Greta Zargo and the Amoeba Monsters From the Middle of the Earth by A.F Harrold - illustrated by Joe Todd-Stanton, Reviewed by Dawn Finch

So, that's possibly the longest title I've ever squashed into a box in a review! Let's do this thing... first, the blurb.

 Greta is an ordinary(ish) eleven-year-old orphan girl with journalistic aspirations. This weekend she's writing a big story about the Thirteenth Annual Festival of New Stuff (TAFoNS for short), being hosted by her absent-minded inventor aunt... who has gone missing. Can Greta find her aunt and answer the riddle of her mysterious missingness?

In the meantime, all across the town, people are being eaten by giant amoeba monsters that have emerged from the pit at the end of Greta's garden.

And, for various complicated reasons, only Greta stands in their way...




Before I get to the review, I need to confess to something. I can't write funny books. I mean, I've really tried but it never sounds convincing and always ends up feeling exactly what it is - clunky and amateur. I can write short bits that are funny, but I can't sustain it. I envy people who can write funny, and A.F Harrold totally nails it.

Greta is the perfect central character, and we first met her in Greta Zargo and the Death Robots from Outer Space. Greta is an independent 11 year old (for complicated but perfectly reasonable reasons) and it has fallen to her to save the people of Earth from all sorts of hideous things. In this (book 2) she is (obviously) saving us all from jellylike amoeba monsters who have a voracious appetite and a tendency to swarm over living things and dissolve them.

Along the way we meet all sorts of wonderful characters (although I can't say I'm exactly happy with the librarian from the Immobile Library - elderly lady in a tweed skirt? hmmm - although I'd love a tiny ostrich, and I do have a tweed skirt...) Where was I? Oh yes, wonderful characters. Loads of 'em, and all wind the adventure along until things speed up towards a thrilling and very satisfying climax.

Along the way we are treated to Harrolds' clever and slightly twisted sense of humour. I genuinely laughed out loud at the names and witty twists. How could I not laugh at Bogof Boredom, Hester Sometimes, Hamnet Ovenglove (world champion onion wrestler) and Rashomon O'Donoghue (All-England Tiddlyblinks champion).

A bit of Joe Todd-Stanton's work that I can show you

With footnotes (which are actually sidenotes - they are literally on the side) and wonderful comic-book style, slick illustrations from Joe Todd-Stanton (many of which I can't show you because they'd blow the story, including an awesome double-page spread showing the amoebas... well, you'll just have to read it), this is a brilliant book for all kids (and grown-ups) who like a well-written suspenseful adventure that is also rollickingly funny.

Greta Zargo and the Amoeba Monsters from the Middle of the Earth is written by A.F Harrold and illustrated by Joe Todd-Stanton
It is published by Bloomsbury (3 May 2018)
You can find more about A.F Harrold's books (and his beard*) by clicking this link.

*website may not contain beards



Reviewed by children's author and librarian Dawn Finch* www.dawnfinch.com

*not Hester Sometimes



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Mary's Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein by Lita Judge, reviewed by Sarah Hammond

“Picture books by Lita Judge” was the theme chosen by my friend for one of our book club meetings. This was a great idea as Judge is an accomplished picture book author and illustrator. As I perused my local library catalogue, I stumbled upon another book for older children (aged 13-17) that immediately caught my eye: Mary’s Monster, Love Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein. Mary Shelley was a runaway pregnant teenager and rejected by society, the Introduction informed me. My interest was immediately piqued. And rightly so. I had only to read the initial few pages to know this was something special. 

As the first modern science fiction book, birthing the ‘mad scientist’ archetype and also the legendary Creature that still haunts us 200 years later, Frankenstein was a novel that defied convention. Judge’s book is also deliberately hard to categorise. It is part biography, written in first person free verse, and also veers into fantasy as the narrative delves into Mary Shelley’s inner world. Judge has made over three hundred full-bleed black-and-white watercolour illustrations which create, in her words, ‘a dance between words and art’. The overall effect is an all-consuming immersion into the life of Mary Shelley, her work, her imaginings. 

The beginnings of Frankenstein are often ascribed to a famous ghost-story challenge set by Lord Byron, the Romantic poet, to Shelley and her circle one rainy evening. However the seeds of this story lie much deeper. Judge uses concise, evocative poems to communicate the threads leading to the creation of Mary's story, embedded in well-researched historical and societal context.  

