Books For Keeps
  • Home
  • Reviews
  • Articles
  • Past Issues
  • Latest Issue
  • Authors and Artists
  • Latest News
  • Search
  • Menu Menu
January 1, 2011/in Fiction 14+ Secondary/Adult /by Angie Hill
BfK Rating:
BfK 186 January 2011
Reviewer: George Hunt
ISBN: 978-0141326108
Price: £8.99
Publisher: Penguin
Genre: Fiction
Age Range: 14+ Secondary/Adult
Length: 304pp
Buy the Book

iBoy

Author: Kevin Brooks

Brooks’ reputation for edgy fiction with a cerebral tinge will be reinforced by iBoy. Herein the cerebral aspect is literal: the book opens as 16-year-old Kevin’s skull is penetrated by an exploding iPhone flung at him from the top of the south London tower block he is about to enter. When he emerges from his coma, it is to discover that the girl he is fond of was being gang-raped in the block at the time of his injury, and that his brain has grafted itself around the iPhone shrapnel, affording him direct access to all the information in cyberspace. He has also been granted a protective force-field, the ability to throw taser-like thunderbolts, and a superhero livery that he can will his skin to switch on and off. The rest of this thoroughly unputdownable novel concerns Kevin’s struggles to balance the demands of vengeance and forgiveness while hiding his secret powers from his traumatised girlfriend and from the powerful grandma who has reared him. He also has to protect his mind from rupturing under the onslaught of knowing everything, and his body from the truly terrifying gangsters striving to seek and destroy him.

iBoy is both hectic and reflective. Violence, some of it sexual and/or sadistic, is wreathed in toiling meditations on moral relativism and the nature of free will and consciousness; as in a frenetic computer game, the warfare wreaked amongst the stairwells and wastelands of iBoy’s territory also rages inside his own head. The story culminates in a nerve-straining climax, then an almost Jackiesque coda incorporating a fairly jarring sequelising chord. I found these latter aspects particularly troubling in so compulsive a book. The world in which girls are raped by thugs to punish their disobedient brothers, and children like Damilola Taylor are murdered in sordid corners, is all too real, all too here and now, to be soothed by romantic tropes or redeemed by the return of a superhero.

Share this entry
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on WhatsApp
  • Share on Pinterest
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Reddit
  • Share by Mail
http://booksforkeeps.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/bfklogo.png 0 0 Angie Hill http://booksforkeeps.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/bfklogo.png Angie Hill2011-01-01 00:00:162022-02-27 10:52:53iBoy

Search for a specific review

Author Search

Search







Generic filters




Filter by Member Types


Book Author

Download BfK Issue Bfk 272 May 2025
Skip to an Issue:

About Us

Launched in 1980, we’ve reviewed hundreds of new children’s books each year and published articles on every aspect of writing for children.

Read More

Follow Us

Latest News

Choice and reading relevant to their interests = reading for pleasure

June 11, 2025

Ross Montgomery wins the 2025 FCBG Children’s Book Award

June 7, 2025

Michael Rosen and Emily Gravett IBBY UK nominations for Hans Christian Andersen Awards 2026

June 4, 2025

Contact Us

Books for Keeps,
30 Winton Avenue,
London,
N11 2AT

Telephone: 0780 789 3369

ISSN: 0143-909X (this is our International Standard Serial Number).

© Copyright 2025 - Books For Keeps | Proudly Built by Lemongrass Media - Web Design Buckinghamshire
Learning to Scream Shadow
Scroll to top