From School Library Journal
Grade 6-8--At a sleepover, Kira, 15, agrees to let her friends hypnotize her for the fun of it. Instead of the expected revelation of a secret crush, her friends hear a child's buried memory of fleeing from danger with her mother and speaking in a language none of them understands. Kira's assumptions about her life in their small Ohio town are challenged, and her reticent, eccentric mother is frightened rather than reassuring when confronted with her daughter's questions. Then she disappears, and a woman shows up claiming to be Kira's benevolent Aunt Memory from a community called Crythe, where memories are valued above all else. Aunt Memory claims that the woman Kira thinks of as her mother is being held hostage and that only Kira can save her. Thus ensues a race across the continent involving Crythian political intrigue, deception, kidnapping, and blackmail. Of course, nothing is as it seems, and there are enough plot twists to satisfy Haddix's loyal readers. The plot-driven narrative moves at such a brisk pace that only by the end of the story do readers have time to ponder the unresolved questions concerning the power and role of memory in our lives.
--Farida S. Dowler, formerly at Bellevue Regional Library, WA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Gr. 6-9. While under hypnosis at a sleepover, Kira remembers a strange tidbit from her past--her eccentric mother has been lying about how she and Kira ended up in small-town Ohio. It turns out that Kira comes from Crythe, a community that, legend has it, descended from the Ancient Romans. The Crythains believe that people are what they remember, so they forget nothing--remembering every word, thought, and action they've ever experienced. Having escaped the strange world of Crythe as a toddler, Kira returns, hoping to discover her past and perhaps save her people. But soon she finds herself imprisoned with her best friend and the woman she always believed was her mother; if Kira has any chance of escaping, she'll have to unlock the memories hidden inside her. Tightly plotted and
Matrix-esque in its thought-provoking complexity, this will have special appeal for the computer cognoscenti. Haddix nimbly balances a fascinating examination of the significance of memory with an exciting, fantastical adventure story.
John GreenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