Mary was born into a world of extremes on the night Herschel’s Comet lit up the London sky. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was an advocate of women's rights, later considered the founder of the feminist movement. She died ten days after giving birth. Her father, an anarchist who fought for the poor and the oppressed, encouraged Mary to be independent and imaginative. Yet her practical application of these teachings was too much for both her father and society.  Mary fell in love with a married man, Percy Byshhe Shelley, and ran away with him together with her sister. Soon she fell pregnant and was publicly shunned. Modern readers might be interested in considering some of these themes in light of the recent #MeToo campaign.

Judge does not shy away from the harsh life Mary faced, including the loss of her baby and her lover sharing her sister, Claire. 

Although scandalous, Mary’s social circle gave her access to cutting edge scientific thinking of the time. For instance galvanism, a process by which a corpse could be ‘animated’ using electric shocks, was a popular topic of conversation. How far could these scientists go? How far should they go? 

As dark events circle ever closer around Mary, she takes refuge in the story that is growing within her. The illustrations show that the Creature is often near her now. Significantly, Mary’s Monster is divided into nine parts, and Mary took nine months to write and give birth to the first full draft of her own creation: Frankenstein. 

Tellingly, it is her Creature — Frankenstein’s monster — who opens and closes her story in the Prologue and Epilogue.  

“Most people didn't believe Mary Shelley,
a teenage girl, unleashed me,
a creature powerful and murdrous
enough to haunt their dreams.”

For those interested in delving deeper, there is a useful Teacher's Guide and also a short video about The Making of Mary's Monster. The back matter is also rich with detail, including thumbnail explanations about what happened to the rest of the characters. 

www.sarahhammond.org 

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HORIZON ALPHA: PREDATORS OF EDEN by D.W. Vogel; reviewed by Gillian Philip

Dinosaurs in space. DINOSAURS IN SPACE!

I could just leave my review there, because let's face it, that is an awesome enough premise, but that would be doing this book a great disservice. The book opens as our protagonist Caleb sets out on a dangerous mission; but there's some unsettling history to the way his small human community met the dinosaurs.

The calamity that has destroyed Planet Earth is, for once, not the consequence of humanity's misdeeds: it's simply a giant cosmic accident. Mercury wobbles in its orbit; Jupiter's gravitational pull alters; Earth's scientists realise they have eighty years to save what's left of humanity. And that's it. From that terrifying moment, it's been a race against time to build four Horizon spaceships that will carry a small sample of humanity to distant, unknown worlds. One of the ships, Gamma, never gets out of the solar system; on the others, generations live and die without setting foot on solid ground.

Horizon Alpha is the first to reach a habitable planet, Tau Ceti e. Horizons Beta and Delta are still somewhere out there, our narrator Caleb assumes: still speeding across unimaginable distances in search of a home. That's a melancholy enough ghost in the story, but because of an explosion as the shuttles are loading, Horizon Alpha is left a wreck in space. Now it orbits Ceti, a spectral and eerie presence that Caleb can't forget – not least because his own father died there, saving as many as he could.

The sheer desperation of the survivors makes this book a nerve-shredding fight for survival from the outset. They're not well-equipped; they have no means of escape; they simply have to endure, and scavenge what they can from the planet's surface and from the wreckage of other shuttles. They can't even be sure of keeping their camp's protective electric fence powered up. And boy, do they need that electric fence...

The creatures that live on this planet aren't Earth dinosaurs, Caleb emphasises; they're what evolved on Ceti instead. Some of them are exactly like ours (what's a dinosaur story without a T-Rex or two?); others are monsters that are entirely native to Ceti. And what monsters – the highly intelligent and terrifying 'Wolves' (called that only because they're grey, and hunt in packs); the motionless, apparently somnolent Crabs, which lie perfectly camouflaged till they lunge to snap a traveller in two; Gilas, creatures that only have to bite once...

The dinosaurs clearly can't be allowed to breach Eden's fence; so fifteen-year old Caleb (who has already lost a brother as well as a father) is chosen for a military sortie, to retrieve a prized power core from a crashed shuttle. Of course, too much can go wrong on this planet; for the mission's own shuttle flight, it goes quickly, violently wrong. Only six members of the party survive the crash.

The good news: they swiftly find the old shuttle wreckage and its precious power core. The bad news: they have to make their way back to their settlement, Eden, on foot and with barely any supplies. And given the hostile environment of Ceti and its native fauna, the expedition becomes a classic, nail-biting, And-Then-There-Were-None horror story.

