Young Natalie Fuentes, sixteen-old-daughter of jet-setting, world-travelling, divorced journalist parents settles down with her father in Toronto. The Canadian city is a little tame compared to her times in Buenos Aires and New York, but walking in on an attack against her high school’s janitor sweeps her up into events before she even attends a class. Now she has to cope with finding friends when she’s already made enemies. Fortunately, Natalie knows how to handle herself, and she resolves to get to the heart of the mystery.
Emily Pohl-Weary’s first foray into children’s literature is a triumph. Natalie is a cool, hip heroine that doesn’t try too hard to be cool and hip. The characters are all well drawn and the mystery will keep readers guessing to the very end. This book is the first of a series, and it will be interesting to see the characters grow and develop in the sequels.
A full review can be found here.
- Book 1: Mortal Engines ($8.99 paperback)
- Book 2: Predator’s Gold ($9.99 paperback)
- Book 3: Infernal Devices ($10.13 paperback)
- Book 4: A Darkling Plain ($15.85 paperback) ($22.89 library binding)
Philip Reeve describes a nightmare world, centuries after the American and Chinese Empires remodelled the planet in a conflict that came to be known as “The Sixty Minute War”. Now, cities have mounted themselves on caterpiller treads and troll the ruined lands of Europe and Asia, consuming smaller towns and cities in their great jaws in a scavenging practise known as “Municipal Darwinism”.
But this world seen through the eyes of young Tom Natsworthy and troubled Hester Shaw becomes one of highest adventure and noble struggle, as they fight for their lives against the machinations of the great cities and the militantly static settlements of Shan Quo. Tom and Hester are a particularly good match, as Tom naively but fervently fights for a fairer world, and Hester is violently pragmatic. Their struggles cannot help but touch the heart in this wild page turner.
From the Amazon web site:
From Publishers Weekly
New York City’s rapid transit system, the longest in the world, was built between 1904 and 1940, and initally was operated as three separate lines (Interborough Rapid Transit, or IRT; Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit, or BMT; and the Independent System, or IND), all of which were eventually unified into one municipal system. Hood, a professor of history at Hobart and William Smith College in New York, here provides a clear, perceptive and carefully researched study of this engineering feat and the ways in which the subway led to an expansion of the metropolitan area. Financed by both private and public funds, construction was hampered by conflicts between financiers and politicians, as well as by geological obstacles which led to devastating underground accidents. Hood convincingly argues that the takeover of the subways by the Transit Authority in 1953 resulted in a progressive deterioration that can only be remedied by government subsidies. This is a strong contribution to urban studies.
A political history of the construction of the New York subway, this book is not for railfans who want track plans, photographs and construction details. History fans, however, will be interested in the social and political maneuverings and transformations that shaped the subway and were shaped by the subway in turn.
