Everlost (1) (The Skinjacker Trilogy) - Hardcover

Shusterman, Neal

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0689872372 ISBN 13: 9780689872372

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2006

Synopsis

Nick and Allie don't survive the car accident...

...but their souls don't exactly get where they're supposed to get either. Instead, they're caught halfway between life and death, in a sort of limbo known as Everlost: a shadow of the living world, filled with all the things and places that no onger exist. It's a magical, yet dangerous place where bands of lost children run wild and anyone who stands in the same place too long sinks to the center of the Earth.

When they find Mary, the self-proclaimed queen of lost kids, Nick feels like he he's found a home, but allie isn't satisfied spending eternity between worlds. Against all warnings, Allie begins learning the "Criminal Art" of haunting, and ventures into dangerous territory, where a monster called the McGill threatens all the souls of Everlost.

In this imaginative novel, Neal Shusterman explores questions of life, death, and what just might lie in between.

About this title

About the Author

Neal Shusterman is the New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty award-winning books for children, teens, and adults, including the Unwind dystology, the Skinjacker trilogy, Downsiders, and Challenger Deep, which won the National Book Award. Scythe, the first book in his latest series, Arc of a Scythe, is a Michael L. Printz Honor Book. He also writes screenplays for motion pictures and television shows. Neal is the father of four, all of whom are talented writers and artists themselves. Visit Neal at StoryMan.com and Facebook.com/NealShusterman.

Reviews

Starred Review. Grade 8 Up–Nick and Allie are killed in an automobile accident and meet as they are heading down a tunnel toward the light. They land in Everlost, the space between the living and the end of the tunnel, and meet Lief, from whom they learn that Afterlights cannot walk where the living walk and that they cannot be seen or heard by the living. Allie is determined to go home, so she and Nick set out from the accident site in upstate New York and the safety of Lief's forest for New Jersey. Even though they have been warned about the McGill, a dreaded, evil monster, they slowly make their way, eventually arriving in New York City. There they meet Mary Hightower, who cares for Afterlights in the destroyed World Trade Towers, keeping them safe from the McGill and the Haunter. (In addition to children, buildings and objects can also cross into Everlost if they were much loved.) In their ensuing adventures, they are captured by the McGill and suffer a horrible fate before Nick discovers his true purpose in Everlost. Schusterman has created a world in which nothing is as it seems. As the teens struggle to make sense of this alternate afterlife, they also grow and develop as people. They learn to question those who have put themselves in power, and they begin to see what is truly important. Shusterman has reimagined what happens after death and questions power and the meaning of charity. While all this is going on, he has also managed to write a rip-roaring adventure complete with monsters, blimps, and high-diving horses.–Lynn Evarts, Sauk Prairie High School, Prairie du Sac, WI
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Following a fatal car accident, teenagers Nick and Allie collide with each other on the way toward the light and are shoved into an alternate state of existence. No longer living but not yet at the end of their journey, they land in Everlost, a color-bleached plane populated with child and teen spirits. There are rules in Everlost that new "greensouls" must learn to survive: keep moving, don't fall into a routine, don't seek the living, watch out for gangs, and steer clear of the McGill, Everlost's resident monster. Such rules are immortalized in the many books on Everlost penned by Mary Hightower, the leader of a large community of souls residing in the inanimate ghosts of New York's Twin Towers. Enamored of Mary, Nick begins to settle in, while Allie fights to escape. Although a strong setup for a unique exploration of life after death, of which there are brief glimpses, the story instead charges ahead in an increasingly zany action adventure that will particularly attract readers of the adventure, fantasy, and science fiction genres and that may herald a sequel. Holly Koelling
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0689872372
• ISBN 13: 9780689872372
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320