Yanked! features two main characters from the present day. Jason Ramsay is a talented basketball player from New York City. Jason is intelligent and a natural leader, but he seems to be risking his future by his undisciplined approach both to basketball and school. Sharon Myers is a shy, intelligent girl in a small town. Her future is threatened by her drunken single mother, and her need to care for her shiftless sister's child. The future folks yank Sharon and Jason, along with Robbie, a thief from Regency England, and Jofrid, a spirited 14-year-old from 10th-century Iceland, in order to form a team which will go to a planet where a group of future children has been marooned, and where the hostile Panurish, three-eyed aliens, are threatening the marooned children in order to try to find a message from the Gift Givers. By mistake, Sharon's niece Tara is yanked to the future along with Sharon.

The main action is set on the new planet, Jump. The children struggle to form a team, overcoming individual dislikes and cultural problems. Of course, each of them has critical contributions to make: Jason's leadership and imagination, Jofrid's knowledge of surviving in a non-technological society, Sharon's cleverness and her love of her niece, Robbie's thieving skills.

The mystery of how to deal with the Panurish is solved in a somewhat clichéd fashion, though the mystery of the hidden message is solved in a fairly satisfactory way. But while there are occasional amusing passages, including Jason's idea for distracting the Panurish, and his various attempts to organize the kids from different eras into athletic teams, most of the story unfolds in a predictable way, with predictable lessons. The Panurish aren't very interesting or convincing aliens, and the planet Jump isn't very interesting either. The brief glimpses of the utopian future Earth society are slightly more interesting.

The key to almost any involving story is living characters, and Yanked! doesn't really deliver on this level either. I was thrown by details in Jason's case: for instance, he is shown dreaming of making a spectacular dunk, just like "Kareem or Larry." Unfortunately, Larry Bird never dunked, and Kareem Abdul Jabbar was hardly known for spectacular dunks. Sharon is presented with earnestness but nothing much else. Jofrid is predictably too 20th-century in her attitudes, though she's engaging enough. Robbie is perhaps presented best, but I couldn't get inside him. Maybe the most interesting character of all was the future robot, unconvincingly named Da Vinci.

Another key for SF is what might be called living ideas, and Nancy Kress has always been good at presenting and following up on neat ideas. But this story completely lacks any really compelling Science Fictional ideas, and Kress' effort seems perfunctory.

I'll keep hoping for good new YA SF, but this book isn't it, and I can't be very optimistic about this series, either. All in all, a disappointing attempt from two very fine Science Fiction talents.