The First State of Being, by Erin Entrada Kelly, for Timeslip Tuesday

The First State of Being, by Erin Entrada Kelly (March, 2024, Greenwillow Books) is a delightful and heartwarming middle grade time travel book that I enjoyed lots.

In August, 1999 (which will seem very strange and far away to the target audience), 12-year-old Michael prepares for the potential disaster that is Y2K.  When we first meet him, he's shop lifting a can of peaches to add to his survival stash kept under his bed--his mom is working three jobs and can't give him the money he'd like to spend getting properly prepared.  Though money his tight, his mother insists on paying 15-year-old Gibby to keep an eye on him, and though Michael feels confident he'd manage find without her, he still enjoys her company, both because he has a crush on her and because his anxiety and social awkwardness has made it hard for him to have friends. His only other friend is the old maintenance man for the apartment complex.

But then into the mediocre life of Fox Run Apartments, in Red Knot, Delaware, comes a teenaged boy, Ridge, strangely dressed and disoriented.  He's a time traveler from the future, and when Michael learns this, he's desperate to know what happens with Y2K.  But Ridge isn't telling.  He's in enough trouble already, as we learn from glimpses of what's happening in the future.  He wasn't supposed to be the first time traveler ever, and he's not going to risk spoiling the future by letting on all he knows.  He just wants to experience life in 1999, especially seeing what a mall is like....

There aren't any dramatic happenings in Ridge's time in 1999, although there are many complexities that Gibby and Michael must deal with.  And although Ridge doesn't tell all he knows, the time Michael spends with him gives him confidence not just about the future but about the present.  And it all ends in a beautiful, time travel wonderful way!

I enjoyed it very much.  The time travel has just the right amount of sci fi to it to make it if not plausible at least acceptable, and the repercussions of Ridge's trip to 1999 are lovely. It will bring that long lost time vividly to life for young readers, and the interpersonal dynamics and tension will keep the pages turning for them very nicely indeed.  I even grew a bit at one particularly poignant point in the best possible way.

The Other Place, by Nancy L. Robison, for Timeslip Tuesday

Today's Timeslip book is The Other Place, by Nancy L. Robison (1978).

Mine, happily picked up at a booksale, turned out to be a review copy (very cool to see the retro promotional info, shown below), but I don't think I'll send in two clippings as requested.

I'm making no effort to hold back on spoilers here with this whacky 1970s sci fi story for kids, so if you are a little kid who's never read any science fiction (which you aren't), go read the book and see if you agree with the two Goodreads readers whose first sci fi it was, and who loved it before I ruin everything.

The Other Place starts with Elena and her dad driving off to the house in the country (USA) where they are now going live, following the death of Elena's mom.  Things get weird, and Elena can't see the road behind them anymore, and her dad's stilted remarks don't do much to sooth her growing sense of wrongness.  The cabin is fine, and seems normal enough, except that Elena is woken up by strange noises, and goes off into the woods to see what's happening, and the townsfolk are dancing around in the middle of nowhere. 

A trip to the store the next day adds to the weirdness, when she sees the storekeeper has eyes filmed over with jelly...as do the kids and the teacher in the one room schoolhouse.  One kid, with mostly non jelly eyes, is friendly, lending her a horse to ride, but when she tries to ride her way out of the valley, she finds she can't.  She's stuck.

Turns out the townsfolk are aliens in a little bubble cut off physically and temporally from the rest of the world, her mom was one of them, and her dad has volunteered to help them fix their space craft so they can go home.  Happily for Elena, the friendly kid helps her get out of the valley, but her dad wants to go off with the aliens because he loves his dead alien wife more than he cares about his living kid (the book does not say it quite like this....).  And when Elena escapes after what felt like weeks away from the city, almost no time has passed, and her aunt is there to meet her....and her aunt has.....JELLY EYES!  The end.

The illustrations add a certain 1970s something to the story.

The paperback cover, if you are so lucky to be reading that one, adds even more.  

Too Many Interesting Things Are Happening to Ethan Fairmont, by Nick Brooks

I very much enjoyed meeting Ethan Fairmont and his friends, including the alien they call Cheese in his first outing (my review) so I dove into Too Many Interesting Things Are Happening to Ethan Fairmont, by Nick Brooks, (middle grade, November 2023, Union Square Kids), with pleasure, and was rewarded by a good read.

Ethan is happily planning interesting inventing and pleasant hanging out at the old industrial building now turned maker space where he met Cheese, and foiled the other hostile aliens hunting down Cheese and his people.  And he's happily looking forward to the start of sixth grade.  Less happily, he misses Cheese lots, and he and his family are still cooping from the trauma of the local police and the feds threatening the black community of Ferrous City and his family in particular.  And then school gets off to a rocky start, when a new girl, Fatima, threatens his self-worth with her own inventor smarts, and Ferrous City is experiencing a population boom that's raising real estate prices, and Ethan's parents, who are doing fine but aren't well off, are considering cashing in. On top of all this, the feds are back in town (and what are they up to?)

Turns out, though, that Fatima is just the new team member Ethan needs to re-establish communication with Cheese.  And Fatima is even more needed when the evil aliens renew hostilities....

It's not a comfort read; as the title suggests, too many interesting (and not very joyous) things are going on in Ethan's life.  But it's a gripping read, and a thought-provoking one, and I enjoyed it. The young characters are believable and very relatable, as is Ethan's growing maturity about teamwork and living in the moment instead of what if-ing, the tension builds at a nice pace, and the ending is satisfactory!  The social justice theme of the first book is here as well, as is an age-appropriate romance.  And of course a lovely alien friendship! 

If there is a third book, I'm there for it!

Fox Snare (Thousand Worlds #3), by Yoon Ha Lee

Another very busy week for me, with none of the reviews I wanted to write being written...so here once more is a quick one before I post today's round up.

Fox Snare (Thousand Worlds #3), by Yoon Ha Lee, is the third installment of great space adventure for upper middle grade readers on up (but do read the first two books in the series first).

Min, the fox spirt who was the central character of Dragon Pearl, is now the keeper of that titular pearl, which can magically terraform in hospitable planets.  Before this, terraforming relied on Dragon magic, and now the Dragons are unhappy that they now outclassed.  Haneuol, a young dragon, was once Min's friend, and when she arrives on the vessel where Min is currently in residence as part of the Dragon delegation to important diplomatic negations with the leader of the Sun Clan nations, Min hopes they can rekindle their relationship, but it doesn't go well. Sebin, the non-binary tiger spirit who was the central character of Tiger Honor, is a cadet on this same ship, and finds themselves drawn into the diplomatic tensions as well.

