December 1, 2007
Gr 6-9-Fourteen-year-old Jet Latter is not at all thrilled when her family and their Simulate Canine Deluxe, Otis, head to Ollywood, movie capital of their planet, where her oldest sister, Turquoise, will play Helenet's Third Damsel in "Fall of Super Troy". Jet and Otis, who has recently missed his half-yearly service, are trying to escape the torture of the Ollywood scene when they meet Ben, who tells them about the strange world of the Subway. On their first trip down to the "Underworld," Jet and Otis are transported to Indigara, a world made up of bad actors, bad dialogue, and scenes from science-fiction pilots that were never made into series. While the premise is amusing, and seems to have potential for humor, the actors and dialogue from the B movies only make for a B book. The perspective jumps from Otis's "diskripts" to Jet's journal, to movielike scene descriptions, which results in a choppy read. Fans of Lee's earlier works will be disappointed, as will fans of futuristic science fiction or Hollywood stories."Kelly Vikstrom, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, MD"
Copyright 2007 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
December 15, 2007
Stuck in a fancy hotel room on Planet Obelisk while one of her two horrible teenage sisters plays a bit part in an Ollywood epic, young Jet and her robotic dog, Otis, slip out to explore. The backstreets of Ollywood turn out to be haunted by dragons and shadowy ex-actors who, declares a puzzled Otis, arent entirely human; dog and girl slip into an alternate reality (see title) that mashes up stock characters, trite scenarios, and really bad dialogue from four failed costume dramas. Lee milks the satiric possibilities for all theyre worth, then brings her levelheaded protagonists back to Ollywood on dragon-backwhere, thanks to the high jinks of a pair of doppelgangers, they land starring roles as wild troublemakers in a new production that goes on to win20 OScars. Theres not so much as a pause for breath in this frothy, tongue-in-cheeksf romp.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)