Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Firestorm


One of the books I read this summer was Firestorm, by David Klass. Firestorm was one of our freshman summer reads and was incredibly popular both this year and last, so I wanted to give it a try. What I liked about Firestorm was its fast pace and action-packed scenes. I also thought that the dialogue was pretty believable, as was the main character Jack's preoccupation with girls (he is 18, after all!).
Jack is the star of the football team and is with friends at a local diner celebrating his most recent victory, when a strange man walks past him and his eyes start flashing silver. Jack tells his parents about this strange occurrence, which ends up changing his life forever: the strange man is from the future and has been sent back to track Jack down and destroy him. As Jack discovers, his parents are not his true parents, as he also has been sent from the future to try and save the world (yeah, kind of like in "Terminator"-- but I forgave the author this obvious similarity because the rest of the book is completely original). The rest of the novel follows Jack as he eludes shape-shifters and makes strange new friends (a talking dog and a beautiful ninja-girl), while trying to understand his past and come to terms with the present.
Firestorm is really exciting and original, so it is definitely a great read for anyone interested in a relatively easy, action-packed, sci-fi type adventure. It also has some fascinating ecological detail worked into the plotline, so you get a little information along the way. It did take me a while to get beyond the author's writing style, however, because he wrote the book almost entirely (it seemed) in sentence fragments. Short. Sentences. Make it exciting. Although sometimes. It drove. Me crazy. You get used to it after a while.
All in all, I definitely recommend Firestorm and give it a hearty
3 out of 4 bananas!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I kind of liked how he would throw in a big word and then stop to define it for us -- I felt like I was learning while still enjoying a good story. Test prep and adventure, all in one book!

Anonymous said...

This book drove me crazy. No joke. Well.. I didn't mind the story plot.. But, the thing that turned me off completely, was how the author used fragments. ARGH! I wanted to just grab a pen and rewrite the entire book! :| It's not a bad book, I'm not saying that, but, I just couldn't take the fragments! :] I liked the second book better than the first, though. Since I read it for my summer reading, along with two other books.. But.. Aren't fragments just irritating sometimes? Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way.

Anonymous said...

i really liked this book it waas very enjoyable

Alicia Duell said...

Thanks for your comments, everybody! Anonymous, I'm glad you liked the book. You might want to come and check out *Whirlwind*, which is the sequel to *Firestorm*!