The Terminals

September 22, 2014
Buckingham makes his U.S. YA debut with this ambitious yet uneven thriller, in which a group of teens diagnosed with a terminal condition get the chance to be globe-trotting secret agents. Their newest recruit, 19-year-old Cam Cody, is an athlete with one year to live, due to a brain tumor. Hoping to make the last year of his life count, Cam eagerly joins the mysterious organization that promises to train and utilize him. Soon he and nine others are fighting pirates, saving lives, and taking down foreign dictators. As Cam’s companions gradually die in the line of duty, he grows uneasy, and when a survivor of the previous “class” of spies shows up, he realizes that nothing is what it seems. Buckingham sets up the premise well and offers surprises at every turn, but this story is weakened by distasteful gender undertones, including Cam’s tendency to see every girl he encounters in terms of physicality and hookup potential, and the way female characters are killed off. An intriguing but problematic story. Ages 12–up.

September 15, 2014
A teen with a year to live is recruited into an elite team of dying 19-year-old spies. Cam Cody is a soccer star finishing up his senior year of high school when he's diagnosed with a rare kind of brain tumor by a secretive traveling doctor. Though he feels perfectly healthy, his despair is overwhelming. When a mysterious man offers him a job as a one-year spy kid, the choice seems obvious: Let the creepy spies fake his premature death and spirit him off to the opportunity of, well, a lifetime. On a beach surrounded by cliffs and jungle, Cam meets the nine other members of his team, all as distinctive as if they were the cast of a miniseries. There's the genius, the musician, the big lunkhead and "the hot gal" (also known as "Obviously female," "a goddamned beer commercial. James Bond with boobs," and "definitely not repressed"). All Cam's teammates take the drug TS-9, which enhances their speed, strength and smarts, but Cam's been assured he doesn't need the drug yet. The team's spy training is brutal, but their missions are rewarding, such as rescuing kidnapped humanitarian-aid doctors from pirates. They are humanitarian-aid doctors, right? Team members keep getting killed-sometimes under very suspicious circumstances-but they all have only a year to live, after all. Solving the mystery with only the most heavily foreshadowed characters left alive leads to a shoehorned lead-in for the next volume. For readers who want cinematic action and excitement without the fuss of character development. (Action. 13-15)

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September 1, 2014

Gr 9 Up-The premise is inventive: terminally ill teens are recruited by a mysterious organization to become medically enhanced secret agents trained to carry out dangerous humanitarian missions for the brief remainder of their lives. Recently diagnosed 19-year-old Cam joins the cause to make a difference before he dies but soon realizes that the organization may have sinister motives in choosing its recruits. The narrative starts out with a bang, but the novel never seems to reach its full potential. The cast of characters is overly large and underdeveloped; it's difficult to care when characters are given a paper-thin backstory and then killed off with little fanfare. Also, there's an uncomfortable tone of misogyny demonstrated when two male characters casually categorize their female companions as "the kind of girl a guy could marry" (because she's good-natured and enjoys baking) versus "I'm guessing she's already had a roll in the sand with just about every [guy here]" (because she's physically attractive and uninhibited). Fans of the spy thriller genre may be pleased by the action-driven plot, but Cam's revelations about the evil organization will come as no surprise to readers, and the end is more predictable than climactic-although it does hint at a sequel. For a more inclusive and empowering book about superpowered young adults, try Dangerous (Bloomsbury, 2014) by Shannon Hale.-Allison Tran, Mission Viejo Library, CA

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2014
Grades 9-12 Handsome, athletic Cameron Cody had a lot to look forward to as he started college, but that was before he was diagnosed with a rare, fatal brain tumor that will kill him within the year. Now he has to accept that he will likely never achieve the things he hoped for. That is, until a mysterious visitor offers him soccer, travel, girls, and more. Soon Cam finds himself on a remote tropical beach with nine other teens with the same type of tumor, and they're all being trained for dangerous covert missions. The other kids receive an experimental drug that will supposedly mitigate their tumor symptoms while enhancing their strength, reflexes, and focus. Cam begins to sense that something is amiss when he receives cryptic notes in his bunk, but just how much is he being lied to, and about what? Though the girl characters get disappointingly one-dimensional treatments, Buckingham's above-average writing and exotic settings are plenty appealing. Fans of Robert Muchamore's Cherub series will eat up this sf-tinged espionage thriller.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)