I was gripped throughout. Caleb has courage – it wouldn't be possible to have survived on Ceti this long without it – but he knows his shortcomings, and he is terribly afraid. His brother vanished on a similar mission, and Caleb is desperate not to become another lost son for his mother to grieve. That makes him cautious to begin with, and the reader can sympathise. The terror only increases as they get closer to Eden, and there are plenty of obstacles, inanimate and living, that threaten to stop them dead. But Caleb's is a classic Hero's Journey, and when things get critically worse, he knows he has to find it in himself to save what's left of their party.

The characters can't help but be sympathetic, given what they're up against – and what they're fighting for, which is the highest possible stakes. They're all individuals, vividly drawn, and you root for every one, from the gruff and competent General Carthage to the eager but nervous naturalist Sara Arnson. You want them all to get out alive. You know perfectly well that won't happen.

D.W. Vogel puts a great deal of care into the technical, natural and scientific detail; the Tau Ceti e ecosystem makes sense, and so does the history of humanity's remnants. There are no laser guns for fighting off alien creatures; humanity didn't have time to invent them. This is a down-and-dirty, desperate fight for survival against impossible odds; The Walking Dead, but with dinosaurs.

The story ends not on a frustrating cliffhanger, but with a development that the reader desperately wants to follow through to its consequences. I'm on tenterhooks for the next instalment.


(currently available only as Kindle edition in the UK)

Horizon Alpha: Predators of Eden by D.W. Vogel; Future House Publishing £2.04

www.gillianphilip.com






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Phoenix by SF Said - reviewed by Dawn Finch

First the blurb….

A BOY WITH THE POWER OF A STAR . . .

Lucky thinks he's an ordinary Human boy. But one night, he dreams that the stars are singing to him, and wakes to find an uncontrollable power rising inside him.

Now he's on the run, racing through space, searching for answers. In a galaxy at war, where Humans and Aliens are deadly enemies, the only people who can help him are an Alien starship crew – and an Alien warrior girl, with neon needles in her hair . . .

I became a reader in the 1970s and this was a golden age for Science Fiction. I had a steady diet of books by the masters of the art, and grew up in a world of aliens, distant planets and giant robots – it was a pretty good time to be a reader. Fashions come and go and, as a children’s librarian, I know that we drifted into a time when you couldn't bribe a young person to read sci-fi. Its image became tainted by a slew of poorly written dross, and cheaply made Star Wars knock-offs, and it simply fell from favour.

Superb books by writers like John Christopher became lost in the melee of ghastly fan-type fiction and, by the time the new century crept in and the Future arrived, we had almost lost the genre for younger readers. It boldly went on for adults and now we have some incredibly fine writers exploring new worlds for us – but in the world of children’s books it had all gone a bit quiet.

I genuinely don’t think that this was for want of good writers, far from it. I think that what actually happened was publishers decided that the genre was not desirable and opted not to commission it. A great shame in my opinion, and a situation that I’m very pleased to see being challenged by writers like SF Said.

I am a fan of Said’s previous work, and in Varjak Paw he challenged what publishers would normally perceive to be fashionable and created a book that seemed to have a genre all of its own. We waited a while for his new book – Phoenix – but it’s worth the wait and again he’s kicking against the genres. Phoenix  is highly accomplished Science Fiction (although I believe that Said prefers the term Space Fiction, and it is indeed set in deep space) and it is an explosive quest story that is riveting to the end. We are swept away with the most extraordinary characters and Said manages to keep them completely real and believable at all times, no matter how wild the adventure gets. We genuinely bond with them, and feel as if we are part of the crew travelling into a mysterious galaxy in search of Lucky’s absent father.

One of Dave McKean's stunning illustrations

As with Varjak Paw, Said’s text is supported by Dave McKean’s glorious inky outpourings. These never clash with the text or reveal too much, but rather act as a teaser for the imagination. They give the book a subtle graphic novel quality, without ever overwhelming the text. It is clear that McKean and Said have an almost symbiotic relationship because the text and illustrations work so well together. The book is a beautiful package of wonderful writing combined with fantastic images and everything comes together to make a book that would definitely convert any non-sci-fi reader.

Here’s hoping that publishers will sit up and notice and take greater risks when commissioning, so that young readers can once again have access to more Science Fiction of this quality.

