend Sal, a white butch lesbian trans girl, from a demon who tries to devour her during a SOSAD meeting, he not only embraces his power, but also starts to see himself as a hero and Sal as his sidekick. Lukoff both explores and then subverts the chosen-one trope through A’s battle with his personal demons. The story is set in 2023, and the fantasy conflict is grounded in serious real-world problems—the ongoing impact of Covid-19, alarming rates of homelessness and suicide among LGBTQ+ youth, and anti-trans legislation. The resolution is both honest and hopeful.
Powerful and awakening. (note on research, note on resources) (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593618981
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
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A half-baked jumble of poorly connected themes, incidents, and tropes.
Eleven-year-old Georgie sets out to the rescue after seeing his dad snatched into thin air by a hideous figure.
In a confusing debut that reads like a first draft, the kidnapping impels the young slingshot expert to go from doggedly enduring vicious bullying at school to intrepidly plunging after his father through a portal to Scatterplot, an otherworldly realm where the memories of everyone in New York are uploaded by omnilingual Scribes. Classmates Apurva Aluwhalia (who’s cued South Asian) and Roscoe Harris (who reads Black and is confined to a role that’s largely limited to comic relief), each motivated by their own concerns, follow white-presenting Georgie on his adventure. In Scatterplot, they must remain alert for the “tribe” of “bad people” called Altercockers, formed by the exiled Rollie D. Meanwhile, Flint Eldritch, the menacing figure who was responsible for Georgie’s father’s disappearance, is bent on using the Aetherquill, a magical pen that can rewrite reality in unpredictable ways, to replace all those recorded memories with fake ones. In a story that’s marred by stilted dialogue, flat characterization, and awkward turns of phrase, Georgie and his friends, along with Scatterplot siblings Edie and Ore, embark on a quest to save both his father and the entire realm. The puss-oozing, misshapen villain Flint, crawling with bugs, does at least provide a memorably lurid element of horror. The novel ends with an abrupt cliffhanger.
A half-baked jumble of poorly connected themes, incidents, and tropes. (Fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9798886453164
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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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