The leaders of the Thousand Worlds want to use Min and the pearl to terraform a planet that lies at a crucial junction between the two hostile factions...but it's not just location that makes this planet a prize both sides want--long ago an immensely powerful war ships crashed there, and whichever side can recover it will have a huge military advantage.

Then the space station where the negotiations are being held explodes.  Min, Haneuol, and Sabin crash land on the contested planet, along with a fox spirit woman who is clearly a suspicious character, and whose own agenda is occluded by her fox gift of charm.  Travelling across this alien world to the site of the crashed warship, Min is troubled by the conflict between her loyalty to the Thousand Worlds and her desire to trust another Fox, Sabin is torn between strict adherence to duty and critical examination of what is happening, and Haneul must wrestle with familial expectations and her own wishes.

And then they reach the ship, and things get enormously more tense as the threesome realizes the truth about why it was never recovered, and just what the Fox spirit woman has planned.

Told in alternating points of view by Min and Sebin, this is a gripping read in which the character's personal conflicts and the external dangers are beautifully balanced, and the magical abilities of the shape shifters, and some unexpected supernatural elements, make for lovely reading.  This installment is more direct than the previous book in identifying the Thousand Worlds as being of Korean descent, and the Sun Clans as being Japanese, making it an even more thought-provoking read. 

My only worry is that this seems to be the final book about these characters and their universe, and that thought makes me sad.  On the other hand, I can look forward to a nice re-read....

Vermilion Sunrise, by Lydia P. Brownlow

It was a nice change for me to read an engrossing YA sci fi story that checked lots of my reading boxes--Vermilion Sunrise, by Lydia P. Brownlow (May 2, 2023 by Warren Publishing).  

17-year-old Leigh has no memory of volunteering to be one of the first colonists on a watery world far from Earth, and so it is more than a bit of a shock when she wakes from cyrosleep and is shuttled down to the planet with very little in the way of a briefing.  The cyrosleep technology is flawed--killing adults.  So her new home is inhabited only by teenagers.  Hers is the third shuttle of kids arriving at a small island outpost.  The earlier arrivals, from countries all around the world, have no answers for Leigh's many questions--why does none of the technology that came with these first settlers work?  Why were these kids selected to be colonists, and why do none of them remember volunteering?  Why have none of them been told what to do? And she has her own demons to struggle with, hoping to put her traumatic past behind her and start again, with a new name and identity.

I was worried that it might become a Lord of the Flies scenario, but happily for my reading pleasure, the kids that were already there included some great leaders, who had made their settlement into a functional sort of found family.  And much of the book involves the dynamics of this group as they work together to make their outpost a place to call home.  Another mystery quickly intrudes, though--bits of a broken shuttle are washing ashore.  Could there be survivors beyond this one island?

A perilous voyage through stormy seas is the only way to find answers...but will the answers they find destroy the tenuous peace of their home?

So the pacing won't be for everyone--for much of the book, there are few Exciting Happenings (there are some very exciting ones towards the end though).  You have to be a real lover of character driven survival stories to fully appreciate this one, which I am, so I did! I really enjoyed the group dynamics as they worked through practical and ethical problems together, and the romance was sweet.  The only thing that would have made me like the book more would have been more time spent by the kids trying to figure out the ecology of the world.  One of the things I immediately found disturbing about this already disturbing situation (and the wrongness of it all is clear from the get-go) was that the colonist kids didn't include anyone with biology experience, and so there wasn't much attention paid to the specifics of flora and fauna (and fauna, especially, was given short shrift).  

I will happily read more about these kids and their new world!  The book ends at a good stopping point, but I want more answers (why, as Leigh herself asks, are there no Canadians? Has something bad happened to Canada? And even more pressingly, why the heck weren't the kids briefed and trained?) and more attention paid to the ecology (the ready-made "food" supplies they arrived with won't last forever....).

disclaimer: review copy received from the author.

two excellent middle grade books in which Black kids meet aliens

One of the reasons I enjoy reading for the first round of the Cybils Awards is that it puts books in my hands that I might otherwise not have read and enjoyed, such as these two excellent books in which Black kids meet aliens...and their real-world lives are turned upside down.

Ruby Finley vs. the Interstellar Invasion, by K. Tempest Bradford, feels like realistic middle grade fiction for about the first half of the story, but the signs are there that it is anything but. Eleven-year-old Ruby is young scientist in training, fascinated by insects, hanging out with her friends, leading an ordinary life. But when she captures a bug she's never seen before, her life becomes very unusual indeed. The bug escapes, burning a hole through her window. Then government investigators show up looking for it, disturbing and disrupting the neighborhood. Ruby and her friends (all of them very smart in their own different ways) are looking for answers too, and though there is no interstellar invasion, the "bug" is indeed an alien, in trouble and far from home. And Ruby is determined to help....

A lot of the story, even after the alien plot begins to be revealed, is real world happenings (including racism, most notably dealing with an unpleasant white science teacher who won't believe Ruby is capable of the science fair project she's been planning), and this is where the book is strongest. The sci fi part takes the better part of the book to really get going, and then wraps up in a mad rush of excitement at the end (like a fireworks show). Kids who come for an interstellar invasion might well put it down halfway, which is too bad, because it all comes together in the end to make for a fun sci fi read, full of science, mystery and great team work.  

Since this is gift giving season, pair this with a magnifying glass and a guide to insects for the science loving kid in your life.

Nothing Interesting Ever Happens to Ethan Fairmont, by Nick Brooks, was subjected to the daunting task of sustaining my interest while horribly expensive repairs were happing to my car, which I needed for a six hour drive the next day....and it came through with flying colors. Ethan's home town of Ferrous City used to be an industrial powerhouse, but those days are gone, leaving behind a huge abandoned factory and lots of junk. Ethan's an inventor, and this junk is the raw material for his creations (along with the family vacuum cleaner, which did not go over well with his parents), and so he visits the factory often, even though it's forbidden. On one such expedition, he and the new kid in town, Juan Carlos, find a big silver ball that seems to have crashed into the factory.

