Saturday 29 March 2008

The Supernaturalist Eoin Colfer

The Supernaturalist Eoin Colfer, Puffin, 291pages, paperback NZ$19.95
ISBN 0-141-38041-1

Eion Colfer’s grim future city offers everything the body wants and nothing the soul needs. It also has street gangs, toxic fumes, an unstable satellite control system, rapid- response combat-lawyers, and orphanages for product testing.


This stunningly detailed dystopia is the background for the imaginative adventures of Cosmo, a 14 year-old foundling, who confronts a plague of eerie blue parasites. Cosmo joins an odd gang of misfits, the Supernaturalists, who share his ability to see these parasites. Their battles across the rooftops are exciting but after an alarming discovery the trio give up in despair. Colfer, however, has several plot twists, some horrors from Cosmo’s past and a hundred more pages to go. As always he is plausibly inventive. His street weapons, in particular, are worryingly convincing.

Trevor Agnew


This review first appeared in The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand in 2004.

No comments: