This bland techno-thriller has plenty of action but not quite enough style.
A teenage hacktivist and her online comrades encounter danger and betrayal when they begin investigating a fashion mogul’s business operations in Hong Kong.
Lian leads a double life. Offline, she is her parents’ “Little Panda,” the studious, obedient daughter of an affluent family; online, she is Komiko, a trusted member of 06/04, a pseudonymous group of hackers dedicated to exposing government and corporate wrongdoing. Her two worlds collide with a vengeance after a corpse washes up on Big Wave Bay Beach, as Lian soon stumbles upon a link between the dead girl and one of her father’s business partners, Rand Harrison. Her situation becomes even more complicated when Harrison’s smarmy son, Matt, transfers into her school, where their paths cross regularly. Lian’s readiness to risk her own safety to secure evidence of Harrison’s crimes makes for a fast-paced story, marked by narrow escapes and high-speed chases. Alas, the technological action fizzles in comparison, as Lian’s elite hacker research appears to consist mostly of basic Web searches. In addition, the novel’s Hong Kong feels more like a movie set than a lived-in city, and it doesn’t help that even the non-American characters often speak colloquially American dialogue.
This bland techno-thriller has plenty of action but not quite enough style. (Thriller. 13-18)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62324-023-3
Page Count: 285
Publisher: Scarlet Voyage/Enslow
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
A solid genre outing.
In the near future, an incarcerated teen with a reputation for escape attempts is moved to a new, maximum-security facility called the Rig, an oil-drilling platform in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, now converted to use as a prison.
Fifteen-year-old William Drake is a likable, tough-talking narrator who hails from London, the son of an African-American father and a Polish mother. True to hard-boiled type, Drake keeps to himself and resists making friends, even as he makes enemies of the worst baddies by defending weaker kids from them and is won over by the Rig's kindly psychologist, Dr. Lambros. Flavoring the third-person narration with some great one-liners (“She had the voice of a lifelong smoker thrown in a blender”), Ducie takes his time setting the stage for the action-packed second half of the novel, with Drake carefully plotting an escape that involves the skills of his hacker cellmate, Tristan, and the knowledge of Irene, a fellow prisoner who hints at a conspiracy that eventually blows up in their faces. All the elements of a great thriller are here—sinister villains, a stoic hero with a heart of gold, even mutated sharks. If some of these details seem a bit familiar to seasoned action-adventure fans, there is still plenty to keep them engaged, and the open-ended conclusion suggests there may be more to come.
A solid genre outing. (Thriller. 13-18)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-544-50311-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
A picture book combines the exuberance of children and the drama found in nature for a sly lesson on power-sharing. Henderson (Newborn, 1999, etc.) lands on the wide reaches of a windy beach where young Jim expansively flings wide his arms and claims “All this is mine!” So it seems until the wind blows in a gale so violent that it smashes objects and tears “through the dreams of people sleeping.” An eerie series of black-and-white paintings shows the white-capped waves breaking ever higher and crashing inland; these are so frightening that Jim cries out to his mother, “The sea! It’s coming!” Happily enough, Jim and his mother are able to run up the hill to a grandmother’s house where they weather the storm safely. The next time Jim speaks to the wind, on a much quieter beach, he whispers, “All this is yours.” Large type, appealing pastel illustrations, and a dose of proper perspective on humankind’s power over nature make this book a fine choice for story hours as well as nature collections. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7636-0904-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
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