It is an alien space craft, and its occupant is desperate to get home again. Communication is difficult and choppy, but Ethan is determined to help the alien, nick-named Cheese (its first English word) repair its vessel. There are complications. Ethan's former best friend, and school bully and his sister who he's now pals with, find out about the alien, and get involved in trying help (there's a nice bit of real world friendship tension sub plot I liked lots here). The other complication is worse--the feds have come to town, working with the local police to track the space ship down, and Ethan's Black community is threatened, with his father getting arrested. (This is the first middle grade sci fi/fantasy book that I have read that shows police brutality to people of color right there front and center, and the first in which the parents have to have the Talk with their son....).

Nick Brooks strikes a lovely balance between the entertaining story of "boy meets alien" (it's lots of fun, sometimes goofy--note, for instance, Ethan's hamster on the cover--but never ridiculous) and the more serious aspects of book. I truly enjoyed it.

Could be paired as a Christmas gift with the box of miscellaneous bolts you have in your garage and/or a gently used vacuum cleaner.....or more reasonably a lego spaceship (safer except when you step on them...)

A Long Way from Home, by Laura Schaefer, for Timeslip Tuesday

It is always very welcome when a book gives me the unexpected pleasure of having time travel in it, because I am not a plan-in-advance person, and it is always touch and go ig I'll have a Timeslip Tuesday book.  A Long Way from Home, by Laura Schaefer (October  2022, Carolrhoda Books) gave me that pleasure, and the pleasure of a very good read as well!  

Abby is unhappily uprooted from home in Pennsylvania when her brilliant engineer mother gets a job with Space Now in Florida.  Now she has to add being a new friendless kid to the constant big worries about climate change and the state of the world that weigh her down.  Juliana, her school assigned mentor, is Friendly as all get out, but Abby still wants to just hole up in her new house, wanting to go back home....

But then she meets two strange boys, Adam and Bix.  They are strange not just in the stranger sense, but in off kilterness of clothes, language, way of being in the world....  They ask for her help--they are a long way from home, looking for their sister, V, and need a place to stay.  She's able to offer them her dad's boat, currently going unused.  Once they are settled there, the boys tell Abby more of their story.  They have come from about 250 years in the future, and they need to find V and get back before they through the timeline out of whack.

The boys' future tech give Abby a glimpse of the future, and too her great relief, all the problems of Earth in the present are solved.  She offers to help the boys, if they will take her forward to their time when they leave...and they sort of agree. 

So 2 future kids needing some tech help and food for a few weeks makes Abby's life busy.  Fortunately she has made contact with her Great Aunt Nora, a former space engineer herself who is now a recluse, and fortunately Nora agrees to help keep Adam  and Bix safe.  And in the end, Juliana the mentor now turned friend and even Abby's mom are all part of Operation find the missing sister and send the strangers back to the future....maybe with Abby, maybe not.

So much for plot synopsis.  I am now asking myself which part of the book I liked best--the realistic, character-driven part, or the sci fi time travel part....

The character part is hard to beat.  Abby isn't magically unanxious by the end of the book, and she still needs her coping mechanisms, but she is stronger, with a more mature perspective, and her character growth was truly moving.  She and her mother also open healthier channels of communication, which helps.  The supporting cast were all interesting too, and I loved the inclusion of Abby's mom and aunt reflecting on the challenges of being women in their field.  There are also puppies, courtesy of Juliana. 

And another small thing that sticks in my head--Great Aunt Nora, a recluse in a big old house, haunted by guilt after a mission she worked on failed, has taken up painting.  She is very bad at it, and knows this, but this does not stop her, because she wants to keep painting.  Possibly this is the most useful  'lesson' the book offers to its readers, and it  ties in with Abby doing small things to save the planet--obviously she won't succeed in any splendid way, but she realizes it is the doing that is important, even when the goal will never be reached.

The sci fi part provides impetus for action and tension, what with the ticking clock of the mission, technical difficulties, and secrets that the two boys aren't sharing.    There are very few books in which kids from the future come to visit, so this was a fun change for me. It was good time travel, too, and the out-of-placeness of the boys and their reactions to what to them was the distant past made for entertaining reading without feeling over the top.  There's a bit of mystery at play too.

Final answer--a really good book to have on hand when you are stuck at a car repair place waiting to find out how many hundreds of dollars you are about to lose.  I was engrossed, and moved, and even inspired/not quite dry eyed.....and I bet my reaction would have been much the same if I'd read it at the target audience age of 11 or so.

disclaimer--review copy received for Cybils Awards reading

The Revenge of Zombert, by Kara LaReau

The Revenge of Zombert, by Kara LaReau (July 2022, Candlewick), is the third installment about a cat who escaped from torment in a lab and the girl who adopted him sees the two of them pitted in a final showdown against the evil corporation, YummCo, that's misusing science to take over the world.

Bert the cat escaped from the YummCo lab, in terrible shape and twisted past normal cat-ness by the experiments to which he was subject.  Mellie adopted him, and the two began to work together to uncover the dark secrets of YummCo.  It becomes an even more urgent crisis in this third book--YummCo. food products are turning everyone who eats them into zombies, desperate to consume more.  And a scratch from Bert's claw has infected Mellie with the same alterations that have made him super smart and super hungry....With the help of friends and some surprising allies, Mellie and Bert use their wits and determination to bring YummCo. down once and for all!

It's very good sci fi adventure for the younger elementary set (ages 8-10).  The cruelty of animals will fire up kids, and some might also appreciate the evil of the corporation so greedy for market control that it will stop at nothing.  The writing is brisk and to the point, capturing each moment in the adventure clearly, and dropping just information about what's really happening to keep readers on their toes.

I was very pleased indeed when this came in the mail so that I could finally find out how it all ended! When I read the first Zombert book book,  The Rise of Zombert (my review), I had the following comment:

"It was an abrupt shock to reach the end of this book only to find that we don't get the answers yet! I myself am suspicious of YummCo Foods, and their economic hold on the town....The sudden stop makes me want to read the next book, but it also was very harsh to be just left there with all the questions. This might annoy some young readers greatly."

Ha!  I was prescient re YummCo!  And now that all three books are out in the world, no annoyance is necessary, unless you read the first one and the other two are checked out or not purchased for you briskly enough....We are given a satisfactory ending, but there is room for more.....and I wouldn't say no!

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Drifters, by Kevin Emerson (for this Wednesday's Timeslip Tuesday)

Drifters, by Kevin Emerson (May 10, 2022, Walden Pond Press), is a long book (592 pages), but the pages turn quickly, and before I knew it, I'd stayed up till 11:30 finishing it in that lovely reading zone where one forgets one is reading....Had I but known when I took this slot on the book's blog tour that there was time slipping involved, I'd have asked for a Tuesday (my day for time travel book) but Wednesday is pretty temporally adjacent, so here we are.

