Review: Boy X by Dan Smith

Kidnapped and drugged, Ash wakes up on a remote tropical island. His mum - a genetic scientist - has been imprisoned and infected with a deadly virus. Where is he, and what's he doing there? He sets out to cross the jungle to find out and rescue his mother. Soon he realises he's quicker and sharper than before. But there's something else ...why are the animals watching him, and how can he use the jungle to his advantage?

Dan Smith writes great thrillers. I loved his Big Game, with its frantic pace and reluctant hero Oskari saving the US President from the bad guys in the wilds of Finland, and when his new book, Boy X, arrived through my door a while back it jumped straight to the top of my ultra-wobbly TBR pile.

The main protagonist of Boy X is another young teen boy who suddenly finds himself way out of his depth in a fight for survival against highly trained villains who are armed to the teeth. However, poor Ash McCarthy does not have the local knowledge advantages that Oskari had in Big Game: at the beginning of the book he wakes in a strange laboratory with no knowledge of why or how he got there. Add a race against time due to the release of a super-deadly new virus and Ash experience the emergence of strange new abilities, and we have all the ingredients for a superb sci-fi thriller, with Dan Smith as the masterchef bringing them all together. If you have a hunger for fast-paced action stories then this is a meal that will both satisfy your appetite and leave you wanting more.

Dan Smith is also a master at keeping his readers gripped by drip-feeding essential information about the plot and the characters' back-stories. There are no big info dumps or sudden reveals that feel forced or make the reader feel cheated. Despite the sci-fi element and the crazy situation in which they find themselves, Ash and his equally out-of-her-depth new friend Isabel, are real enough for young readers to relate to and they complement each other perfectly.

Dan Smith brings his story to an explosive and satisfying conclusion, but the final chapter leaves the reader with a promise that Ash's story is far from over. This is fabulous as I am certainly hungry for more, and I know many other with feel the same way. My thanks go to the lovely people at Chicken House for sending me a copy of the book.

Review: Beetle Boy by M.G. Leonard

Darkus is miserable. His dad has disappeared, and now he is living next door to the most disgusting neighbours ever.

A giant beetle called Baxter comes to his rescue. But can the two solve the mystery of his dad’s disappearance, especially when links emerge to cruel Lucretia Cutter and her penchant for beetle jewellery? A coffee-mug mountain, home to a million insects, could provide the answer – if Darkus and Baxter are brave enough to find it …

 

Three was the magic number for Bob Dorough, Blind Melon and De La Soul, and it's also the magic number for these new style Book Zone reviews, as part of my seemingly endless quest for brevity when reviewing. So, here are three reasons to love Beetle Boy, by M.G. Leonard.

1. The Beetles

Forget the Fab Four*, this is more the fab four hundred thousand, as M.G. Leonard's debut, Beetle Boy, is overflowing with brilliant, benevolent beetles. Not since the hugely entertaining Joe's Apartment have so many incredible insects been used as a force for good in a fight against dastardly villains. I think M.G. Leonard must have had great fun researching this book: there are all kinds of species of cool and crazy Coleoptera, each bringing their own talents to help Darkus Cuttle fight the evil Lucretia Cutter and her minions. It's great to see insects as the good guys in a story!

2. Friendship

One of the reasons I love middle grade stories is the strong themes of friendship that many of them contain. Whether it's classics like Swallows and Amazons and The Famous Five, or more contemporary stories like the Harry Potter series and Robon Stevens' Wells & Wong Mysteries, friendship in stories is important for young readers. It helps kids understand that working with others towards a common goal is important, even if it isn't always easy, and how fun, happiness and strength can come from sharing with others. The friendships in Beetle Boy are both conventional (starting at a new school, Darkus makes friends with Virginia and Bertolt) and unconventional (boy makes friends with beetle).

3. The villains

Everybody loves a 'good' villain, and Beetle Boy has no shortage of them. From the truly heinous and inhuman Lucretia Cuttle to Darkus's bizarre odd-couple neighbours, Pickering and Humphrey and their somewhat unsanitary living habits, the villains in this story have just the right level of over-the-top-ness to make them easy to dislike and entertaining, without ever entering pantomime territory.

Beetle Boy isn't released until the beginning of March, so make note of this now and either pre-order it or set a reminder on your smart phone, as this is already a hot contender for my 2016 Books of the Year list. My thanks go to the fab people at Chicken House for sending me a copy of this little beauty.

