Synopsis
Crouched and grinning, he faced her. Fourteen, wiry and strong, he was tuned to every pulse of his body. Violence sang in his blood, sky met earth and he was a lone dark figure dancing at the center point. At the base of the fence the dog went manic, vaulting itself upward, spiraling into a high-pitched whine. Leaning down, Deller teased it with a dangling hand. "Gotcha, Bunny," he sneered. They'd never trapped her like this before-alone, way out nowhere. Several years earlier Nellie and her mother fled the Interior and its hated security police for the Outbacks, a loose-knit resistance of small cities, towns and rural areas. Since then her mother has disappeared and twelve-year-old Nellie is on her own, scrounging a living where she can find it. When loneliness opens her mind to flux, the ability to alter her vibratory state in the molecular field, she learns to travel to other levels of reality. When a prank by the Skulls, an unruly gang of boys, reveals several large scars on her scalp, Nellie is forced to confront the terrifying truth that her vague memories of experiments that took place while she lived in the Interior are real. Befriended by fourteen-year-old Deller, leader of the Skulls, Nellie learns of the disappearance of his younger brother Fen. Using her ability to travel the levels, she eventually finds Fen trapped in an experimental laboratory deep in another reality. Although Nellie is unable to free him, her discovery precipitates a series of events that lead her and Deller back to the Interior, and straight into the memories she has been trying so hard to forget. Long regarded as one of Canada's finest writers of teen fiction, Beth Goobie's novels have received numerous awards and citations. Flux is the first of two books in a series. Book two is Fixed.
Michael Levy - VOYA
Nellie is living on the street, eating out of trash cans, and robbing stores when she must. She lives in an old shack on the edge of the city. Her mother disappeared many months ago, and there is a big hole where her memories should be. She has two advantages though. First, the Goddess Ivana appears to favor her. Second, she can feel the flux and enter other levels of reality, stealing things from those higher dimensions and the stupid doubles who inhabit them, and then escaping back down to her own level. She has to be careful though. The Skulls, a gang of teenage boys led by the weasel-faced Deller, are after her. And then there are the repressive Interior Police, who can travel the levels as well and who make homeless children disappear, apparently using them for illicit experiments. Worst of all, Nellie has reason to believe that the Interior Police are specifically interested in her. When the Skulls catch her and shave off her hair, Nellie makes a startling discovery. Her head is covered with massive scars, and she begins to have memories of men in white lab coats. Something terrible is going on, and after she makes her peace with Deller, the two young people team up to uncover a hideous secret. Hovering on the border between science fiction and fantasy, this novel is a powerful, well-written, and suspenseful tale that should strongly appeal to the many readers who loved Goobie's previous novel, Before Wings (Orca, 2000/VOYA April 2001). VOYA CODES: 4Q 4P J S (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Broad general YA appeal; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2004, Orca, 256p., Ages 12 to 18.