Truancy Origins
Grade 8 Up—Zen and Umasi, the teenaged adopted sons of the mayor of Education City, rebel against the rigid strictures of society and the educational system and join the outcasts on the streets. But they have very different values and goals. Zen is determined to destroy the school and the City and establish himself as leader of the Truancy, a company of teens who have been expelled, while his gentler, more humane brother wants to protect the common people of the City, even if it means destroying his own brother. Fukui's second novel reads like a futuristicLord of the Flieswith gangs of boys running wild through an urban jungle battling one another and the Enforcers (for those of us who lived through the 1960s, the word "pigs" springs immediately to mind). Fukui's dramatic and compelling dystopian world will initially capture the imaginations of teens who are disenchanted with school and home and the limitations imposed upon them by adults. Unfortunately, the overwrought writing style, stock characters, underdeveloped plot, and nonstop mayhem are unlikely to hold their interest.—Jane Henriksen Baird, Anchorage Public Library, AKCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.