*(yes, yes, I know they spelt their name differently)

The Black Lotus Blog Tour: My Life That Books Built by Kieran Fanning

Last month I posted my review of Kiean Fanning's brilliant new ninja time travel adventure story, The Black Lotus. Today I am overjoyed to be welcoming Kieran to The Book Zone to tell us about the books he enjoyed reading when he was younger:

One of the first books I remember being genuinely moved by was The Children at Green Meadows by Enid Blyton. I was a huge Enid Blyton fan and read all The Secret Seven series. The Famous Five series was also a firm favourite, especially as the show was on TV.

We also had some abridged illustrated classics at home, like Treasure Island, King Solomon’s Mines, and The Last of the Mohicans. I think I enjoyed the illustrations more than the stories but they did prompt me to revisit these titles when I got older and Treasure Island is still one of my all-time favourites.

We loved comics in our house too, though we weren’t allowed to buy them often. Our neighbour however, got comics every week so when he was finished with them we received bundles of the Beano, the Dandy, Roy of the Rovers and Thundercats.

Our mother also encouraged us to read Irish books and I loved Tom McCaughren’s fox series beginning with Run with the Wind. I also vividly remember Carolyn Swift’s Robbers series and Island of the Great Yellow Ox by Walter Macken.

Roald Dahl has to be on this list too, my favourites from him being Danny the Champion of the World and James and the Giant Peach.

I also have great memories of books in school. Every day we used to look forward to the teacher reading us Charlotte’s Web or The Iron Man. In the older classes I discovered abridged classics like Dracula, Frankenstein or The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

The first books that totally transported me to another world were Mary Norton’s Borrowers books. I guess it was my first taste of fantasy. Watership Down was my second, and I was truly blown away by it. It remains in my top ten books of all time.

As kids, we loved getting gifts that came free with a box of cereal, but when the Weetabix came home from the shop with a book attached we were overjoyed. Not just because it was a free book, but because it was a book we’d never seen the likes of before. It was a Choose Your Own Adventure book, in which the reader makes decisions at the end of each page to choose the direction of the story. This interactive fiction coincided with the arrival of an Atari 800xl computer in our house and for the first time I realised that the reader no longer had to play a passive role, and that a story can have many endings. I remember reading War With the Evil Power Master, The Case of the Silk King, The Horror of High Ridge, Survival at Sea, and Mountain Survival over and over again until I reached a satisfying ending.

From there, my brother and I evolved to reading gamebooks. These were like Choose Your Own Adventures, but with the added complexities of fighting monsters, rolling dice, collecting objects and earning/losing health and skill points etc. I loved The Way of the Tiger series by Mark Smith and Jamie Thomson, and the Lone Wolf series by Joe Dever.

These types of books led me to write my own books, which I still have. They’re my most precious possessions! At around the age of ten I wrote The Magic Sword, and The Samurai was written some years later.

Fast forward twenty years and it was no big surprise that my first publications would be interactive puzzle adventures – Trapdoor to Treachery, Voyage to Victory, Tempest of Trouble and Curse of the Cockroach.

Fast forward another 10 years and it is no surprise that my first novel, The Black Lotus includes swords, ninjas, samurai, time travel and talking animals. It may have taken forty years, but the books I read as a kid were the making of my novel, and also, the making of me.

The Black Lotus by Kieran Fanning is the first book in the Samurai Wars series and is out now in paperback (£6.99, Chicken House). Find out more at http://www.kieranfanning.com and http://www.chickenhousebooks.com 

Review: The Black Lotus by Kieran Fanning

Ghost, Cormac and Kate are not like other kids.

Ghost can turn invisible, Cormac can run up walls and Kate can talk to animals - all abilities which make them perfect recruits for the Black Lotus, a training school for ninjas. But when the Moon Sword - a source of unimaginable power - is stolen by samurai, the three are forced to put their new skills to the test in sixteenth-century Japan ...

Add too many ingredients to a bread or cake on the Great British Bake Off and you'll have to suffer the wrath of Paul Hollywood. Do the same when writing a book and you may not face wrath, but it will make your story appear disjointed and confused. Kieran Fanning's debut middle grade novel, The Black Lotus, has young people with super powers, martial arts, fantasy swords with magical powers, ninjas and samurai - that's a hell of a lot of ingredients for a literary cake yet somehow Fanning pulls it off to produce a mouthwatering adventure story that will satisfy the appetites of action-hungry young readers.

