The Nightworld

April 9, 2012
This slim adventure has an unusual provenance. Developed by James Frey’s Full Fathom Five packaging company and first published by Harper in November 2011 as an e-book in conjunction with a mobile game app of the same name, the story serves as the origin for a world
devoid of sunlight. Everyteen Nick Robbins’s physicist father is brutally murdered soon after a mysterious cloud blankets the Earth, cutting off all light. On his own, with civilization rapidly collapsing around him, Nick must find a way to survive. While some—like his newfound love interest Lara and tough guy Zeke—are on his side, most people are ready to murder, enslave, and pillage at the drop of a hat. Moreover, government thugs are after Nick for the light-generating MacGuffin his father left him. The end result is a bleak, tense affair where no one is safe and every moment is fraught with danger. Blaine does his best with the material, but with the book ending just as things start to get interesting, this is more like an appetizer than a full meal. Ages 14–up.

June 1, 2012

Gr 8 Up-Reminiscent of Susan Beth Pfeffer's "Last Survivors" trilogy (Harcourt), but not as well-written, this apocalypse story begins as Nick Robbins excited about being invited to a party by his longtime crush, Lara. However, he leaves early when a menacing cloud settles over the city. Upon arriving home, his father, a research scientist for the government, explains that they need to escape immediately: the storm cloud is a sign of impending doom. Government men kill him, but Nick escapes with a device his dad was working on, which may be the only chance for the world's survival. The novel starts slowly, but once the teen is on the run, it becomes a fast and energetic ride. Up to the point that Nick finds Lara holed up in her penthouse apartment, readers might be able to accept how he survives, but what happens after that completely strains credulity: he and Lara take off on a motorcycle to Detroit, find an underground refuge, inoculate themselves from the virus that killed everyone in the refuge, and begin saving children who are left to fend for themselves. The ending is way too pat and leaves too many unanswered questions. This story was inspired by a video game and feels like it. It's only for readers who just can't get enough about the end of the world.-Elizabeth Kahn, Patrick F. Taylor Science & Technology Academy, Jefferson, LA

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2012
Grades 8-11 If you like your world-gone-wrong dystopia lighter on romantic torment and heavier on actual physical torment, then Blaine's grim vision is for you. Just after Nick finishes seventh grade and has made inroads with the cute Lara, a dark cloud begins to cover the sky, turning the world into a cold, sunless battleground populated with starving bands of lawless thugs. Using the effective limited perspective recently seen in Megan Crewe's The Way We Fall (2012), Nick, along with a trusty dog named Tank, is thrust into a roaming survival situation nearly as frightening as the one in Andrew Smith's The Marbury Lens (2010). Kind loners intervene along the way as Nick searches for Lara, but mostly he struggles to evade the crazies (a savage gang fond of taking fingers as mementos of their kills) as well as government thugs after the secret Nick's particle-physicist father was working on before his murder. Though the story seems to cut off prematurelysequels, perhaps?this is a well-envisioned nightmare owing more than a little to Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (1954).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)