Post-Wiscon YA reading #7: The Danger Box
Dec. 20th, 2011 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carbonelThe Danger Box, by Blue Balliett
The last book wasn't YA. What this book isn't is fantasy or science fiction. It's a perfectly mainstream middle-grade novel about a boy who is probably on the autistic spectrum and is legally blind. He finds something of historic interest, and has to figure out what it is. In the meantime, other people want it as well.
This book is essentially an idiot plot. If an offstage character hadn't done something monumentally stupid at the beginning of the book, there never would have been the rest of the book. That said, the book kept me engaged throughout. Though it is not SF, as I said, there is a certain amount of alien viewpoint that gives it much the same sort of feel.
Two of the author's other books are Chasing Vermeer and The Wright 3, from which I infer that fiction with historical resonances is her specialty.
The last book wasn't YA. What this book isn't is fantasy or science fiction. It's a perfectly mainstream middle-grade novel about a boy who is probably on the autistic spectrum and is legally blind. He finds something of historic interest, and has to figure out what it is. In the meantime, other people want it as well.
This book is essentially an idiot plot. If an offstage character hadn't done something monumentally stupid at the beginning of the book, there never would have been the rest of the book. That said, the book kept me engaged throughout. Though it is not SF, as I said, there is a certain amount of alien viewpoint that gives it much the same sort of feel.
Two of the author's other books are Chasing Vermeer and The Wright 3, from which I infer that fiction with historical resonances is her specialty.