The Black Lotus is set in an alternate 21st Century planet Earth, where much of the world is part of President Goda's samurai empire. London, Paris, Rio... all are part of Goda's empire and it seems that the USA is one of the few nations that lies outside of his influence. For the time being at least.

We are initially introduced to this world through the lives of three teenagers from very diverse backgrounds, although all three have at least two things in common - they all believe themselves to be orphans and all three of them have a special power. Ghost lives in a Rio de Janeiro favela, and can turn himself invisible if he concentrates hard enough; Cormac lives in a Hinin House, or orphanage, in Ballyhook, Ireland and can run so fast that he is able to run up vertical walls; and Kate lives on the streets of NYC having run away from a children's home. Kate's special gift is that of communicating with animals, literally speaking with them. All three think they have managed to keep their special abilities, however all three have come to the attention of the Black Lotus, a group of ninja freedom fighters who have spent centuries fighting against the totalitarian rule of Goda (yes, you read me correctly - NINJA FREEDOM FIGHTERS). Soon the three find themselves teaming up to join this fight, and on an adventure that sees them travelling back to 16th Century Japan to retrieve a magical sword that goad could use to subjugate the rest of the world.

To describe The Black Lotus as cinematic would be a disservice to Kieran, as to me it can imply that a story relies far too much on action set-pieces, and yet this book would make a damn fine action/adventure film. The Black Lotus certainly isn't just a chain of action scenes with little in between them. In fact, although the action scenes are fast-paced and exciting to read (and are full of NINJA martial arts wonderfulness), it is the relationship between the three young heroes that makes this story work so well. Each one has different back histories and thus different motivations, and although, for plot reasons, we find out more about one of the three than the others, it is still very easy for the reader to empathise with all three.

The Black Lotus is yet another fab addition to the plethora of great middle grade books that have been published in the UK in 2015. It is certainly a book that will have young readers clamouring for a sequel, although I would guess that we have quite a wait for that ahead of us as The Black Lotus was only released two weeks ago. 

And did I say that it has lots of ninjas?

My thanks go to the fab people at Chicken House for sending me a copy to read.

Review: Big Game by Dan Smith

13-year-old Oskari is sent into the cold wilderness on an ancient test of manhood. He must survive armed only with a bow and arrow. But instead, he stumbles upon an escape pod from a burning airliner: Air Force One. Terrorists have shot down the President of the United States. The boy hunter and the world's most powerful man are suddenly the hunted, in a race against a deadly enemy.

A handy indicator of how much I enjoy a book is if it has me reading well into the night, on a 'school night' when I am already feeling very tired. This doesn't necessarily apply to every book that I totally loved, but it does apply to Dan Smith's Big Game. It is as if Dan Smith has delved into my DVD collection, and then used his findings to write a book that was guaranteed to appeal to me and kids around the world who have a hunger for cracking action stories.

The story behind Dan Smith's writing of Big Game is a little different from most of the books I have read in recent years. From what I can make out, Chicken House supremo Barry Cunningham acquired the rights to publish a book based on the screenplay of a Finnish/British produced film, and then asked Smith is he would write a book based on that script. Unlike many books based on films, it was not to be a direct novelisation of the movie, but was instead to be a book that would stand as a great action novel in its own right, and this is one of the reason why it works so well. Don't get me wrong, movie novelisations are a great way to engage boys with reading, and I read loads of them when I was a young reader, but too often they come across as second rate to the film and are simply the film translated into words on paper. However, for Big Game to be second rate to the film, then it is going to have to be one damn great film indeed (ok, so it has Samuel L. Jackson in it does have something of a head start).

Big Game is like White House Down or Olympus Has Fallen (don't judge me too harshly for loving both of these films), but set in the wilds of Finland (although I believe that technically Air Force One is the White House when the US President is on board), and instead of Channing Tatum or Gerard Butler stepping in to kick terrorist butt and rescue the President, enter 13-year-old Oskari, possibly the most unlikely hero of all. Tradition has it that in Oskari's society a boy must prove himself in order to be considered a man at the age of 13. Oskari must therefore venture out into the wilds on the eve of his thirteenth birthday and return the following day with a trophy, i.e. the head of a creature he has hunted and killed himself. 

Unfortunately Oskari is small and not particularly strong - he cannot even pull back the string of the huge bow that tradition dictates he must use to make the kill. It is with a great fear of shaming his hunter father that he sets off into the Finnish forest alone, but with the hope that he will somehow be successful and return with a trophy of which he can be proud. However, his hopes and plans are dashed when terrorists bring down Air Force One and Oskari, barely surviving being killed by the cataclysmic crash, stumbles across an escape pod containing the US President. Oskari's quest to become a man suddenly becomes a race for survivial, with all the odds stacked against him.