The small town of Far Haven is barely hanging on.  There was a nuclear accident a few years ago, and people who could afford to get out did.  Now a large part of its population is the team from the accident remediation and monitoring company (who are very intrusive and increasingly creepy). And for one girl, Jovie, the town became even smaller when her best friend Micah disappeared.  It's only been a few months, but everyone but Jovie, feeling lost and alone, has forgotten her...

Which they have (except for her parents...who have given up on the search).  

Searching for Micah leads Jovie down a path of every increasing strangeness and mystery.  She meets a very peculaiar boy, Mason, who gives her a spyglass that lets her see the community of lost and forgotten people living on the beach.  They are invisible and untied from ordinary life, drifting toward the pull of a mysterious vortex of light that periodically manifests off the coast, bringing storms and disasters to the town (which like the drifting people, fade from memory....).   When Jovie realizes that Micah has probably become a drifter, she becomes determined to bring her back.

With a new friend Sylvan, a younger and also lonely boy, Jovie starts to uncover the strange and shattering truth about the vortex and its potential to bring disaster not just to her town, but possibly the whole world.  Dodging the workers of the "clean-up" crew, who are determined not to let her get to close to the truth as they know it, trying to figure out what Mason really knows, trying to find clues in the town's history, she presses on, with the town's history, pockmarked with disasters, leading her to the remarkable truth.

Here's where the time slipping-ness comes in--I don't want to spoil all that is learned when Jovie passes through the vortex, as it is pretty clear quite early on that she will do, but time passes differently there, a few hours equating to several months....This happens very near the end of the story, and though the author could have added another couple of hundred pages about what happens when Jovie comes back (which I would have enjoyed), that's not the point of the story, and we only get a fairly short epilogue.

It's a slow build to full on science fiction, but when the sci fi kicks into gear it becomes remarkable! I'd recommend it to  those fans of Margaret Peterson Haddix who have the commitment to read one of her long speculative fiction series to its end.  

I'd also recommend it to those who like stories whose heart is an exploration of what it means to feel lost and drifting through life, especially during adolescence--Jovie and Micah's friendship had actually turned sour a few months before she was lost, with Jovie feeling stuck and alone and Micah seeming to be pushing fast past their shared childhood (a fairly substantial part of the story is Jovie re-examining their relationship)  Sylvan is pretty alone too, living mostly on-line, and for him, the connection made with Jovie is something of a lifeline out of loneliness. And strange, mysterious Mason has his own grief and disconnections to deal with.... lots of lovely friendship and growing up and figuring out who you are along with all the mystery and strangeness.

It links back to Emerson's trilogy that begins with the VERY highly recommended Last Day on Mars (my review), which I will now have to re-read to figure out all the connections...but you don't have to have read those books first. 

Not a book for everyone--like I said, is long, so a bit daunting, and you have to be a fan of slowly unfolding sci fi that keeps stretching further and further from ordinary world.  Which would be me.

About the Author

Kevin Emerson is the author of Last Day on Mars and The Oceans Between Stars, as well as The Fellowship for Alien Detection, the Exile series, the Atlanteans series, the Oliver Nocturne series, and Carlos Is Gonna Get It. Kevin lives with his family in Seattle. You can visit him online at www.kevinemerson.net.

DRIFTERS Blog Tour

5/9/22 Nerdy Book Club @nerdybookclub

5/10/22 Bluestocking Thinking @bluesockgirl

5/11/22 Charlotte's Library @charlotteslibrary

5/13/22 Maria's Mélange @mariaselke

5/16/22 Teachers Who Read @teachers_read

The Monster Missions, by Laura Martin

 

Here's another great middle grade sci fi book that read for the Cybils Awards --The Monster Missions, by Laura Martin (June 1, 2021, Harper Collins).  Lots of sea monster adventure goodness, underwater tech, friendship, and danger, with an appealing science-minded heroine!

The scrappy ship Atlas is the only home Berkeley and her best friend Garth have ever known.  Ever since the Tide Rising flooded the world, ships like this carry little pockets of humanity, trying to survive on very limited resources.  Berkeley and Garth work as scavengers, diving down into flooded cities, but when Berkeley ends one mission by pissing off a monstrous kraken, it ends up battering the poor Atlas badly.  To make up for the economic loss, the two kids are about to be sent off to a work boat (basically a floating prison of hard labor) when the Britannica, a state of the art sub swings by.  Her captain offers the two kids a place on the sub, and so they are off to new adventures, with no chance to say goodbye to their families, who are left to assume they are dead.

The Britannica is a monster hunter, prowling the seas in order to keep ships from being destroyed.  Berkeley loves this new life of training and learning and speculating about sea monsters (there are tanks of young ones in the ship's lab) alongside the two other kids already on board.  But it's dangerous--the sea monsters aren't the only predators, and when pirates take over the sub, and the four kids are the only free crew members, it's up to them to use all the sea monster skills and knowledge they've acquired to take back the ship!  (note--as an adult reader and parent, I'm glad that after all the excitement  Berkeley and Garth got to go on board Atlas again and see their families!)

There's lots of really good monster hunting and excitement (some if it rather icky, like when the Britannica actually gets swallowed by a sea monster), and a nice dose of monster study and speculation as well.  Berkeley isn't interested in just killing individual monsters attacking ships; she wants to learn how to keep the attacks from happening in the first place.  And she's a tinker-er, able to look at junk and see potential, a creativity that is key in the pirate struggle! The details of life in the sub are great, the kids are a good mix of different personalities and skills, and the flooded world with its monster filled oceans is a vivid backdrop for the story.

(My only quibble, as a scuba diver myself back in the day, was the wonderful visibility enjoyed by the scuba diving kids--it was harder to swallow than the sea monsters)

That being said, I can imagine this book being happily passed around a fifth grade classroom really easily!

disclaimer--review copy gratefully received from the publisher for Cybils Award consideration, and now on its way to my local public library to win Laura Martin new fans!

Pixels of You, by Ananth Hirsh and Yuko Ota (writers), and J.R. Doyle (Artist)

Pixels of You, by Ananth Hirsh  and Yuko Ota (writers), and J.R. Doyle (Artist): (February 8th 2022, Amulet Paperbacks) is, I think, the first graphic novel I've read in a year or maybe even longer.  Recognizing that my graphic novel reading skills, always a bit tenuous because of years reading text quickly and ignoring illustrations, were rusty, I was firm with myself and looked at the pictures as I read! (yay me). I was rewarded--sc fi sapphic romance with art students ftw!

