conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled Invisible Things about Denmark, Sophie, Nobel with the genre: Teen & Young Adult, Literature & Fiction.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Gr 8 UpSet in 1939 Denmark, this story uses the same alternative history device as Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan (S & S, 2009), but it doesn't work here. Instead, the book is a confusing mishmash of characters with the history and science not fully explored. It is a novel more of explanation than action. Sixteen-year-old Sophie, an orphan living at a scientific facility operated by Niels Bohr, has been smuggled out of Scotland for her own safety. She's hoping to speak to Alfred Nobel about the death of her parents. After a gas and pellet attack at Bohr's birthday party and the subsequent invasion of Denmark, Sophie, her friend Mikael (undergoing some strange personality changes due to the gas), and a few of the scientists from the institute evacuate to Sweden where they stay in the same boarding house as Mikael's brother. After a rather surreal meeting with Nobel, during which she finds out that her father had successfully designed the atomic bomb, she gets confirmation that she is Nobel's granddaughter and heir. She is sent on a long journey to negotiate plans for the weapon, and to rescue Mikael, who has been hypnotized into following Elsa Blix, a weapons dealer and also an illegitimate child of Nobel's who only wants recognition of her paternity. Few readers will stick with Invisible Things to its unsatisfying and rather sudden conclusion.Suanne Roush, Osceola High School, Seminole, FL(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.