Big Game could be added to the dictionary as the definition of 'edge of your seat thriller'. The short chapters and fast-paced and relentless action make it one of those books that is incredibly difficult to put down, as I discovered when I was still reading it at midnight, desperate to find out whether Oskari and the President would escape from their hunters. Yes, I imagine that the film is probably one of those action-by-numbers films that some sniff at but others (like me) can't get enough of, and those same detractors will probably turn those sniffy noses up at this book, but it is the perfect book for middle grade readers who love action and adventure stories, and Oskari is a brilliant character with whom many young readers will empathise.

Big Game was published in the UK on 1st January and my thanks go to the fab people at Chicken House for sending me a copy.

Guest Post by Chris D'Lacey (A Dark Inheritance blog tour)

A Dark Inheritance by Chris D'Lacey was published by Chicken House earlier this month. The first book in the brand new The Unicorne Files series, A Dark Inheritance is thrilling story with X-Files/paranormal themes and a definite whiff of conspiracy. Today I am really happy to be hosting a guest piece from Chris as he embarks on his UK blog tour:

Remembering Rafferty Nolan

When I was at university, studying biology, there was a particular lecturer I really enjoyed hearing.  His name escapes me now (it’s been a long time since I was a student) but his field of interest was genetics.  Over a period of weeks he taught us, among other things, about the discovery of the genetic code and the structure of DNA.  He told it like a real story, chapter by chapter – the four bases, the alpha helix etc. – and I remember being so gripped that I would get to the lecture theatre early to be sure of getting a good place.  That was the closest I came to being a science nerd.  Not too long after university my life began to move down a literary path and science became something I relied on simply to pay the bills.  But I’m certain that lecturer had a huge influence on my writing.  I still love a good scientific mystery now, and occasionally it shows in my books.

This is partly what fuelled the central theme of A Dark Inheritance, the first in my new series The UNICORNE Files.  I love anything that might be said to lie on the extreme edges of science, particularly those subjects that have no robust scientific credibility yet can’t quite be dismissed as hokum.  The one that pops up in A Dark Inheritance is the fascinating phenomenon of cellular memory.  To explain: people who’ve had organ transplants sometimes make the extraordinary claim that they have some memory of their donor or that they’ve inherited some of their donor’s personality traits.  Imagine a forty-year-old man who has never been interested in gardening receives a new kidney and suddenly begins to know the Latin names for plants or has a strong urge to visit garden centres.  He then finds out that his donor was a keen gardener.  That would be cellular memory.

There have been many theories put up to explain it and I don’t have room to go into them here.  Some people believe that every cell in the human body has full ‘consciousness’.  And to hark back to my genetics teacher, in one lecture he dealt with the captivating subject of totipotent cells, which have the ability to differentiate into a complete organism from a single cell state.  Wow.  So where does this lead us?

Well, in an early review of A Dark Inheritance, the reviewer said they didn’t ‘get’ cellular memory.  Fine.  Hand on heart, I don’t ‘get’ telekinesis or past-life regression or out-of-body experiences – or my beloved dragons, for that matter – but I don’t have to believe in a thing to want to explore it in a work of fiction.  Subjects like these are toys in a writer’s attic, there to be picked up, played with and re-imagined.  With cellular memory, I did what all writers do, I lodged the idea into my subconscious and let it bubble away for a while.  It eventually came back with an interesting question, “What if the donor had died in an accident, but the person receiving the organ remembered something that would suggest the death wasn’t an accident?” And away I went.

A Dark Inheritance is a kind of ghost story with a twist.  The notion of cellular memory is used to unravel the truth behind the untimely death of a girl called Rafferty Nolan.  To say any more than that would be to say too much.  Writing the story hasn’t made me believe in the subject any more now than it did before I started.  But my mind is open and the truth is out there.  A fantasy writer wouldn’t have it any other way.