This is the story of two girls in a not so far off future in which AI is a part of life, and AIs are a part of society.  Realistically, there are tensions and anger and fear.  Indira and Fawn are both photographers, and both have unpaid student internships at the same art gallery, but when they meet for the first time at Indira's exhibit opening, it's a disaster when Fawn (not knowing who she's talking to) offers an uncomfortably frank critique.  The gallery owner, not wanting the two of them messing up the peace of the gallery, decrees that instead of independent final shows, they must work together. And so they do.

Fawn is an AI in a human facsimile body, unlike her "parents" for whom nothing disguises the fact that they are robots.  Indira is on her own, struggling with chronic pain in her artificial eye, the result of a long-ago car accident, and she has reasons to distrust AIs.   But as the two work together, they start to communicate openly and vulnerably, and from there it leads (fairly obviously, but sweet nonetheless) to romance.

The art does a lot of heavy lifting in the story, and so I'm glad I paid attention! The panels really reward lots of looking. As well as helping the emotional beats of the story along, color, tone and small details all add to the individuality of each girl beautifully.  That being said, the writers do a good job in fairly limited text making each one a distinct person, and by the end of the book I carred for both of them lots!

Very much recommended, especially to younger teens who loved kids graphic novels and are now ready to move on to YA.  

disclaimer: review copy received from its publicist

The Unforgettable Logan Foster, by Shawn Peters

I don't remember any books about kids with superpowers in the comic book sense of the word back when I was an actual middle grade fiction reader (decades ago in the early 1980s....); lots of kids with preternatural gifts, but no young superheroes.  It's been fun over the past ten years to get a chance to read all the books in this subgenre, all with different twists, such as this new one--The Unforgettable Logan Foster, by Shawn Peters (January 18, 2022, Harper Collins).

Logan Foster is not a superhero.  He's a kid who's bounced in and out of foster homes, and now that he's twelve, his hopes of getting adopted are practically nil.  It's hard for him to imagine prospective parents who want a kid with an eidetic memory that pours information from his mouth in an unexpected, and often unwelcome, way, a kid whose social skills are non-existent.  But then Gil and Margie arrive, and maybe he has found a real home...

Except that Gil and Margie are seriously weird.  Logan's memory records every perplexing thing he notices, but the actual reason was not something he could have guessed--they are superheroes, whose adventures have been chronicled in the comic books Logan loves!  

Superheroes have been going missing, an earthquake-causing villain is terrorizing the west coast, and now Logan and his memory are pawns in a struggle to control his foster parents and the other superheroes who had dedicated their life to the common good.  And though Logan might not be traditionally super-powered, his gifts are key to saving the day!  (Helped by an new, actual friend--a neighborhood girl who is also more than she seems to be; she is a great character, btw).

It's a fun (also funny) and fast-paced, with mortal peril and considerable action once things really get going.  The reader is essentially told by Logan that he is unlikeable, but this is not the impression the reader, who sees from his point of view, gets (the reader, of course, doesn't actually hear a constant flood of whatever information is bubbling up in Logan's mind, which one can see would potentially be annoying). Instead, Logan, to me at least, was a neuro-divergent kid who desperately needed love, appreciation, and validation, and it was great to see him getting those from both his new foster parents and his new friend!  I hope we get another book--this one ends with some questions still unresolved.

In short, an excellent addition to the corpus of MG superhero stories!

disclaimer--review copy received from the publisher

Relatively Normal Secrets, by C. W. Allen

One of the fun things about being a panelist for the Cybils Awards is getting review copies of books you've been wanting to read, and also books you've never heard of. In December reading is foremost, but now that's it's January, I am determined to turn my attention to my elementary/middle grade speculative fiction review copy backlog! (it is not, frankly, going well, but I am always hopeful that someday there will not be urgent things sucking all of my energy away.....I could have done without the sewage pipe catastrophe, for instance.....)

But in any even, I have a review today gosh darn it! Relatively Normal Secrets, by C. W. Allen (September 2021, Cinnabar Moth Publishing), is a fun portal fantasy/science fiction story.

Zed and his sister Tuesday know that their parents are odd, and Tuesday in particular is determined to discover the secrets she's sure they are hiding. When their parents leave on a last minute "business trip," leaving behind Nyx, their mother's huge guard dog who has never left her side before, the kids decide to search the house for anything that might shed light on their strange parents. But this search is cut short when thuggish intruders, armed with magical, shapeshifting weapons, show up.  And Nyx the dog bursts into flames and attacks them. The two kids run from the house into the woods, and their day gets even weirder when a portal opens, transporting them to the world of Falinnheim, where Nyx is mysteriously there with them.

Falinnheim is a strange mix of sci fi modern and medieval fantasy, and Tuesday and Zed are totally at sea.  All they have is Nyx, who keeps displaying other unusual talents, and coded clues in fragments of nursery rhymes that keep turning up in unexpected places.  The enforcers of the despotic régime start trying to arrest them, and it's not until their captured by bandits working to overthrow the despot that they start figuring out that the secrets their parents were keeping from them were vastly more remarkable than they'd ever imagined.

It's a fun story--the sci fi aspects of Falinnheim's text freshens this alternate world, and the fact that Tuesday and Zed aren't chosen ones with a mission, but simply two kids hoping to find their parents and stay alive, is also a nice change from standard portal fantasy.  And Nyx is a great dog; it was fun to see him manifesting his powers!  Recommend for readers who enjoy mystery mixed with their speculative fiction, and want an enjoyable escape to an alternate world.

It ends with a huge reveal setting up a sequel, which I'm looking forward to!

Thanks, Cinnabar Moth, for sending us panelists hard copies of the book!

The Last Cuentista, by Donna Barba Higuera

The Last Cuentista, by Donna Barba Higuera (October 12th 2021 by Levine Querido), is mind-blowing middle grade science fiction.

Halley's comet has been knocked off course, and is about to smash into Earth. Petra Peña is one of the lucky ones who gets a chance to flee across space to a new home, and though her heart breaks to leave her grandmother, she's determined to take with her all her grandmother's stories, and as many other stories from Earth  that she can cram into her head. But instead of waking up from stasis a few hundred years later at the planet that will be her new home, with her parents and brother next to her, she wakes up to a dystopian nightmare.

