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Publisher:
Atom (Time Warner) |
Release
Date: January 2004 |
ISBN:
190423352X |
Awards:
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Format
Reviewed: Paperback |
Buy
it at Amazon US
|| UK |
Read
an Excerpt |
Genre:
Teen-YA / SF [Contemporary, Smallville] |
Reviewed:
2004 |
Reviewer:
Rachel A Hyde |
Reviewer
Notes: |
Copyright
MyShelf.com |
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Shadows
Smallville Series
By Diana G Gallagher
Clark Kent is on his
way home from school when he finds the dead farmer, and instantly
people are wondering whether it was the fallout from the disused
missile silo or the LexCorp fertilizer plant. Then new girl Sharon
starts getting very friendly with Clark, and very keen to get on
the staff of the school newspaper. Mysterious animal deaths add
another puzzling dimension to the problem, and maybe Sharon’s
scientist father is not merely writing a science fiction novel after
all.
Smallville could have just been a
junior version of Superman, but the fact that it is far more than
that explains the show’s continuing popularity and my own
assessment of it as “inspired.” This novel reminded
me of a Buffy story with the mad scientist and his mutants, things
going bump in the night, and school life, but a lot less tongue-in-cheek
It’s an exciting story, predictable but lifted above all this
by the turbulent relationships that mark this series out for closer
viewing. As ever, the tormented Lex and his doomed friendship with
the squeaky-clean Clark dominates the tale, as it ought to. The
fact that something so seemingly plot-driven as Superman has been
turned into something so character-driven continues to compel.
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