A Dark Inheritance by Chris D'Lacey, out now in paperback (£6.99, Chicken House) 

My Life That Books Built: Guest Post by Melvin Burgess (The Hit Blog Tour)

Although I am cutting back on taking part in blog tours, if an author is happy to write a post that fits with the My Life That Books Built feature that I occasionally run then I am more than happy to host them. Especially if it is a writer as amazing as Melvin Burgess. Melvin's new book The Hit was published last week and although I have not yet had the chance to read it due to other reading commitments, it is very near the top of my TBR pile and I'm really looking forward to it. Over to Melvin:

The book I first fell in love with was The Wind in the Willows. It’s a comfort read, all about home. In some ways it’s in two parts – the parts about Toad, an adventure away from home in which he has to get back and regain his home; and adventure about the Mole finding a new home; and finally those mysterious parts, with Pan, and where the Mole goes back to his old home. But it’s all about home in one form or another. I adored it. My parents got someone to paint me a picture of the Great God Pan which I hung above my bed, so you can guess which parts I liked best.

Perhaps it was Pan who first brought me to myths and legends. My dad worked at OUP for a while, and brought home volumes of books on Czech legends, or Legends of Heath and Moor – if I remember correctly. But the one that really blew me away was Tales of the Norse Gods and Heroes, by Barbara Leonne Picard. I loved those Norse gods, with their tricky ways, their oddly comic tales and warped sense of destiny. I still do. They are the true deities of Northern Europe – not like the soppy Greeks with their curly haircuts and haughty distain for all things human.

I love wild life and I love a laugh. When I was a child you could get both from Gerald Durrell, founder of Jersey Zoo, pioneering conservationist, rescuer of the Hawaiian Goose from extinction and, more importantly at the time for me, Man Who Went Round the World collecting animals for zoos. I envied him almost as much as I envy David Attenborough now.  You could do worse than start with the The Bafut Beagles, although his most famous work is his account of his childhood in Corfu, My Family and Other Animals.

I was always a big fan of fantasy, but my favourite well away was Mervyn Peake’s Gormanghast. Back in the day, fantasy wasn’t the dragons and wizards stuff you get now. We had people like Angela Carter writing it. Try Gormanghast. You’ll never read anything like it in terms of content, character, or language. You’ll see fantasy in a whole new light after this.

Kurt Vonnegut Jnr, Slaughter House Five. Although Goodbye Mr Rosewater is almost as good. No one ever did to sci fi what this man did. Funny, wise and inventive, and utterly in love with the human race, in a sad but amused kind of way. He’s much missed.

George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant. Someone told me recently that this event, which is portrayed as an essay, never happened. Good. It’s a wonderful example of how to talk about politics with such clarity that a child can understand. After Orwell, I knew that if I read something difficult to understand it’s not my fault – it’s the writer’s.

Finally – what am I reading now. Japanese fiction – I love it! Try Natsuo Kirino, Out, or Real World. Have a look at Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara. It’s so refreshing …

Review: Freaks by Kieran Larwood

The Freaks are a band of misfits, trapped in a nightly Victorian sideshow. There's Wolf-girl, Sheba, with her amazing sense of smell; Sister Moon, who can move at the speed of light; and Monkey Boy, ace climber and human stink bomb. But during the day, the Freaks decide to put their extraordinary talents to use. And in a world of child-snatchers, grave robbers and dastardly doctors, they solve the mysteries no one else cares about, including why London's poorest children are being snatched from the banks of the Thames.

Towards the end of last year I received an envelope full of A4 full colour, glossy press cards from the lovely people at Chicken House, and this one leapt out at me for three reasons: the book title, the cover and then the blurb. Chicken House had one their job well - they had me securely hooked, reeled in and left waiting for it to be released. Long time readers of The Book Zone will know I am a big fan of books set in the Victorian era, especially those promising a mystery needing to be solved, and with the added element of the freaks I knew I wanted to read this book well before Kieran Larwood wrote a short piece about it for my Coming Up In 2012 feature.

Freaks is an exciting, fun mystery story, perfect for 10+ readers, and the second book I have read recently that I think would translate brilliantly to the comic book format. The freaks of the books title are like a team of Victorian X-Men, each with his or her own unique gifts, that are sadly viewed as mutations or aberrations of nature by the general public. There is Sheba, the wolf girl, whose skin is covered in fine hair; Monkey Boy, one of the most disgusting characters I have read in a children's book for some time, who has a tail and can climb like an ape; Sister Moon, kick-ass ninja girl; Mama Rat, and her colony of performing rats; and the very large, and superhumanly strong, Gigantus.

