AUGUST 2019 - AudioFile
Narrator Will Collyer brings realistic emotion to this creepy audiobook about a terrifying plague. Ben, 11, and his brother Pete, 12, witness the first of many mysterious, random storms that are turning people all over the world into obsidian glass statues. The two brothers then make very different attempts to try to avert impending doom. While Ben thinks that birds are involved, Pete becomes obsessed with a theory that shattering the glass-ified people will end the plague. Collyer expresses Ben’s anxiety in measured tones, keeping it under the surface but palpable. His serious, straightforward narration makes the horror of this gripping story seem like it could happen anywhere. S.C. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
starred review Quill and Quire
* "A powerful piece of storytelling... Will resonate with anyone who understands that heroism is not a matter of saving the world but of maintaining yourself, and acting to protect those in your community — despite the forces arrayed against you.
BCCB
Stephen King-level horror haunting a tight, thoughtful domestic drama.
From the Publisher
"Narrator Will Collyer brings realistic emotion to this creepy audiobook about a terrifying plague."—AudioFile
Booklist
This gripping novel trusts its young readers.
School Library Connection
Will stick with the reader long after they are finished.
Canadian Children's Book News
A fresh spin on the post-apocalyptic genre.... A thought-provoking read.
Shelf Awareness
Gripping and affecting.
AUGUST 2019 - AudioFile
Narrator Will Collyer brings realistic emotion to this creepy audiobook about a terrifying plague. Ben, 11, and his brother Pete, 12, witness the first of many mysterious, random storms that are turning people all over the world into obsidian glass statues. The two brothers then make very different attempts to try to avert impending doom. While Ben thinks that birds are involved, Pete becomes obsessed with a theory that shattering the glass-ified people will end the plague. Collyer expresses Ben’s anxiety in measured tones, keeping it under the surface but palpable. His serious, straightforward narration makes the horror of this gripping story seem like it could happen anywhere. S.C. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2019-02-13
When a bizarre plague strikes the world, the stakes for one boy could not be more personal in this debut coming-of-age novel from a Canadian author.
It starts the summer Ben is 11; sudden dark clouds appear, and millions of random adults turn to obsidian glass. As panic and chaos spread, passionate birder Ben worries mostly for his own family, about the town bullies, and over the inexplicably missing local sparrows. But after a compelling, mysterious Voice on the radio enlists the world into a radical response, Ben must decide where his loyalties belong. His first-person narration authentically conveys the painful confusion of a sensitive child coping with adult tragedies. Removing access to computers and cellphones turns his small rural home into an oddly old-fashioned Everytown, albeit one with little scope for women—Ben's mentally fragile mother is the only notable female character. A Stranger Things-like tone effectively conveys the creeping dread of a hapless microcosm trapped within a supernatural end of days. Unfortunately, despite the intimate family drama and devastating losses, there is a frustrating lack of resolution: What really caused the "glassification"? Who was the Voice? What did the birds have to do with it? Along with the more compassionate but much less innocent Ben, readers learn only that "life simply went on." Characters are default white.
An interesting but ultimately unsatisfying experiment from a writer worth watching. (Horror. 8-12)