Publisher: Corgi Childrens (11 Dec. 2014)

ISBN-10: 0552571342

Reviewed by Dawn Finch

Author of Brotherhood of Shades

School Library and Literacy Consultant

Vice President CILIP

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Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick - review by Dawn Finch

The spiral has existed as long as time has existed.
It's there when a girl walks through the forest, the moist green air clinging to her skin. There centuries later in a pleasant greendale, hiding the treacherous waters of Golden Beck that take Anna, who they call a witch. There on the other side of the world as a mad poet watches the waves and knows the horrors the hide, and far into the future as Keir Bowman realises his destiny.
Each takes their next step in life. None will ever go back to the same place. And so, their journeys begin...

I should declare a bias before you read the rest of this review - I'm a massive fan of Sedgwick's work and have read all of his books and so I was looking forward to reading Ghosts very much. I was aware that it was a different format to his other books and I was looking forward to something new. I was not disappointed.

Ghosts of Heaven is split into four parts; four different stories interconnected by various key elements and a theme inspired by the occurrence of the spiral form. The remarkable thing about these stories is that we are encouraged by the author to read them in any order we like. I read them in the order 4, 1, 3, 2 - and was thrilled to find that the seeds of other stories are sewn in each chapter. It really is extraordinarily accomplished to make all of these stories connect in such a subtle and fluid fashion. I've certainly never read anything like it.

But it's not just clever, it's beautiful too. Each section has its own tone and voice, and is written with Sedgwick's usual deft hand. To be honest I could have read a novel based on each and every story and been wholly satisfied. Each chapter represents a very fine piece of writing alone, and the fact that they curve and spiral around each other is utterly fascinating.

However, it did raise an issue with me that I have often been baffled with. This book is listed as a YA title and yet almost all of the central characters are adults facing adult situations. The two younger characters are based in a time period when there are no "young adults" and so they behave as adults to adult situations. I am often puzzled as to why a book is marketed as YA when it is clearly an adult book. Don't get me wrong - I do think that young adults will love this book, but the type of young adult who will enjoy it will also be the type of reader who is already reading adult books. I feel that by listing it as YA there will be a lot of adults who will remain completely unaware of the existence of this book, and they will miss out. I strongly feel that Sedgwick deserves a much wider audience, and this is perfect example of a wonderful book that might not get into mainstream adult reviews and magazines simply because it's marketed as YA. I genuinely don't understand adults who lock themselves into a place where they don't read YA books. That is a great shame because in this case people are missing out on a remarkable reading experience.

Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick is published by Orion - isbn 9781780621982 - £10.99
On Sedgwick's website you can view the atmospheric trailer.

As of December 2014, Ghosts of Heaven has been  shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards as well as the Bookseller YA Fiction Prize
It has also been listed as a Peters Book of the Year and a Lovereading Book of the Year 2014

review written by Dawn Finch - author of Brotherhood of Shades

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CRACKS by Caroline Green, reviewed by Cecilia Busby

I thoroughly enjoyed Cracks, although it's not the best of titles for a sentence like that - actually, it's hard to think of a sentence with the title in that wouldn't draw a snigger from several of the teenage protagonists of this book. That aside, it's a rip-roaring adventure that will appeal to many of the readers who devoured The Hunger Games, and reminded me of some of the futuristic thrillers I read as a child by Peter Dickinson, John Christopher, or Robert Westall. Essentially, it's the revolutionary underground against the evil system, but there is scope in that general area for all sorts of interesting things to happen, and Green adds her own inventive take, with some memorable characters and a good deal of exactly the right kind of nail-biting tension and multiplication of layers of plot which need to be uncovered.

In the first part of the book, we meet Cal, who appears to be an average teenage boy, stuck with a rather nasty stepfather and older stepbrother and a mother who's turning a blind eye to the bullying going on in the family. But from the first sentence we are aware that all is not as it seems: Cal sees a crack running across the ceiling of the school toilet which, when he runs and calls for help, has disappeared. More cracks appear and disappear, he hears strange voices, saying things like, "He's waking up. We need to increased the dose", and sudden stoppages or slippages in time. Despite these clues, it's actually quite a shock when Cal "wakes up" and we discover where he really is.