Despite the book following the adventures of the team of freaks as they attempt to discover who is abducting the young Mudlarks from the banks of the Thames, this book is very much Sheba's story. We first meet her in Pilchton-on Sea, confined to a cage in a run down, seaside freak show (or what is left of it). Sheba is very much more than a girl covered with hair though - she is intelligent, has taught herself to pick locks and has a sense of smell to rival a bloodhound. 

Other than a spell in a workhouse, Sheba has next to no memory of who she is, where she came from, who her parents were, or if Sheba is even her real name. She is little more than a slave, forced to 'perform' for anyone who was bored enough to pay a penny to view her and the two-headed sheep she shares a shack with, and the future looks bleak and lonely until she is sold to another freak show owner and finds herself heading for London. Although technically still a slave, at least she is no longer alone, as she finds herself in the company of the aforementioned freaks. And it isn't long before the team find themselves up to their necks in mystery - a hunt to find missing children that belong to some of the poorest and most destitute families living in London. A mystery that will have them fighting for their lives against a gang of rather nasty villains (Kieran Larwood does very bad villains).

Freaks is pretty much everything a 10 year old reader could ask for in a story. First up, it is funny, exciting and nail-biting in equal measures, with a plot that races along without being overfilled with action scenes. The characters are wonderfully realised, and I hope there will be a sequel so that we can find out even more about the various 'freaks'. Kieran Larwood also brings Victorian to life in a way that will have young readers finding it easy to imagine the sights, sounds and smells of the city as it was back then.

My thanks go to the good people at Chicken House for sending me a copy to review.

Review: Floors by Patrick Carman

Welcome to the strangest hotel in the world!

There’s no place on earth like the Whippet Hotel. Every floor has its surprises and secrets. Guests are either mad or mysterious. And ducks are everywhere.

If anyone knows the Whippet, it’s Leo, the caretaker’s son. But when he finds four strange boxes that lead him to hidden floors he realises something extraordinary is going on.

As the hotel begins to fall apart, Leo's on the ride of his life, without ever having to step outside.

Walter E. Whippet's dying words to his son Merganzer were: "You will prosper in the field of wacky inventions". Merganzer took this to mean that he should use his inherited billions to create something unique and so he bought an entire Manhattan block, had all the buildings pulled down, and proceeded to build the weirdest, strangest, most unusual hotel in the world... ever! Unusually for Manhattan it was a very small hotel surrounded by grounds vast enough to make a property developer weep at the waste of incredibly expensive space.

Those who did not know better assumed the Whippet Hotel to have only nine floors, topped with a pond on the roof as Merganzer was especially fond of ducks. Not many people choose to stay at the hotel as it is horrendously expensive, and those that do all seem to be rather eccentric in one way or another. The hotel is run by a skeleton staff of Leo Fillmore and his father Clarence (maintenance); Mr Phipps (gardener); Ms Sparks (particularly nasty desk clerk and general manager); Pilar (maid) and her son Remi (newly appointed bellboy). All meals are delivered from a local restaurant so there is no need for kitchen staff. 

Of course, there is also Merganzer Whippet himself, but he has mysteriously gone missing, and as the story starts he has been missing for 100 days, leaving his hotel and his beloved ducks in the care of his staff. On this 100th day, as he is collecting the ducks for walk in the gardens, Leo discovers a box in the duck life with his name on, and so the adventure begins as he has to solve the clues and get to the bottom of the mystery, as the hotel starts to fall apart around him. All the time he is looking over his shoulder, suspecting that there is someone in the hotel, guest or staff member, hellbent on causing chaos through sabotage, possibly with a view to helping the mysterious Bernard Frescobaldi obtain the hotel and its valuable land at a knock-down price.

Floors is a really fun read, and before I knew it I had read it in a single sitting (ahhh... the benefits of the school holidays). I think it is a great book for the 9+ age group, who will love the mystery and suspense, as well as the comedy that runs throughout the story. The various incredible rooms in the hotel will fire up children's imaginations, and have them wishing for their very own Pinball Machine room, Room of Ponds and Caves, or Robot Room. Whilst reading about these I was reminded of the various areas in Willy Wonka's factory, and how much pleasure I got out of reading about them when I was a child. Just like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I think Floors would make a great family film and I wouldn't be surprised if there is some interest Hollywood in the book.

Although I have drawn parallels with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I must also add that I do not think that Patrick Carman's storytelling is quite up to the level of the late, great Roald Dahl. The characters and the hotel are well imagined, but some of the scenes in the bizarre, hidden lacked faultless pace the clarity of description that we get in a Roald Dahl book. However, this one small gripe has not stopped me from looking forward to the next book in what I believe is intended to be a series. The book comes to a satisfying conclusion, but we are given a small handful of hints that there are more adventures to come for Leo and his friends in the Whippet Hotel.

