Horn Book Review
Thirteen-year-olds may sometimes seem like alien creatures, but how often do you meet one with an actual alien inside? Meet Felix Yz (pronounced like is). When Felix was three, his scientist father was vaporized in a lab accident and Felix himself got fused at the atomic level with a hyperintelligent being from the fourth dimension named Zyx (rhymes with six, and is short for Zyxilef, Felix Yz spelled backward). As a result, Felix has trouble talking, his limbs jerk, and his body is contorted into a hunched-over position (the cover story for outsiders is that he suffered a traumatic brain injury as a child). As the novel opens, there are twenty-nine days to go until ZeroDay, when scientists will attempt to separate Felix and Zyx in a procedure that may either help Felix or kill him. For as long as Felix can remember, he and Zyx have literally been inseparable. How will he be different without Zyx? In the novel, Zyx is real, but readers may see in him a metaphor for anything that makes people feel different, and may start to question what is and isnt normal. When Felix asks whether Zyx is a girl fourth-dimensional alien or a boy fourth-dimensional alien, Zyxs reply is question mark. Felix has a crush on cute classmate Hector; he doesnt know if Grandy is his grandmother or grandfather because vo (Grandys invented nongendered pronoun) alternates between Vern and Vera during the week. The novels premise allows for fascinating reflections on these and many other ways of feeling different, and debut author Bunker pulls it off with little heavy-handedness. dean Schneider (c) Copyright 2017. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A freak scientific accident leaves an ordinary Maine boy atomically bonded to a fourth-dimensional being in this debut middle-grade novel."If it wasn't for the fused-with-Zyx-thing, I suppose I would just be normalwhatever that means," writes Felix Yz in his "secret blog," first published by Bunker as online interactive fiction. Counting down the days until an experimental Procedure might free him (possibly fatally) from the alien bond that has made movement and speech painfully difficult for 10 years, the white eighth-grader chronicles the quirks of his loving family, his passion for drawing and writing, his run-ins with bullies, and his awkward crush on another boy at school. Meanwhile Zyx (typing through Felix's fingers) provides running commentary as something of a "wise fool" archetype, dispensing gnomic truths and mystical insight with the eager charm of a hyperintelligent puppy. But the outr premise is only the setup for this unique, whimsical tale; it's also about webcomics and chess and geometry and jazz and the astonishing "threeness of things." It's about the suffocating terror of death and the sweet agony of first love. It's about transcending binaries, both the obviousFelix's mother is bisexual, his grandparent gender-fluid, the boy of his dreams both biracial (black/white) and bilingualand those more subtle and profound, all in the most gloriously matter-of-fact way. Above all, it's about Felix's voice: acutely perceptive, disarmingly witty, devastatingly honest, and utterly captivating. Joyful, heartbreaking, completely bonkers, and exuberantly alive. (Science fiction. 10-adult) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
