"GRASSHOPPER JUNGLE" is two for one. On one level, it is a darkly comic story about the end of the world. The book's narrator and protagonist - 16-year-old Austin Szerba, of the fictional town of Ealing, Iowa - accidentally unleashes an infestation of six-foot-tall praying mantises, products of a scientific experiment gone kookily awry. With exoskeletons "as tough as the exterior hull of an aircraft carrier" and razor-sharp barbs on their arms, the bugs are killing machines invulnerable to bullets, and they set about devouring humanity. The praying mantises are perpetually horny as well as ravenous, able to smell a mate four miles away, breeding ceaselessly while slaughtering everything in their path. The earth is consumed by implacable forces and mindless appetite. On another level, "Grasshopper Jungle" is a novel about adolescence. Like most teenage boys, Austin fairly vibrates with pubescent energy and blunderbuss desires; still a virgin, he fantasizes endlessly about sex. He gets aroused thinking about his girlfriend; thinking about his gay best friend, Robby Brees; thinking about all three of them in a ménage à trois; thinking about Robby's mother - about pretty much anything. He and Robby are also buffeted by the violence and desolation of small-town, subprime Midwestern life. The book opens with the pair getting gay-bashed by local bullies behind the focal mall; the mall itself is half empty because the town's factory long ago shut down. The boys' mothers are both addicted to Xanax, the streets are dotted with vacant and foreclosed houses, and Austin's brother is horribly wounded in Afghanistan. The earth is consumed by implacable forces and mindless appetite. Of course, many science fiction and fantasy novels have a similarly bi-layered structure, using the surreal to comment on the real. They're genres in which allegory and metaphor are often deployed with pneumatic intensity, particularly in today's young adult galaxy of vampire/ werewolf/gladiator adventures. Done poorly, steroidal allegory produces some pretty hammer-headed prose. But when it's done well, it is sheer poetry. Andrew Smith does it astonishingly well. "Grasshopper Jungle" is a rollicking tale that is simultaneously creepy and hilarious. Its propulsive plot would be delightful enough on its own, but Smith's ability to blend teenage drama into the bug invasion is a literary joy to behold. Austin and Robby are intelligent and observant kids, keenly aware of how messed up the world is, even before the praying mantises begin their rampage. (While trying to break into a building, Austin wonders, "Do you think we should make a plan or something?" "This is Ealing," Robby replies. "There's some kind of prohibition against making plans.") Austin delivers a stream of deadpan internal monologues: He meditates on his tempest-tossed Polish ancestors, the sex-obsessed pop culture of his day, the hypocrisies of the American vice president, his medieval patron saint, the difficulty of choosing appropriate names for his testicles. Smith has a deep and rare respect for how sheerly weird the sexuality of teenage boys can be. Austin's incessantly titillated perseverations aren't played merely for laughs; they're cerebral, witty riffs. As more and more havoc breaks loose - and the extremely strange story of the bugs' origin is revealed - it turns out Austin has connections to the apocalypse that he didn't expect, and his seemingly internal obsessions and catchphrases become woven into the larger epic. As he repeats motifs and running jokes, they loop and reloop, gathering new meaning each time they recur: Here, as he rides in the car with his mother; there, when he and Robby battle the giant mantises with paintball guns while wearing white nylon jumpsuits and rubber animal masks. Smith may have intended this novel for young adults, but his technique reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's in "Slaughterhouse-Five," in the best sense. As Austin cocks his paintball gun and aims at a monster mantis, he notes: "History, when told truthfully, will show that boys never really do make heroic statements while engaged in battle. Historians craftily pen those things in after the fact." This book, thankfully, is that kind of record. CLIVE THOMPSON, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and Wired, is the author of "Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better."