Floors was published by Chicken House at the beginning of January and my thanks go to the publisher for sending me a copy to review.

 

Coming Up In 2012 #10: Freaks by Kieran Larwood

I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to reading this book by debut writer Kieran Larwood. Members of a travelling Victorian sideshow by night, crime fighters by day? How good does that sound? Add in the fact that Freaks is the book that won The Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition and it has six-pack of win written all over it. Freaks is due to be published by Chicken House in April, but in the meantime here is Kieran to tell us a little more about it in his own words: 

Victorian London in 1850 is full of diseased slums, foul stenches, seedy villains and sinister sideshows. 'Freaks' follows the members of one such sideshow as they are drawn into the underworld in an attempt to solve the mystery of pauper children being snatched from the stinking river banks. There is Sheba the wolf-girl, Sister Moon- ex-assassin, Gigantus the Man Mountain and Monkeyboy- the most disgusting creature in the British Empire. The book is a mixture of mystery, action, atmosphere and humour. It basically contains everything the ten-year old me would have loved to read, all squished together into one fast-paced, suspense-filled, freakish blob. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

Coming Up In 2012 #7: Shadow Runners by Daniel Blythe

Back in the autumn I received a nice pile of press releases from Chicken House, detailing some of the books they were publishing in 2012. These were all printed in glorious, glossy high quality - a great way of showcasing the books. One of the books that jumped out and shouted "Read me!" was Shadow Runners by Daniel Blythe, and so I contacted Chicken House and asked if Daniel would like to take part in my "Coming Up In 2012" feature. He very kindly agreed to participate, and so now I hand you over to Daniel who will tell us a little more about his new book:

Firecroft Bay. The town's name comes from the Old English meaning 'wickedness', and when 12-year-old Miranda May moves there with her mum and her little brother, she thinks at first that it is just a quiet, windswept little end-of-the-world harbour. But forces are stirring in Firecroft Bay, and Miranda's new teacher, Miss Bellini, may have something to do with it all... For the Bay is a place where ancient stories come to life, where supernatural curses are very real, and where the dark shadows Miranda sees at the edge of her vision also creep into her dreams. What is the mysterious Shape? Who is the girl in the burning forest who haunts her nightmares? And what does it all have to do with her strange new friends - a bunch of children and teenagers calling themselves the Shadows? They could be Miranda's allies in a terrifying fight against the darkness - but can she really be sure who she can trust?...

I hope readers will be frightened, entertained and enthralled by "Shadow Runners", which is my first book for younger readers outside the "Doctor Who"  series which I've also written for. It's my first book for Chicken House, who have been great to work with at every stage. I wanted to write a book which both boys and girls will enjoy - Miranda is a feisty, witty, skateboarding heroine who tells the story in a sardonic first-person voice, taking you with her on every step of her new journey. I hope it will be the first in a series of "Shadow Runners" adventures. Excitingly, I hear it's already going worldwide, with Brazil the latest country to snap it up!... And there will be an audio-book from AudioGo too.

For all the latest news on Daniel Blythe and Shadow Runners, please go to www.danielblythe.com

*** Undead Competition Result

The lucky winner of the copy of Undead by Kirsty McKay is:

D Randle

Well done and thank you to all of you who entered. I will now endeavour to contact the winner through by email. Please reply within 48 hours or I will draw another name out of the hat. Many thanks to Chicken House for providing the prize.

The Undead Blog Tour - Kirsty McKay reads from Undead

A week ago I posted my review of Kirsty McKay's Undead, a superb book for young horror lovers who love their zombies, and a fun read for zombie lovers of all ages. Now Kirsty is nearing the end of her week-long blog tour and today she has stopped by The Book Zone to read to us a short passage from Undead. Hand around after you have watched the video as I will be telling you how you could win a copy (possibly signed) of Undead.

As you know, I have read the rest of the book, and if you like zombies it really is that good. So, if you want to win a copy courtesy of the good people at Chicken House Books then all you have to do is fill in the form below by the closing date and then I will draw a winner at random. Closing date is 8pm GMT Tuesday 4th October (sorry, UK residents only for this one).



