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Lanagan, Margo
9 Reviews
(4)
YA
Zeroes series.
In this hefty conclusion to the trilogy, the Zeroes, a diverse team of supernaturally gifted teens, heads to New Orleans to attempt to defeat the Nexus, a machine that channels crowds' power and energy with the aim of dismantling societal norms and causing chaos and anarchy. An epic face-off during Mardi Gras results. The action is high-amp and nonstop; characterization suffers, necessarily, in comparison.
Reviewer: Martha V. Parravano
(2)
YA
The Zeroes, a diverse team of supernaturally gifted teens, encounter strangers who wreak havoc with their own crowd-manipulating abilities--and warn of a much bigger threat. This second volume (Zeroes) accelerates the pace and ups the stakes with lots of action sequences, some truly scary. Development of the teens' platonic and romantic interpersonal dynamics (including one blossoming same-sex relationship) adds depth.
Reviewer: Katie Bircher
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
September, 2016
(2)
YA
Each of the five teens in "the Zeroes" has a supernatural ability. When Ethan ("Scam") gets himself into trouble, the others jail-break him, crossing paths with another gifted teen, Kelsie. At five-hundred-plus pages, with six main characters to follow, this series-opener occasionally struggles to maintain its pace, but there's plenty of time to flesh out the teens' motivations and unusual abilities.
Reviewer: Katie Bircher
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
November, 2015
(2)
YA
With little exposition or context setting, Lanagan's fourth short story collection leaves readers deliriously off-balance through language that is more imagistic than descriptive and settings that can be simultaneously realistic and extraordinary (e.g., a hardscrabble maritime community beset by a sea creature). Unsettling, often gruesome--these works demand much of their readers, occasionally providing catharsis and unfailingly provoking thought.
Reviewer: Elissa Gershowitz
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
May, 2013
(1)
YA
Magically, a bitter ostracized seal-kin girl calls up beautiful selkie women to entice the men of Rollrock Island, whose human wives eventually abandon the island. The world is busily, passionately alive in this blend of folktale and invented regionality; each of six narrators comes fully formed; and Lanagan makes us confront the troubled but fertile margins of our animal and human natures.
Reviewer: Deirdre F. Baker
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
September, 2012
(1)
YA
After escaping from horrifyingly abusive circumstances, Liga raises her daughters, Branza and Urdda, in a parallel world without aggression or fear. When strangers pique Urdda's curiosity, she finds her way to the real world, rupturing Liga's haven. Earthy folk dialect tethers the fantasy even as the lyrical narrative and mythic imagery intensify its fairy-tale atmosphere. A story of extraordinary depth and beauty.
Reviewer: Deirdre F. Baker
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
September, 2008
(1)
YA
Lanagan's (Black Juice, White Time) ten stories delve into the crevices of nightmare, temptation, and helplessness. She has an unerring ear for patterns of speech and for weird, terrifying combinations of words that conjure startling images. Physical desire and repugnance go uneasily hand in hand in most of the stories, which have the intensity of folktale and a powerfully visceral style.
Reviewer: Deirdre F. Baker
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
November, 2007
(1)
YA
In this collection of ten compelling stories, Lanagan typically plunges into the action in a deceptively commonplace milieu. In "Wealth," for instance, a chilling dystopian satire, the chief value of the ruling Leets lies in their voluminous hair, artificially augmented by the impoverished Ords. Other themes--nonconformity, sexuality, cultural norms--in this taut, vivid, and original book challenge teens to explore their own values.
Reviewer: Joanna Rudge Long
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
July, 2006
(1)
YA
From the stunning first story, "Singing My Sister Down," these ten stories are mesmerizing. Whether post-apocalyptic, dystopian, or primeval, each diverges from our ordinary view of reality yet illumines such verities as courage, loyalty, and love. Their perspectives are closely encompassed by their first-person narrators' circumstances, revealed (minimally, obliquely) as the action unfolds among marvelously strange concrete details.
Reviewer: Joanna Rudge Long
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
May, 2005
9 reviews
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