From School Library Journal
Grades 5-8--This is the second installment in a trilogy about a band of mutant teenagers in 24th-century London. Though the premise sounds like a B movie, this fast-paced novel is more engaging than one might expect, and should appeal to fans of the genre. "Hexes" are outcasts who possess a particular gene that gives them extraordinary mental and technological powers that even they don't fully understand. The European Federation views the race as terrorists, and has vowed to destroy them, so Hexes have rarely lived beyond childhood. Only a small band of renegades, led by the powerful and mysterious Raven, has managed to evade government capture. Here, Raven and her clan join forces with a powerful antigovernment group to battle the CPS, a secret government agency leading the extermination effort. Raven is temporarily captured, but the ending makes it clear that she emerges stronger than ever. Lassiter shows considerable skill in drawing readers into her world of tomorrow, while still creating characters that will be recognizable to today's kids. Raven is about as strong a female protagonist as there is, but within the Hex clique, there are the same insecurities, jealousies, and peer pressures that kids experience in their own lives. Though second in a series, this installment reads fairly independently. The only drawback is that the book contains a handful of careless grammatical and typographical errors, but none so serious that they will detract from readers' enjoyment.
Ronni Krasnow, New York Public LibraryCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Mass Market Paperback
edition.
From Booklist
Reviewed with Rhiannon Lassiter's
Ghosts.
Gr. 7-10. These two paperbacks continue and complete the Hex trilogy, with the same nonstop action that distinguished Hex [BKL Ja 1 & 15 02]. In Shadows, teen hacker extraordinaire Raven is captured by the secret government agency bent on destroying the Hex-human mutants. She's put into the clutches of the very scientist whose secret laboratory she had destroyed and who wants to plumb the depths of her supercomputer mind. Meanwhile, her fellow Hexes are forging a partnership with an antigovernment rebel group and making plans to rescue her. In Ghosts, the new amalgamation of Hexes and rebels comes out of hiding to wreak havoc on the world's computer system and discovers the system itself harbors an evil, threatening blackness. This trilogy is tautly plotted and exciting to the max, and the conclusion will satisfy readers. Sally Estes
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to the
Mass Market Paperback
edition.
