With just hours to go before Jack's arrival as Passenger, Publishers Weekly has placed a third star (following those by Booklist and Kirkus) on the book.
This is amazing.
Yesterday, I did a reading from Passenger at the Orange County Children's Book Festival. I read a bit from the prologue, where the boys shatter the lens and divide up their pathetic kingdom of Marbury; and then (taking copy editor Anne's advice) a bit from "The Under," where Quinn comes clean and admits to being the murderer Jack suspects him to be; and finally from the scene where Jack confronts the preacher in the middle of the nothingness of the Marbury desert.
It was fun.
Here is what Publishers Weekly had to say about Passenger:
★ Passenger Andrew Smith. Feiwel and Friends, $17.99 (480p) ISBN 978-1-250-00487-1 Although 16-year-old Jack and his friends survived their visit to the hellish alternate world of Marbury in Smith’s superb The Marbury Lens, the boys were both badly scarred by the experience and strangely addicted to it. Trying to destroy the lens, they instead discover that there are an infinite number of such universes, each more horrific than the last. In order to expiate the crippling guilt Jack feels over bringing his friends to Marbury, he must find a way to keep them alive and bring everyone home. Smith is a brilliant, almost hallucinatory stylist, who frequently uses his talent to gruesome effect: “The bandages and tape... soaked through with blood and pus that separated like light in a prism as the fluids migrated through the gauze and formed layers of color—the broken-down spectrum of the stuff inside of Jack.” And after all the torment Jack suffers, Smith pulls out an ending that, while perhaps not “happy” (this is Marbury, after all), feels both right and true. Readers who were riveted by The Marbury Lens will flock to this story. Ages 14–up.
...And, by the way, if you are a die-hard Marbury head, you just may be able to get a copy today if you can make it to one of the two Mysterious Galaxy Books locations.
You can see the actual Publishers Weekly review of Passenger here.