I don't want to give too much away, because one of the joys of this book is that, along with Cal himself, you have to piece together what's going on from little bits of information or disinformation, and often Cal is forced to reassess things he'd previously thought he had nailed. But essentially, from the point he wakes up, Cal is fighting to find and regain his lost identity, as well as to avoid the establishment scientists who took it away in the first place. Along the way he makes contact with some other lost souls, and meets a girl, Kyla.

The future as painted by Green is recognisably extrapolated from our present - more terrorism, more control, more marginalisation of the poor or non-white. It therefore asks teenage readers to think quite hard about the possible end results of the casual racism, anti-immigration and fears of terrorism we are constantly showered with by the current government and press. White teenager Cal, by way of contrast, associates his warmest memories with an Asian family who ran the local shop in his home-town, and the girl he falls for, Kyla, is black - his growing feelings for her are tenderly drawn, as is his friendship with her best mate, also black, Jax.

I read the book in a little under a day, and it was perfect for that fast-paced, can't put it down, plot-driven story that is sometimes just exactly what you want. Green has recently published a sequel to Cracks, which continues the story, but focuses on Kyla, called  Fragments - I will definitely be looking out for that one, too!


Cecilia Busby writes as C.J. Busby, and writes funny, adventure-filled fantasy for readers 7+

Website: www.cjbusby.co.uk
Twitter: @ceciliabusby



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THE SILK SISTERS: PINK CHAMELEON by Fiona Dunbar; reviewed by Gillian Philip

There's something especially exciting about diving into a book when you really don't have a clue what awaits. I knew that Fiona Dunbar's Silk Sisters trilogy had a fashion element and that it was futuristic, but that was pretty much it. I was expecting quite a 'girly' story, what with the pink cover and the fashion theme, but what I got was something else entirely. The running girls are more of a clue, because this is a fast-paced adventure that never entirely lets up.

Rorie is a wonderful heroine. She and her little sister Elsie (who is something of a loose cannon, but a very entertaining one) have a near-ideal life until one day, their inventor parents vanish on the way to a business meeting. Taken in by their foul uncle and aunt – who make the Dursleys of Privet Drive look like models of foster parenting – they have to survive the boarding school rigours of the horribly named Poker Bute Hall, escape their relatives' dastardly clutches (for Uncle Harris and Aunt Irmine have Ulterior Motives), and discover the truth about their mother and father. And since it's a trilogy, that's never all going to happen in the first book.

What I love about the futuristic aspect of this story is the assumption that the reader is in on the details. This isn't a story full of spaceships and aliens - it's a future world you can imagine happening tomorrow, with digitalised clothing, intelligent SatNavs, 'shels' (the new cellphones) and 'slants' - the new and better version of jeans that were developed for use in mines on Mars. It all seems so very close and next-week-real, and if anything it makes the story seem more contemporary than sci-fi. That leaves the reader free to enjoy the ride as Rorie and Elsie make their escape attempts, and to wonder and fret about the awful hidden secrets of Poker Bute Hall. Because it seems there is something very, very dark going on, something that's even worse than the strict regimen of housework, cataloguing classes and hammerball...

The good news is, the Silk sisters have allies, too, very appealing characters in their own right. And the good guys' chances look up when there's an accident involving a chameleon and a lightning bolt....

There are two more books in the trilogy, Blue Gene Baby and Tiger Lily Gold, and I really am waiting with bated breath to read them. Pink Chameleon has everything a 9-12 year old reader could want – adventure, danger, technology and super powers – and please, if you know a boy who likes any of those, just wrap the book in blue paper and persuade him to read it. This is not a book the girls should be allowed to keep for themselves.


PINK CHAMELEON (The Silk Sisters Trilogy) by Fiona Dunbar (Orchard Books 2007)

www.gillianphilip.com





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The Planet Thieves by Dan Krokos: reviewed by Gillian Philip

I have been a sucker for space adventure ever since Star Wars caught me at an impressionable age. (I mean the first three. Let us never speak of the prequels.*) How we marvelled at the groundbreaking special effects of 1977. Some of them look a teeny bit ropey now (really, they’ve held up remarkably well), but the movies endure, because, well - it wasn’t about the special effects. Not entirely, anyway. The first Star Wars, an unexpected hit, was a mash-up of westerns, Robin Hood and Saturday morning serials. The story was the thing, and the thrills and the adventure and the romance and the cliffhangers...

