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Summary
Summary
What can he do with his new powers -- and what are they doing to him?
Before the attack, Tom Harvey was just an average teen. But a head-on collision with high technology has turned him into an actualized App. Fragments of a shattered iPhone are embedded in his brain. And they're having an extraordinary effect on his every thought.
Because now Tom knows, sees, and can do more than any normal boy ever could. But with his new powers comes a choice: To avenge Lucy, the girl he loves, will he hunt down the vicious gangsters who hurt her? Will he take the law into his own electric hands and exterminate them from the South London housing projects where, by fear and violence, they rule?
Not even his mental search engine can predict the shocking outcome of iBoy's actions.
A WiFi, WTF thriller by YA master Kevin Brooks.
Author Notes
Kevin Brooks is the groundbreaking author of the internationally acclaimed novels DAWN; BLACK RABBIT SUMMER; BEING; THE ROAD OF THE DEAD, a Mystery Writers of America "Edgar" nominee; CANDY; KISSING THE RAIN; LUCAS; and MARTYN PIG, which received England's Branford Boase Award for Best First Novel. Brooks lives in Yorkshire, England.
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Brooks's latest novel may have a goofy premise, but this revenge story is no less intense a thriller than his earlier work. Sixteen-year-old Tom lives in the rough Crow Town projects in London, where gangs run rampant. As he heads to one of the towers one day to see his friend Lucy, an iPhone is thrown from her apartment, shattering his skull and embedding itself in his head. When Tom wakes up in the hospital after surgery, he finds that some pieces of the phone have merged with his brain, and he has newfound powers that include mentally browsing the Internet, hacking cell phones, and zapping people. He also learns that Lucy was being gang-raped while he was en route to visit her, and the rest of the novel consists of Tom's attempts to retaliate against the gangs and the culture that creates them. Brooks (Dawn) delivers something that's less a work of science fiction than a brutal rumination on vengeance, near-limitless power, and their effects on people, with believably flawed characters and a harsh setting that serve the story well. Ages 14-up. (Nov.)? (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
A brutal act of violence results in an iPhone being lodged in narrator Tom's brain. Now armed with mental access to all of cyberspace, Tom takes vengeance on the people who raped his friend, Lucy. The premise requires much suspension of disbelief, but the moral ambiguities inherent in such power and Tom and Lucy's tentative journeys back from their trauma are compelling. (c) Copyright 2012. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Brooks (The Road of the Dead, 2006) is a master at revealing ugly and brutal aspects of relationships among family and friends as well as plumbing each individual's capacity to reach deep within to find character traits that can lead to redemption. Here, South London teen Tom Harvey suffers a bizarre but compelling accident: when someone throws an iPhone at him from a 30-story public housing tower, his skull is split, and small pieces of the communications device cannot safely be retrieved during brain surgery. While recovering, Tom learns that his friend Lucy was brutally raped during the same incident. He also discovers that the bits of embedded iPhone have given him the power to search the web, listen to phone calls, and manipulate messages sent by cell, all through his thought processes. Motivated by the need to punish those who hurt Lucy, Tom sets out to identify and take revenge on local gang members. Brooks' writing, as always, is smooth; his dialogue realistic; and his characters and setting fully developed. The ethical issues Tom encounters during his crusade will resonate with readers of any social class, and this novel should lead to many a discussion about the unsteady fault line between good and evil.--Goldsmith, Francisc. Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
THE setting for "iBoy," in the projects and high-rises of South London, as well as its violence, meted out by marauding pubescent gangs, cannot help cutting close to the bone after this past summer's riots in England. Kevin Brooks's "iBoy," his latest gritty sci-fi thriller ("Black Rabbit Summer," "The Road of the Dead"), is a vengeance tale that even offers a philosophical take on the criminal actions of these young offenders, a prescient view currently shared by many British politicians: "The application in my iBrain doesn't care why they do it. It doesn't care if they're poor or uneducated or bored or addicted or troubled or lonely or if they simply don't know any better." The "iBrain" in this case is distinct from the boy, the 16-year-old protagonist Tom Harvey, an average teenager "with no major problems, no secrets, no terrors, no vices, no nightmares, no special talents," as he sees it. Tom does, however, feel far more ambivalent than this "iBrain" does about the crimes of his peers. "There aren't things that