The ship has been overtaken by zealots of the Collective (who believe the group is all that is important, and that conformity and unthinking cooperation are the path toward peace, because when everyone is the same there is no reason for war). All the sleeping colonists have been brainwashed as they travelled through space, and have been awakened in bits and dribbles during the journey, to serve the cause of the Collective. They remember nothing of their former lives on Earth.

Petra is one of the last to be woken, and the brainwashing did not work on her. She remembers everything...all the stories her abuelita told her, all the books she read, all her love for her family, are still there. And so she sets out to thwart the Collective by making the planet they've finally reached into a home for herself and a handful of other children, a place where she can tell her stories, and new stories can be made.

It is not a comfortable read. It is a powerful, wrenching, disturbing one. I couldn't read it all in one sitting even though the writing was great, Petra was a great heroine, and the story was tremendously compelling. Perhaps the target audience (who I'd put at 10-13 years old) won't find it as emotionally difficult; young readers are better, I think, at taking fictional darkness in their stride...

Happily it ends (after an extra sharp bit of heart-ache) at a happy and hopeful point. I wish I could relax and assume that now everything will be fine....but there is lots of room for a sequel that would be another emotional wringer....

Middle grade science fiction is fairly thin on the ground compared to fantasy, and there are very few books about kids travelling through space and exploring exo-planets (the Zero series, by Dan Wells, and Sovereign, by Jeff Hirsch, are the only ones that come to mind). I very much enjoyed the parts of The Last Cuentista that involved Petra's work as a biologist (the role the Collective determined for her) on the planet. But though this was something of respite from the tension of the Collective controlled space ship, it was overhung by the wrongness that what should have been a magical experience shared with her family was instead part of a desperate child's struggle to find a way to be free to remember and to dream.

It's a powerful, memorable, compelling, terrifying story. I have one reservation regarding disability rep. though--Petra has retina pigmentosa, and right at the beginning it's made clear that this is already having a negative impact on her vision. But once she wakes up from stasis, it becomes back-burnered, and we don't hear about it even when she's on the surface of the planet, with strange vistas all around her, or sneaking around the space ship in dim lighting....there are maybe two more mentions of it, with no substance. I felt a little cheated by this, but not enough to substantively dim my admiration for the book as a whole.

disclaimer: review copy received for Cybils Award consideration.

Guardians of Porthaven, by Shane Arbuthnott

I very much enjoyed Shane Arbuthnott's first two middle grade books, Dominion, and Terra Nova, starring a brilliant girl who challenges the corporate greed of her society, realizing her ancestors did bad things and working to undo them.  I finished the books wanting more of the characters and their fascinating world.  But although this is not yet to be, I happily dove into Arbuthnott's new Guardians of Porthaven, and found it very good as well, hitting many of the same thematic points just as well (smashing corporate greed and undoing your family's morally bankrupt choices!)

Malcolm Gravenhurst was born into a powerful family; they have been the Guardians of Porthaven ever since aliens began to portal through to this one particular city on Earth.  The Gravenhursts are able to destroy the aliens minions, the robotic klek, thanks to superpowers that they acquired when the gate to Earth was opened.  And this has made them the incredibly wealth and fame, making them de facto absolute monarchs of Porthaven. 

The book begins with Malcolm turning fifteen, the age at which he can use his own powers to help keep the city safe.  He dreams of helping the citizens of Porthaven, not just dispatching of the klek on days they come through the gate, but along the lines of the superheros in the comic books he loves--keeping watch against more ordinary nefariousness.  So he sets off into the night alone....and his world gets upended when he meets three teens who also have powers, who use them for the common good; and these teens had friends who were disappeared when their powers became known to the Gravenhursts. 

Malcolm's belief in the heroic goodness of his family begins to crack, and through those cracks he and his new friends begin to understand the deep rot behind the operation the Gravenhursts are running.

(spoiler alert)

Turns out their powers and wealth actually come from the aliens....and in Malcolm's grandfather's mind, that's worth keeping a gate to hostile aliens open.

Malcolm and his friends disagree, and are proven all too right when the aliens come for real.

(end spoilery bit)

The sci fi plot is full of excitement--there's the interest in uncovering the mystery of the alien gateway combined with lots of action-packed alien fighting.  Supporting and strengthening this is the more character-driven story of a privileged boy recognizing that privilege, and the harm it's done, and trying to do better.  He has to learn, for instance, that now he is part of a small group of rebels he can't just go off making decisions that seem reasonable to him, from his place in the ruling family, because he lacks to context to understand the bigger consequences.  It takes a few times of screwing things up for the group before he learns his lesson, but he does learn it, and tries to do better. 

Malcolm is white, but the 3 rebel kids are more diverse--two have dark skin, and one's name seems Asian.  The two girls in the group are in a relationship.

In short, there are many reasons why I highly recommend it to readers on the upper end of middle grade and into YA (11-14 year olds), particularly to superhero comic book fans, and to young sci-fi fans who are setting themselves up to work on the side of social justice.

Just checked the Kirkus review, and we are in complete agreement, so good job, Kirkus.

Stowaway, by John David Anderson

There's a lot more fantasy for middle grade kids (9-12 year olds than there is science fiction, so it's a nice change when one gets to venture out among the stars, as one does in Stowaway, by John David Anderson (Walden Pond Press, August 2021).  Except something always goes wrong out there...and indeed, lots is going wrong for Leo, the protagonist of the story. Right from the beginning, we know it's going to be a rough ride--this is the first sentence:  "They were playing tag when the first torpedo hit."

"They" are Leo and his older brother, Gareth, and they are on a small ship, the Beagle, in space with their scientist father and a fairly small crew.  There is a war going on between two powerful alien civilizations, and Earth, with its rich supply "ventasium," (the element that powers space travel), has become a pawn in the conflict.  When the Avkari arrived on Earth, they brought wonderous technology and promises of peace, in exchange for the ventasium.  But they also brought war; Earth was attacked by other aliens, the  Djarik, and one of the many casualties was Leo's mother.

Leo's father's work on venasium technology required journeying into space, and three rather boring years have passed since they left Earth.  But when the Djarik attack their ship, and kidnap Leo's dad, life becomes all to exciting.  The Beagle is left drifting, unable to call for help.  It is a sitting duck for the pirates who find them, but when the pirates leave again, without finding much to pilfer, Leo is on board their ship, thanks to his brother's tricking him into becoming a stowaway.  