Unfortunate coincidences involving sixteen-year-old Austin and his best friend Robby lead to the unleashing of gigantic, ravenous praying mantises related to a diabolical scientist's decades-old experiments. Austin's love for and attraction to both his girlfriend and to Robby is the powerful emotional backbone of this intricate, grimly comedic apocalypse story, in which Smith proves himself a daring and original wordsmith. (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Gr 10 Up-It used to be that the only interesting events to occur in crumbling Ealing, Iowa happened between the pages of 16-year-old Austin Szerba's "history" journals. Austin's journals are elaborate and uncensored records about sex; his love for his girlfriend, Shann; his growing attraction for his best friend, Robby; his unique Polish ancestors; even Ealing's decrepit mini-mall where he and Robby hang out. Shann tells Austin, "I love how, whenever you tell a story, you go backwards and forwards and tell me everything else that could possibly be happening in every direction, like an explosion." And that's exactly how Austin narrates the end of the world when a twist of fate sparks the birth of mutant, people-eating praying mantises. Austin not only records the hilarious and bizarre tale of giant, copulating bugs but his own sexual confusion and his fear about hurting the people he loves. Award-winning author Smith has cleverly used a B movie science fiction plot to explore the intricacies of teenage sexuality, love, and friendship. Austin's desires might garner buzz and controversy among adults but not among the teenage boys who can identify with his internal struggles. This novel is proof that when an author creates solely for himself-as Smith notes in the acknowledgments section-the result is an original, honest, and extraordinary work that speaks directly to teens as it pushes the boundaries of young adult literature.-Kimberly Garnick Giarratano, Rockaway Township Public Library, NJ (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Simmering within Ealing, Iowa, is a deadly genetically engineered plague capable of unleashing unstoppable soldiers six-foot-tall praying mantises with insatiable appetites for food and sex. No one knows it, of course, until Austin and his best friend Robby accidentally release it on the world. An ever-growing plague of giant, flesh-hungry insects is bad enough, but Austin is also up to his eyeballs in sexual confusion is he in love with Robby or his girlfriend, Shann? Both of them make him horny, but most things do. In an admittedly futile attempt to capture the truth of his history, painfully honest Austin narrates the events of the apocalypse intermingled with a detailed account of the connections that spiderweb through time and place, leading from his great-great-great-grandfather Andrzej in Poland to Shann's lucky discovery of an apocalypse-proof bunker in her new backyard. Smith (Winger, 2013) is up to his old tricks, delivering a gruesome sci-fi treat, a likable punk of a narrator, and a sucker punch ending that satisfyingly resolves everything and nothing in the same breath.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2010 Booklist

Assuming the role of a historian (a wildly obscene historian), 16-year-old Austin Szerba chronicles the end of the world as it begins in his small Iowa town. Austin is in love with two people-his girlfriend, Shann, and his best friend Robby; neither of them is okay with it but, as Austin frequently repeats, "I was so confused." This confusion worsens when a series of missteps results in the propagation of six-foot tall, superstrong, mantislike Unstoppable Soldiers that portend a new world order on Earth. Sex is everywhere in this novel (only some of it involving humans), but Smith (Winger) describes it in purposefully clinical and utterly unromantic terms, making connections between the Unstoppable Soldiers-who "wanted only to fuck and eat"-and human beings, whose preoccupations aren't, perhaps, so different. Filled with gonzo black humor, Smith's outrageous tale makes serious points about scientific research done in the name of patriotism and profit, the intersections between the personal and the global, the weight of history on the present, and the often out-of-control sexuality of 16-year-old boys. Ages 14-up. Agent: Michael Bourret, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

A meanderingly funny, weirdly compelling and thoroughly brilliant chronicle of "the end of the world, and shit like that." This is not your everyday novel of the apocalypse, though it has the essential elements: a (dead) mad scientist, a fabulous underground bunker, voracious giant praying mantises and gobs of messy violence. As narrated by hapless Polish-Iowan sophomore Austin Szerba, though, the "shit like that" and his love for it all take center stage: his family, including his older brother, whose testicles and one leg are blown off in Iraq; his mute, perpetually defecating golden retriever; the dead-end town of Ealing, Iowa; his girlfriend, Shann Collins, whom he desperately wants to have sex with; and most importantly, his gay best friend, Robby Brees, to whom he finds himself as attracted as he is to Shann. His preoccupation with sex is pervasive; the unlikeliest things make Austin horny, and his candor in reporting this is endearing. In a cannily disjointed, Vonnegut-esque narrative, the budding historian weaves his account of the giant-insect apocalypse in and around his personal family history and his own odyssey through the hormonal stew that is adolescence. He doesn't lie, and he is acutely conscious of the paradox that is history: "You could never get everything in a book. / Good books are always about everything." By that measure, then, this is a mighty good book. It is about everything that really matters. Plus voracious giant praying mantises. (Science fiction. 14 up)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.