From School Library Journal

Gr 6-10–In this first installment of a planned series, 13-year-old Eli lives in a postapocalyptic domed city run by InfiniCorp. The world has been suffering from global warming, but the corporation insists there is no reason to worry. It uses the power of the CloudNet to distract its citizens from signs that all is not as it should be. Because Eli is one of the few who can resist the CloudNet's power, he is accused of being a “Fogger” (those who are accused of anti-InfiniCorp sentiments) and is sent to a reeducation facility where he is imprisoned and forced to work assembling T-shirts. He meets Tabitha, who is the only other slave who can fight the power of the CloudNet. Together they plot to escape. Taut pacing and interesting characters are offset by flawed world building. A map does add visual clarification to settings that aren't fully fleshed out in the text (though, oddly, the location of the re-education facility is not indicated). Eli's microchip-implanted pet mongoose functions as a deus ex machina, another symptom of sloppy world building. While this is a decent example of dystopian literature, it is not likely to win over those who aren't already enthusiastic readers of the genre.Kristin Anderson, Columbus Metropolitan Library System, OH
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From Booklist

Hughes’ ecocrisis dystopia follows a familiar formula yet marks the beginning of a thought-provoking series. Thirteen-year-old Eli is expected to secure an important position in the family’s company, InfiniCorp, which created dome-cities to protect humanity from the ecological disasters Outside. When he notices worrisome problems with the artificial sky and weather, his concerns are dismissed. Unable to simply toe the company line, Eli meets the Friends of Gustavo, who claim they know the truth about the Final Days, and ends up marked as a terrorist. When he is sent to be reeducated, he meets Tabitha, another Friend, and with her and his telepathic pet mongoose, Eli intends to escape and bring change. Hughes takes on digital realities, mind control, corporate conspiracies, climate change, religious mania, and evil family members in this action-packed adventure. Although Eli doesn’t spur the plot forward so much as react as it happens, readers will relate as he ends up in trouble just by being inquisitive and observant. The author’s note includes a reading list and intelligent examples of how real science informed the story. Grades 6-10. --Krista Hutley

Product Description

Self-reflective mirrors looking for their own reflections. Towns that migrate to the moon. Prisoners of elaborate dungeons and gigantic miniature solar systems. Robots, ghosts, rascals, explorers, troubadours, apemen and yetis. All are present in the multiverse of inversion and invention that is Link Arms with Toads! Rhys Hughes is a unique figure in contemporary fiction whose speculative whimsicality is not so much balanced as trampolined by tensile prose and puckish pensiveness. Link Arms with Toads! forms the ideal introduction to his work.

About the Author

Rhys Hughes was born in 1966 in Cardiff but grew up in the seaside town of Porthcawl. He began writing at an early age but his first publications were chess problems and mathematical puzzles for newspapers. He sold his first short story in 1992 and his first book, Worming the Harpy, was published in 1995. Since then he has embarked on a mammoth project of writing exactly 1000 linked 'items' of fiction, including novels, to form a gigantic story cycle. Many of these 'items' have appeared in journals and anthologies around the world, and his books have been translated into Spanish, French, Greek, Portuguese, Russian and Serbian. His work has attracted attention for its originality of ideas, ingenuity of plotting and rich playfulness of his language.

Still adjusting to being back on Irish soil, PI Ed Loy finds himself caught up in a deadly web of lies, betrayals and shrouded histories. Shane Howard, a respected dentist from the venerable Howard medical family of Dublin, asks Loy to search for his missing daughter. The only information available is a set of pictures portraying nineteen-year-old Emily in a series of very compromising positions.

Seems like a pretty easy case to Loy… until people start dying. The very same day that Loy meets Howard, Emily's mother and ex-boyfriend are brutally stabbed to death. But that's only the beginning.

Loy discovers that the Howard family is not all that it seems. For years their name has stood for progress and improvement within Dublin's medical community, but that is only what's on the surface. The true legacy of the Howards is one of scandalous secrets, the type that are best left unearthed. Against his better judgment, Loy is drawn into the very center of the Howards' sordid family history, and what he finds could ruin more than reputations.

In The Color of Blood, Declan Hughes once again brings the city of Dublin to life in all its gritty glory. The dark realities of the streets converge with the lethal secrets of the past in a sinister and graphic thriller that will have readers on edge right up to its shocking conclusion.

What's in a name? Apparently everything for Ed Loy, because that's the only information Father Vincent Tyrrell, brother of prominent racehorse trainer F. X. Tyrrell, offers when he asks for Ed's help in finding a missing person. Even the best private eye needs more than just a name, but hard times and a dwindling bank account make it difficult for Loy to say no.

He is not without luck, however. While working another case, Loy discovers a phone number that seems linked to F.X. found on an unidentified body. Thinking it more than a coincidence, he begins digging into the history of the Tyrrells-a history consumed with trading and dealing, gambling and horse breeding-and soon realizes there is more to the family than meets the eye, a suspicion confirmed when two more people with connections to the Tyrrells are killed.

On the eve of one of Ireland 's most anticipated sporting events, the four-day Leopardstown Race-course Christmas Festival, all bets are off as Loy pursues a twisted killer on the final leg of a reckless master plan.

In The Price of Blood, Declan Hughes once again paints an arresting portrait of an Ireland not found in any guidebooks. Deadly passions beget dark secrets in a chilling story that will have readers on edge right up to its shocking conclusion.