And in the next few hectic days, the pirates become almost a found family to Leo as they commit to helping him find his father, a hectic journey that takes them to the heart of Djarik territory.  In the course of the various adventures, Leo comes to realize that there might not actually be a "good side" in the war....

The story of Leo's adventures is interspersed with his memories of his life on Earth. Though these interludes slow the helter-skelter pace of events, full of action, strange aliens, and future tech, they gives context and poignancy to his present day experiences, and push forward his inner journey to a more nuanced understanding of what's happening in the galaxy.  Nothing is resolved here in the first book, and in fact the stakes get raised tremendously right at the end, leaving the reader (me) wondering how on earth things can be resolved. The reader (me again) is also left very invested in Leo and the crew of the pirate ship, and anxious to see how their story plays out.

I have lots of reasons to recommend this one--family, both biological and found, at the heart of the plot, excellent sci-fi shenanigans, disability rep., and solid and vividly detailed story telling, for instance.  But here's my main reason for recommending the book enthusiastically--reading is a great way to gently nudge kids towards a deeper understanding of the real world. I'm not sure that the ten-year-old reader will think, as I did, "Wow.  The Avkari are a clear parallel to European imperialists."  But perhaps that young reader will, when they learn of the attempted genocide and exploitation of native peoples here at home,  make the connection and more critically reflect on our own past in the same way that Leo has to rethink his future Earth's recent history.

 

Attack of the Killer Komodos, by Summer Rachel Short

If kids surviving un-natural, vicious, creatures and the perils of the natural wilderness is your jam, you must read Attack of the Killer Komodos, by Summer Rachel Short (September 2021, Simon & Schuster).  

Maggie and her best friend, Nate, saved their town from mutant mushrooms, and saved Maggie's older brother, Ezra (and many others) from the zombification they caused (as told in The Mutant Mushroom Takeover-my review).  Now the three kids  (and their grandma) are in Yellowstone National Park, where Maggie's dad is a ranger.  It's supposed to be a fun family vacation, but it's clear to Maggie that something is bothering her dad...

And then he goes off on ranger business, and her grandma goes off to buy supplies, and the kids are all alone when a major earthquake strikes.  The way into town is cut off by a new geyser, but the walkie-talkie still works, and Dad lets them know where he is, and that he is injured.  So instead of staying put like the are supposed, they set off to hike the four miles to get to him.

It is not your average walk in the park.

To Nate's fascinated delight (cryptozoology is his passion), the fauna of the park now includes strange  and deadly creatures.  Komodo dragons with stingers, snakes with wings, giant mosquitos, and more, make the four miles almost impossible.  Where did they come from?

Ezra is preoccupied by caring for a strange mutant snake, and Nate's mind races with conspiracy theories and he's determined to document the bizarre creatures for his you-tube channel. Maggie is more practical; she anxious to find a factual answer to what's happening, and a chance discovery of a hidden lab supports her belief that a rouge scientist must be involved.  But will they survive long enough to find out?  

Their journey is full of peril upon peril, not just from the creatures, but from the ordinary hazards of being in cut off in a wilderness being shaken by earthquakes. The walkie-talkie no longer works, food and water run low, and they keep getting hurt....and the komodo dragon-things seem to be hunting them!

It's not quite to my own personal taste (I like survival stories, but prefer them meditative rather than tumultuous), but I can image it hitting the spot for many kids.  Readers who like fast-paced action will love it just for that; readers who like fantastical creatures will love it for the menagerie presented here (especially Ezra's snake friend), and scientifically-minded kids will appreciate how much of it is actually based in real science (as explained in the end-notes).

Glitch, by Laura Martin, for Timeslip Tuesday

 

I really enjoyed Glitch, by Laura Martin (Harper Collins, June 2020)--not only was there fun time travel, but it was also a school story with an enemies into friends twist, so it was right up my alley!

Regan and Elliot both have the gene that lets them time travel, and both are students at the Academy which trains kids like them to be Glitchers, going back in time on missions to keep history safe from interference by those who would alter what actually happened.  They don't have a choice about this--all kids with this gene are gathered in by the Academy as infants.  Regan's mom happens to be the director, but Elliot has no memories of his family.  

The two of them dislike each other lots--Elliot thinks Regan is a spoiled princess, and Regan thinks Elliot is a know-it-all jerk.  Neither is entirely wrong.  But fate throws them together when Regan finds a note left to her by someone from the future, and Elliot intercepts it.  It's a crypt note warning of things to come and things that must be done, and both kids are appalled to find themselves entangled in one of the very butterfly effects they are supposed to be working to stop.  

Not content with implicating the two kids in an illegal manipulation of time, fate throws another wrench in their lives.  Competing in a stimulated mission challenge, they unwittingly demonstrate that to the Academy staff that they make a great team.  And so, with no say in the matter, they are shipped off to an even more secret campus of the Academy to train together.  For the rest of their lives as Glitchers (which won't be that long, because time travel burns a person out, forcing adults to retire early), they will have to work together.

But to do that, they will have to figure out how to get along, and figure out the clues given them from the future in order to save the Academy and the Glitchers from a threat to its very existence by their enemies who want to change the past.

It beautifully vivid time travel to a variety of periods (mostly simulations sending them into pivotal moments of American history, like Gettysburg and Lincoln's assassination).  The task in each mission is to identify and foil the person trying to change the past.  Regan has almost preternatural intuition when it comes to identifying that person, and Elliot has a wealth of knowledge and a respect of the rules, so they do actually complement each other.  

The time travel is brisk and to the point; the kids can't interact with the past for fear of changing it themselves, so it's more a matter of observation, survival, and capturing the enemy.  There's enough consideration about the ethics of the whole set-up to give the Glitchers the moral high ground, while being thought provoking.   And it was a fun story in its own right, with the threat to the Academy giving the story dramatic forward progress while still leaving lots of room for the more personal story of Elliot and Regan figuring things out.

(there was only thing that bothered me--as an adult, I was rather distressed about kids being taken in as babies, and how little the Academy does to be a warm and nurturing place, which explains a lot about poor Elliot!)

But in any event, I would definitely read another book about the Glitchers!

(Elliot is described as dark-skinned, and shown on the cover thus, and so I'm counting this as one for more list of diverse middle grade sci fi/fantasy).

