08/04/2014
Frey and Johnson-Shelton open an ambitious trilogy, designed to play out over multiple media platforms, including mobile games. Ostensibly, it’s about 12 teenage Players, each representing a different bloodline from which all humanity is descended, who have been called together by the arrival of a meteor that signals Endgame—the point at which they must find three keys that will allow only one line to survive an apocalyptic event. As they outwit and outfight one another, they solve riddles and clues designed to help them succeed in their tasks. In addition, readers who solve the enclosed puzzles can compete to locate a (real-life) hidden treasure of gold coins. The premise is engaging, in a Hunger Games–meets–National Treasure sort of way, and the diverse global cast is welcome, but the choppy, disjointed prose (“Nothing happens. The stars are out. They stare. Wait”) quickly wears thin. The narrative shifts frequently among the overlarge cast, and it’s too soon to tell what’s signal and what’s noise in the overabundance of details. Ages 14–up. Agent: Eric Simonoff and Simon Trewin, William Morris Endeavor; David Krintzman, Morris Yorn. (Oct.)
This year’s most thrilling teen releases take readers on journeys to postapocalyptic kingdoms, the bottom of the sea, a madcap Florida, and a former asylum that will make your skin crawl. Here are the books young readers will be putting on their wish lists this holiday season.
Nothing gets a young reader’s heart hopping—and her hands flying through the pages—like a high-stakes story of survival. Whether set in a postapocalyptic wilderness, a quarantined mall, or a reimagined fantasy world, these books feature young people defying the odds and facing terrible dangers. They’ll thrill and delight their receivers, with propulsive stories that will carry […]
A teen novelist, set loose in New York City after her debut sells big. A girl mutated by fever, just discovering the extent of her new supernatural powers. The dregs of the human race, fighting to survive alien invasion. In the best teen books of the year, young protagonists navigate life in our world and at the end of it. They struggle to survive and thrive in imagined universes, dead-end towns, and deep under the sea. These are the year’s most moving, heart-pounding, and engrossing teen books.
This is a month of thrilling returns: Stephenie Meyer is back, Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl spinoff is FINALLY here, and Miss Peregrine fans can now read her peculiar children’s story in one week-long binge. Other exciting new reads include a Victorian murder mystery and a futuristic invasion story told entirely in classified documents and other “found” ephemera. Here […]