LION BOY

This first volume (by a mother-daughter team writing under one name) in a planned trilogy melds a rousing traveling circus adventure with shades of cautionary science fiction. The near-future setting serves only to explain the absence of cars and the presence of the debilitating allergies they have caused. Otherwise, the story feels 21st-century in nearly every respect. Charlie's parents, both scientists, disappear from their home in Britain, and Charlie suspects foul play. Through flashbacks, readers learn that Charlie can communicate with cats (while he was in the jungle with his father as a toddler, Charlie's blood commingled with that of a leopard cub). Through a network of cats (who feel indebted to Charlie's parents for reasons that become clear later in the novel), Charlie is able to track the scientists, who have been kidnapped by a nebulous organization called The Corporacy. His journey to rescue them makes for a page-turning read, as he becomes the helper to a lion trainer on a circus boat bound for Paris. The ending may leave readers in a lurch, but the idea introduced toward the conclusion—that a company's best interests may not be in the cure to a disease (allergies), but rather in the profits to be made from the sale of its remedies—provides much food for thought, and fodder for future installments. Corder's most profound metaphor might be Charlie's slick analogy: that those employed by a corporation are not so different from the beautiful lions trapped in cages, held captive to "perform tricks they don't want to perform, to hand over their specialness and their skills." Ages 8-up. (Dec.)