are definitely right or definitely wrong. Nothing is simply black or white; it's all a murky dull gray." But because of an accident in which fragments of an iPhone become embedded in Tom's skull (to be precise, a 32 gigabyte iPhone 3GS, traveling at a speed of 77 miles per hour), the power of moral arbiter is suddenly forced upon him, the chance or the obligation to decide whom to punish as his fluorescent alter ego, iBoy. Tom's new superhero-size powers include the immediate, in-brain access to any information, even classified or hidden, on the Internet; the means to monitor and control the activity of any phone in the world; and the bonus mutation of being able to zap his enemies with accumulated electric buzz. "Imagine," he says, "the sound of a billion bees, the sight of a billion beees, the sense of a billion bees. Imagine their movement, their interactions, their connections, their being." This, he explains, is the cumulative sensation of the torrent of information exploding into life inside his head. Tom himself draws the comparison with that most relatable of gangly adolescent superheroes, Peter Parker, as he experiments with and debates how best to use his powers. Inaction is hardly an option, however, as Tom is drawn rapidly toward vigilantism by the assault on his best friend and "Mary Jane Watson," Lucy, who was horribly attacked by the same gang members who dropped the iPhone from 30 stories up that smashed into his skull. The vivid portrayal of gang violence and retribution in "iBoy" is challenging to read even for an adult. But the chapter epigraph that quotes from a genuine news article that appeared in The Guardian of London, which describes rape being used by gangs as a method of intimidation, anchors the Lucy subplot in depressing reality. Lucy's suffering is an ever-present background and justification for iBoy's revenge spree. In fast-moving passages, Tom harnesses his powers to scan all electronic activity in the neighborhood, intercepting and storing every text and phone call, setting up and framing the guilty for engineered crimes if their real misdeeds aren't being prosecuted. When virtual intervention isn't enough, iBoy brutally exposes the empty bravado and cowardice of the local thugs in tense fight scenes - just before he concusses them. Because iBoy's attacks amount in most cases to a light frazzling it seems churlish to condemn them for gratuitous violence. However, the gruesome climax of the novel could be criticized on these grounds. A book that purports to deglamorize gangs and cruelty perhaps shouldn't gleefully describe how an exposed spine looks poking out of a mutilated henchman. Not that such scenes will dissuade many of the book's likely readers Brooks's "iBoy" is part of a trend of nerdy-gritty-superhero ultraviolence, notable in recent books by Mark Millar. If blood and guts are necessary to catch the eye of the teenage reader, then the excess of "iBoy" is forgivable. The book may feature exploding limbs, but it is also a moralistic fable that makes thoughtful reference to Arthur Koestler, Aristotle and E. E. Cummings. Together, it makes for an intelligent and fast-moving story, one that cleverly shifts between comic-book thrills and touchingly effective realism. Victoria Beale has written for The Guardian, The New Republic, Intelligent Life and The Financial Times.
School Library Journal Review
Tom realizes he has superpower after parts of a cell phone, dropped from a high-rise building, become imbedded in his brain. He battles with his urge to seek revenge on the gang that raped his childhood friend and beat him or to control his newfound powers. This book is realistic, frightening, and a real sci-fi page-turner. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Being, 2007, etc.). This classic superhero plot, at once cutting-edge science fiction and moral fable, is guaranteed to keep even fiction-averse, reluctant readers on the edge of their seats. (Science fiction. 14 up)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
From iBoy When he saw me standing there-a hooded figure with a nightmare face -- Jayden froze, shocked, scared to death. I reached out to push him back into the elevator. I only intended to give him a shove, but when my hand touched his chest, my fingers flashed and I felt something jolt through my arm, and Jayden was suddenly flying backward as if he'd been hit with a sledgehammer. As he slammed against the lift wall and slumped to the floor, I stepped in after him and the doors closed behind me. There was a faint smell of electricity in the elevator-a hot, crackly kind of smell-and as I hit the button for the ground floor I realized that the skin of my hands was shimmering, too, just like my face. And the ends of my fingertips were glowing red. The elevator started to descend. I looked down at Jayden. He was very pale, his face white and rigid, his hands shaking. He stared at me for a moment, then wiped his mouth and spat on the floor. "What the hell are you?" I guessed that meant that he wasn't too badly hurt. "I'm your worst nightmare," I told him. Excerpted from iBoy by Kevin Brooks All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
