Just when readers have almost wrapped their heads around the flying teen heroes, strange communication signals and extensive back story and have settled into this otherwise fairly fast-paced third, Jacobs confoundingly switches gears midway through and adds multiple narrators. Not only is the action hard to follow from the first page, but it’s interspersed with confusing, often unattributed dialogue that is either spoken or telepathically sent, the latter set apart in bolded italics rather than with quotation marks. Awakened by a din of screams and crashing trees outside their bunker, Shreve and Jack, heroes of the previous two installments, rally their troops to battle the Conformity, a conglomeration of thousands of innocent human victims fused together into a brown, jellylike bipedal mass by “some massive and unknown telekinetic power.” The Conformity stands stories tall, wreaks havoc wherever it walks and sucks up other humans into its body as it goes. Right from the get-go readers are plunged almost too quickly into the action of Jacobs’ finale. Telekinesis, flying teens, reinhabited bodies, giants and more: The Society of Extranaturals returns for the conclusion to the Twelve-Fingered Boy trilogy. Kettle’s camp flashbacks feel short and in need of deepening to reflect his injustice in contrast, Nora’s violent encounters with her father, written with care, grip the heart.Ī complicated, unlikely friendship with an ending that feels simplified. Although it takes a while (the book’s middle) before these two lost souls meet, their chemistry becomes palpable and gives the narrative a good jolt. An act of purging finally brings Nora and Kettle together. Endearingly loyal and responsible, Kettle works dangerous dock jobs to pay for groceries, toothbrushes, and Slinkys for his Kings. He and his best friend-practically a brother-Kin, both Japanese-American internment-camp detainees, now take care of the Kings, a group of homeless boys (and one girl), who proudly rename themselves with K names. Kettle, an orphan and part Japanese-American, must deal with attitudes fresh from World War II that still believe he’s the enemy. When Nora’s mother dies after a fall, Nora’s last fragment of security is shattered. She’ll do anything to protect her younger sister, Frankie, from their abusive father, ironically a civil rights attorney.
Nora lives in constant fear and has the bruises to prove it. But, at their very cores, they share a common need: survival. She lives in a brownstone he, on the streets.
Teens Nora and Kettle endure hardships while leading two different lives in 1950s America.
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