Last Gate of the Emperor, by Kwame Mbalia and Prince Joel Makonnen

A mythical Ethiopian empire in space....a deadly enemy that has almost defeated it...a boy who might be its last hope...this is what you will find in Last Gate of the Emperor, by Kwame Mbalia and Prince Joel Makonnen (middle grade, May 4th 2021, Scholastic).

Yared and his uncle have moved around the city of Addis Prime more often than he really remembers, never with enough money to live comfortably, and so his life has been a little lonely--his only friend is a mechanical lioness, Besa, with no head for heights.  Addis Prime has a lot of rules, and lots of drones to enforce them, but it also has, for Yared, a great redeeming feature--a fantastical, and illicit, augmented reality game-- The Hunt for Kaleb's Obelisk.  If he can win the next big game, and his chances are good, he'll get enough money to pay his school bills...

But the rules of this game are different.  He has to use his real name for the first time, and instead of playing solo, everyone has to have a partner.  Yared is not happy to be paired with his greatest rival, a girl known as the Ibis...how can he beat her if he has to join her?   

These concerns, though, soon fade to total insignificance when the city is attacked.  Yared's uncle has told him countless stories of a fearsome monster created for a rebellion against the ancient ruling power at the center of the galaxy.  Now that monster, and the enemy forces commanding it, have disrupted his game...and his life.

Yared's old life was based on a lie, and now he must frantically try to find out the truth of who his enemies are, and what role he's destined for in this war that has come to his city.  Together with the Ibis, who's thrown her lot in with him, and with his faithful lion guardian, he journeys to the heart of the old empire, and then back to his city, to save it.

It's a wild and wonderful great game of a setting; a vibrant chaos of extraordinary technology and fearsome foes.  Lots of touches of Ethiopian culture (including tasty food) add to the rich sensory wealth of this world.  Those who love stories that propel them from one excitement to the next will enjoy it lots.   Kids who love game battles will be hooked especially quickly!  (I myself loved how the obelisk hunting game actually was designed with a purpose).

For the first two thirds of the book, though, I felt somewhat disconnected from the story.  Partly this was because Yared had been thrown into a cataclysmic situation, and had little agency to shape the course of events, and neither he, nor the reader (me) fully understood what was happening.  

On top of that (which is simply a reading preference, and not a critique of the book), I was somewhat disappointed with the character side of things.  Yared is, rather understandably, living moment to moment, and doesn't have much time to reflect on things, (and one gets the sense that he a sort of sass and smart answer kid of kid in any event, not given to introspection), and being on the run there were few quiet bits to the story that could have shows the reader more depth of personality.    Fortunately, the final third of the book was great on all counts, and Yared really comes into his own as both hero and person.

My disappointment with the Ibis, however, was never quite dispelled.  She is pretty much a stereotype of the kick-ass girl, a fine stereotype, but not enough to make her a person to care much about.  She says very little, and we never even learn her name.  

But though it wasn't the perfect book for me,  I'm absolutely certain there are plenty of young readers who will love it for the high tech adventures and unlikely and indefatigable young hero!  It's a stand-alone story, though there's set up at the end for more adventure...

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Flood City, by Daniel José Older

Flood City, by Daniel José Older (Scholastic, middle grade, February 2, 2021), is a wild, and (I say this after much careful consideration) rambunctious science fi fantasy that entertained me greatly!

Flood City is the last bastion of humanity on Earth.  Epic floods have covered all of the planet except for this raggedy conglomeration mostly made up of old buildings.  Off in space are the Chemical Barons, a powerful force (responsible for the floods in the first place) that wants to return to Earth by taking over Flood City.  The intergalactic Star Guard is protecting, and feeding, the Flood City folk, but it's the sort of protection that's essentially a totalitarian government (and the food tastes like wet towels).  The Chemical Barons are white, the Flood City folk various shades of brown.

Max's Mom was a kid when the floods hit, on a school trip in space.  But the flooded ruins are all Max has ever known.  He and his big sister know all its nooks and cranies, except for the parts where no one ventures (the electric ghost graveyard, and the ocean liner that's home to the mysterious Vapors).  Ato, a young Chemical Baron who's part of what's ostensibly an information gathering mission to Flood City, has only known life in space.

When Ato finds there's a nuclear warhead on board his ship, ready to be dropped on Flood City, he can't stand the thought of the resulting death and destruction, and sabotages the mission.  Surviving the crash landing, he's found by Max, and the two boys form an alliance to keep the other surviving Chemical Barons and their increasingly crazed leader from recovering, and using, the warhead.  Joining them is the daughter of the city's holographer, Djinna, who's mad drumming skills are matched by her technical abilities.  Yala, meanwhile, has joined the Star Gaurd, and is off in space, struggling to survive the hostile environment of her training (human recruits are not treated well at all).

And, skipping to the end,  the four kids (with some help from grownups and a friendly alien) save the day after much action and adventure and tension! The reign of the Star Guard is ended, the Chemical Barons are foiled (for the moment....)

I must confess I was confused as heck at first.  And I will further confess that there are lots of things that aren't explained (like the one magical bird that can carry messages from Earth to Space).  But when I realized that this wasn't a straight up sci fi future environmental apocalypse story, but rather a zesty mix of sci fi and fantasy of the rollicking sort, I relaxed and went along for the ride.  There are magical things alongside jet propulsion boots and space travel, and the reader must just nod in agreement.  I was nodding my head off by the end of the book, because of enjoying it so much!  (Although when I reached the end, I wanted very much to have someone else on hand who had also reached the end to talk too; I still have several "but what about xyz" sort of questions.....).

So there's a lot that's strange, but also a lot that's relatable even for kids living mundane lives, such as Max's crush on Djinna and his desire to break free of the boring sameness of music as proscribed by Star Guard (he's a trumpet player).  Seeing Ato and Max being able to work together after being on different sides, and Ato being able to rethink the stories he's grown up with, is also applicable to our own lives.

My personal favorite part of the book was the regular inclusion of the daily Flood City Gazette.  Though this Star Guard publication annoys the citizens (one of the first things they do when Star Guard pulls out, leaving them (maybe) to starve to death, is figure out how to get rid of the caps lock in which it is printed), I loved it, and always looked forward to the "Iguangull Ahoy!" section in particular. It amused me very much. (Yes there are iguana/gull hybrids with savage beaks and claws that can cut through metal flying around... ).

Strongly recommended to readers who have a tolerance for the somewhat complicated peculiar! (Star Wars fans, for instance, might well enjoy it lots).  That being said, this isn't how I think of myself, and yet I enjoyed it lots....so who knows?

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher.