Sylo

June 10, 2013
MacHale (the Pendragon books) shifts into thriller mode as he launches a trilogy with an entertaining and creepy tale of teens forced into a dire situation. Tucker is a high school freshman on Pemberwick Island, Maine, content to be a benchwarmer on the varsity football team. After the star tailback drops dead during a game, Tucker and his best friend Quinn go for a therapeutic bike ride at night and spy a mysterious aircraft. Soon after, more people start dying, and the island is quarantined and placed under protection of the SYLO agency. The introduction of a drug called the Ruby increases the threat, as humans and animals alike become strong and fast under its influence, but risk overdosing. As deaths continue to mount, Quinn, Tucker, and a girl named Tori become suspicious of their own families, as well as the government. MacHale throws a lot of action and a touch of romance into his conspiracy-laden plot, but fans of similar series (Michael Grant’s Gone books, for example) should have no problem keeping up. Ages 10–up. Agent: Richard Curtis, Richard Curtis Associates.

This riveting novel starts with a question: How safe is it to remain uninvolved? At 14, Tucker Pierce is all about fitting in and going with the flow. While his friends talk about going out into the world and doing great things, he prefers to dream small. He likes life on tiny, fictional Pemberwick Island, Maine, and hopes to take over his father's landscaping business eventually. For now, warming the bench at the weekly football games is just fine with him. But when the island is quarantined by the U.S. Navy, things start to fall apart, and Tucker can't stand aside for long. People start dying. The girl he wants to get to know a whole lot better, Tori, is captured along with Tucker and imprisoned behind barbed wire. The country-club golf course has been converted into a military camp run by a division of the military they've never heard of: SYLO. There's no communication from the mainland to the island and no way to get word of what's happening out to the world. Tucker and Tori need to get to the mainland to tell their story. Can they get past the naval blockade? Can they survive the sky-borne attack on the blockade? Whom can they trust? Who--or what--is SYLO? And who is fighting whom? MacHale knows boy readers and delivers, giving them an action-packed plot with a likable, Everykid protagonist and doling out answers with just the right amount of parsimony to keep the pages turning. This first installment in a proposed trilogy is absolutely un-put-down-able, more exciting than an X-Box and roller coaster combined. (Adventure. 10-16) COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2013

Gr 8 Up-MacHale's current-day dystopic series opener begins with a mysterious death and gets stranger from there. On Pemberwick Island off the coast of Maine, Tucker Pierce, 14, is vaulted onto his high school football team's starting lineup after a star player falls dead at the end of a game. To clear their heads, Tucker and his friend Quinn Carr take a late-night bike ride on the road that runs around the island's perimeter only to encounter a shadowy flying object that emits strange music that then explodes over the water. Within a few days, a stranger to the island offers Tucker a "supplement" called "the Ruby" that makes him feel superhuman. Then a military force wearing red camo uniforms with a patch bearing the word "SYLO" takes control of the island, and the president announces a quarantine until the CDC can identify and neutralize the "Pemberwick virus." Tucker and Quinn don't know what to make of events or who to trust as martial law takes over. In desperation, the teens make plans with Tori Sleeper, a lobsterman's daughter, to use her dad's two boats to escape the island. MacHale pens some terrific and unique action scenes, but they never overwhelm the story as the characters face one quandary, riddle, or dilemma after another in unraveling the mystery of what is happening. The shocking ending will leave readers hungry for the next installment.-Eric Norton, McMillan Memorial Library, Wisconsin Rapids, WI

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2013
Grades 5-8 High-school freshman Tucker Pierce lives on isolated Pemberwick Island, just off the coast of Maine. He has the requisite wiseacre best friend, Quinn, and is crushing on two unobtainable girls, Tori and Olivia. But when a series of sudden and mysterious deaths, including one of Tucker's classmates, throws everything he knows into turmoil, it leaves him with no idea where to turn or who to trust. Tucker's conversational, first-person point-of-view draws the reader in as SYLO, a military operation endorsed by the president, takes over the island. It quickly becomes apparent that SYLO forces will stop at nothing to see that everyone stays put. But then Tucker witnesses several cold-blooded killings, and he and his friends are determined to escape to the mainland. Once there, they find more questions than answers, and the story ends with a wide-open cliff-hanger and no resolution whatsoever. With this extremely high-octane story that's the equivalent to a summer movie blockbuster (enough explosions and firepower to put Michael Bay to shame), MacHale kicks off an apocalyptic trilogy sure to leave readers demanding the next installment. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: MacHale is the author of the bestsetting Pendragon series so, clearly, there are more than a few middle-grade kiddos who'll be snapping up this one.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)