Which is where Dan Krokos comes in. The Planet Thieves is the first in a middle grade series following the adventures of Mason Stark, his bitter frenemy Tom Renner and the violet-haired, eerily beautiful but mysterious Merrin Solace. I liked that Mason from the get-go: when we first meet him, hiding behind the pilot console of the SS Egypt, he’s just played a prank on his sister, a Lieutenant Commander of the fleet, by removing all the bolts from her chair. Well, he’s bored; he’s only a thirteen-year-old cadet logging space time, and he and the other cadets have done nothing but kick their heels, squabble and get in the way of the crew. (I couldn’t help picturing a much younger James T Kirk from the rebooted Star Trek movies.) 

Anyway, he knows how to pick his moments, does Mason. Earth is at war with the Tremist (a war sparked ‘because two races were really bad at taking care of what they had’) and the SS Egypt comes under enemy attack just as Mason’s removing the last bolt. 

See, that’s what I like in a book. Straight in at the deep and dangerous end, and then let’s see how much worse it can get.

Of course, it’s the irritating ‘cargo’ of cadets who escape notice and capture when the crew and senior officers are overwhelmed, and it’s down to them to save the day. There follows a properly action-packed thrill-ride, full of swashbuckles and narrow escapes, but it’s not all smash-bang-wallop; with Mason, Tom, Merrin and their fellow cadets forced into the role of heroes, all their faults and foibles are exposed. They all have histories and they all have secrets. and things are going to get hairy on the personal as well as the combat front. And the stakes are higher even than they thought, because the Egypt turns out to be carrying a weapon that could change the course of the war...

I mentioned movies because that’s how the book feels in your head. It’s kinetic and very visual, and any kid who loves science fiction or superheroes is going to adore it. Mason and his friends are heroes to root for, and the Tremist are magnificent villains, sinister but complex - not least because despite 60 years of war, nobody knows what they are. 

Oh, and the special effects are fabulous.

The Planet Thieves is published on May 21st in the States; this side of the Atlantic it’s currently available only as an audiobook, but keep your goggles peeled because I’m certain it’ll cross over here at warp speed - not least because there is word of an ACTUAL Warner Brothers movie.  

The Planet Thieves by Dan Krokos; published 21st May by Starscape Books

www.gillianphilip.com

*PS Nor shall we ever speak of the Ewoks. 

Dan Krokos has a bit of a Matt Smith look going on, doesn't he?
This had no bearing on my review but I thought I'd mention it.

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0.4 by Mike Lancaster Reviewed by Adèle Geras

Mary Hoffman on her blog, THE BOOK MAVEN, quotes Julia Eccleshare at the London Book Fair saying this: "Big successes drive underground books we know are better." That struck me as so true and so apposite to lots of books I could name that I decided to write about this one.
Newspapers and websites and social networking sites are crowded with noise about such things as the HUNGER GAMES trilogy. There are flashy dystopias and science fiction books tied into films all over the place. This book has found its way, through the votes of young people in Lancashire, onto a prize shortlist but it's so enjoyable and has come out with so little fanfare (I'd never even seen it before it appeared on the shortlist) that I feel like drawing it to the attention of everyone.
I am not an SF fan and I'm not keen on fantasy either, for the most part, but this book is an accomplished debut novel and something that I'm sure a lot of boys as well as girls would enjoy.It's set in a future time and the whole story is presented as the findings of/research notes of an Editor. This Editor presents the contents of tapes made in the past. The past is our present and in the account given on them, a boy called Kyle Straker tells us what happens on one day when a friend of his hypnotizes four people as an 'act' in a local talent contest. The contest is an annual event taking place in a small Cambridgeshire village. The whole population of the place turns out to the Village Green to watch. Then something happens...
What follows is both scary and convincing and the idea behind this book is so terrific that I'm not going to say a single word about it. Suffice it to say that the title, 0.4, which at first I thought a bit silly and not very memorable, is EXACTLY right for the narrrative. The cover image too, which is hard to look at without squirming or flinching, is precisely true and horrifying.
I for my part was happy not to be snarled up as I often am when reading SF, in stuff I couldn't understand to save my life. It's a pleasure to read something so well, and clearly and modestly written. The novel has a very clever structure and fits together like good clockwork. The characters are believable and Kyle's voice is one that we like and can listen to for the length of the story. Do yourself a favour. If you have a young person of about 12 or older, buy this for them and read it yourself too!
Publisher: EGMONT Format: Paperback Price: £6.99 ISBN: 9781405253048

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