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Firestorm: The Caretaker Trilogy: Book 1

Book Summary

Reviewed byMatt Berman
Jack's life comes crashing down after he wins his high school football game and is featured on the local news. Suddenly he is being hunted by strange creatures, who kill his parents just after he finds out they aren't really his parents, for reasons he doesn't understand. After nearly being killed again in New York, he takes up with a large, telepathic dog and flees down the Eastern Seaboard, pursued all the way and never knowing whom to trust.

Gradually he discovers that he is from 1000 years in the future, when the earth is an ecological wasteland; that the Turning Point, beyond which the disaster can't be stopped, is coming up; and that he has been sent back according to a prophecy to find something called Firestorm, which can stop the coming catastrophe. If only he knew what it is, or where.

Is It Any Good?

4
As with many thrillers, there's much here that lacks internal consistency. People show up in impossible places with no explanation; Jack's father communicates from the future, but Jack can't understand him until it's too late; people arrange complex and infallible deaths for Jack and then count on his surviving, and so on. Author David Klass compounds the problem with an irritating writing style made up almost entirely of incomplete sentences. Apparently he thinks it makes it more exciting -- cut right to the chase (no pun intended), don't waste words, keep it moving. Instead, it's merely a distracting gimmick.

But you know what? No one but curmudgeonly critics is going to care. The story rockets along with pulse-pounding action and gritty violence, and even reluctant teen readers will be quickly sucked in. And then in the second half, after they can't possibly put the book down, they get a good-sized dose of ecological information and messages. Jack is a likable enough protagonist and his gradually emerging abilities are satisfying, and the story features time travel (a sort of Terminator for the teen set), a ninja babe who teaches Jack to fight (after beating him up repeatedly), paranormal abilities, and a climax worthy of a Bond movie. What's not to like?

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