Barney and The Piggy are back in this long-awaited, delightfully icky sequel to Interstellar Pig (1995). The aliens have left in pursuit of The Piggy, but Barney still has the Interstellar Pig board game they abandoned in their haste. He’s been playing the game with his new friends: another 16-year-old named Katie, an undergraduate named Matt, and a mysterious stranger named Julian. Barney thinks that the game is no longer dangerous, since the aliens have left Earth. Of course, the real game isn’t over at all. Julian kidnaps Barney, and reveals himself as a giant tapeworm parasite in a dinosaur-like creature with disgusting eating habits. Matt, it seems, is a giant parasitic wasp, who kidnaps Katie. Katie, at least, is actually human. This merry band descends on the planet J’koot in search of The Piggy. J’koot is the home of enormous crabs who reputedly find humans tastiest after slow and painful death (the crabs are distressed by their brutal reputation; in one hysterical scene, they escort their captives to a tastefully decorated spa for “marination therapy” in a pool filled with something like garlic and soy sauce). To complicate matters even further, Barney has a parasite—Madame Toxoplasma Gondii—living in a cyst in his brain; she needs Barney to be eaten by a giant crab in order to complete her lifecycle. Barney’s hilarious adventures are filled with gruesome detail, lovingly described. The presence of a few appealing secondary characters, which Interstellar Pig lacked, gives Barney’s new story freshness in its own right, and keeps it from being merely a sequel. (Fiction. 12-16)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-525-46918-4
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2002
Wrought with admirable skill—the emptiness and menace underlying this Utopia emerge step by inexorable step: a richly...
In a radical departure from her realistic fiction and comic chronicles of Anastasia, Lowry creates a chilling, tightly controlled future society where all controversy, pain, and choice have been expunged, each childhood year has its privileges and responsibilities, and family members are selected for compatibility.
As Jonas approaches the "Ceremony of Twelve," he wonders what his adult "Assignment" will be. Father, a "Nurturer," cares for "newchildren"; Mother works in the "Department of Justice"; but Jonas's admitted talents suggest no particular calling. In the event, he is named "Receiver," to replace an Elder with a unique function: holding the community's memories—painful, troubling, or prone to lead (like love) to disorder; the Elder ("The Giver") now begins to transfer these memories to Jonas. The process is deeply disturbing; for the first time, Jonas learns about ordinary things like color, the sun, snow, and mountains, as well as love, war, and death: the ceremony known as "release" is revealed to be murder. Horrified, Jonas plots escape to "Elsewhere," a step he believes will return the memories to all the people, but his timing is upset by a decision to release a newchild he has come to love. Ill-equipped, Jonas sets out with the baby on a desperate journey whose enigmatic conclusion resonates with allegory: Jonas may be a Christ figure, but the contrasts here with Christian symbols are also intriguing.
Wrought with admirable skill—the emptiness and menace underlying this Utopia emerge step by inexorable step: a richly provocative novel. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 978-0-395-64566-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1993
Dark, seductive, but over-the-top: Characters and book alike will enthrall those who choose to play.
Garber returns to the world of bestseller Caraval (2017), this time with the focus on younger, more daring sister Donatella.
Valenda, capital of the empire, is host to the second of Legend’s magical games in a single year, and while Scarlett doesn’t want to play again, blonde Tella is eager for a chance to prove herself. She is haunted by the memory of her death in the last game and by the cursed Deck of Destiny she used as a child which foretold her loveless future. Garber has changed many of the rules of her expanding world, which now appears to be infused with magic and evil Fates. Despite a weak plot and ultraviolet prose (“He tasted like exquisite nightmares and stolen dreams, like the wings of fallen angels, and bottles of fresh moonlight.”), this is a tour de force of imagination. Themes of love, betrayal, and the price of magic (and desire) swirl like Caraval’s enchantments, and Dante’s sensuous kisses will thrill readers as much as they do Tella. The convoluted machinations of the Prince of Hearts (one of the Fates), Legend, and even the empress serve as the impetus for Tella’s story and set up future volumes which promise to go bigger. With descriptions focusing primarily on clothing, characters’ ethnicities are often indeterminate.
Dark, seductive, but over-the-top: Characters and book alike will enthrall those who choose to play. (glossary) (Fantasy. 12-16)Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-09531-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
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