Competition open to UK residents only.
Neither the author or I will not be held responsible for items lost in the mail.
I hold the right to end a contest before its original deadline without any prior notice.
I hold the right to disqualify any entry as I see fit.
I will contact winning entrants for their postal address following the close of the competition. Winners have 48 hours to reply. Failure to do so in this time will result in another winner being randomly selected.

Review: Undead by Kirsty McKay

It was just another school trip... When their ski-coach pulls up at a cafe, and everyone else gets off, new girl Bobby and rebel Smitty stay behind. They hardly know each other but that changes when through the falling snow, the see the others coming back. Something has happened to them. Something bad...Soon only a pair of double doors stand between those on the bus and their ex-friends the Undead outside. Time to get a life.

Back in May Steve Feasey, author of the brilliant Changeling series, wrote a great post about the appeal of zombies for The Book Zone, starting with the question as to why they are so popular when as monsters they are so unappealing on the face of things. Whatever the reasons, zombies are incredibly popular with boys, and my experience at school suggests that they rank far above vampires as the boys' monsters of choice (perhaps its a hygiene thing with boys preferring the dirty, unwashed, grunge image). Over the past handful of years zombies have enjoyed something of a revival (no pun intended) in kids literature, with the likes of Charlie Higson and Jonathan Maberry leading the way, but now Kirsty McKay wants some of the action as well and her Undead is certainly a worthy addition to the ranks.

If you are a seasoned reader of zombie stories then your first thoughts of Undead will most likely be similar to mine: it doesn't really bring anything new to the party, and is something of an A to Z of zombie film cliches. However, as an introduction for new readers to the genre who are 11+ there is probably little better than this book. Weighing in at less than 300 pages it isn't as hefty a tome as Charlie Higson's The Enemy, and whilst it is just as gory in places it also comes with a liberal dosing of humour throughout. In fact, it is closer in tone to Shaun of the Dead than Dawn of the Dead, and its characters are very much in line with Grange Hill or some of those brat pack movies of the 80s such as Some Kind of Wonderful and The Breakfast Club. 

I have read some comments about Undead that criticise the book for its characters being stereotypes. Yes, the teen characters read like a list of must-include-in-any-school-drama but for me this made the story work all the better. Admittedly this means that there were few surprises and the actions of the characters were quite often predictable but this just added to the comedy factor for me and I couldn't help but read the book in a single sitting I was enjoying it so much. The flow of the story was another element that contributed to this 'can't put it down' feeling - Kirsty McKay has this completely nailed, with her relatively short chapters and fast-paced prose this really is a sit-up-all-night-to-finish book for horror loving kids that want to dip their toes in the zombie-lit pool for the very first time.

Undead was published on 1st September and my thanks go to the good people at Chickenhouse for sending me a copy to review.

Review: Demon Strike by Andrew Newbound

Demons from the Dark Dimension pour through a portal in the wall of Pittingham Manor, ready to strike!

Into this chaos stumble two twelve-year-old ghost-busters: psychic Alannah Malarra and burglar Wortley Flint. Up until now, they've only ever hunted tame, trasure-hoarding ghosts, but this is something else.

Their only hope is a winged A.N.G.E.L police patrol on a routine earth-monitoring mission. The future of the world is at stake...

The first thing you notice about Demon Strike is its fantastic cover featuring a particularly gruesome looking demon; it has a lenticular panel that enables the facial experssion of the demon to change as you move the book. I won't say any more, get this book and have a look for yourself.

So is the inside as good as the outside? I will be honest and say it took me a few chapters to get into the book. In Chapter 2 we are introduced to A.N.G.E.L. Trooper Flhi Swift, soon to be promoted to Inspectre (yup... that's how it is spelt in the book), and I was initially worried that this character sounded very similar to Holly Short, the LEPrecon heroine of Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl books. And yes, there are similarities, but only because both books have gutsy non-human heroines who like to take risks and who don't always play by the rule-book (in Flhi Swift's case - it is more a case of "what rulebook?" as she seems to have broken every A.N.G.E.L. rule by the end of the story).

However, Flhi Swift is not the story's sole main character - she has to share this honour with ghost-hunting psychic Alannah Malarra. Alannah is the daughter of famed (and currently missing in action) psychics Ben and Sadie Malarra. However, where her parents hunted ghosts for altruistic reasons, Alannah's motives initially seem far more mercenary - she knows that ghosts only remain on earth if they have something precious worth staying for; thus where there is a ghost, there must also be treasure. With this in mind she has begin to amass a small fortune, although we soon discover that she intends to use this treasure to fund the search for her missing parents.

Alannah is a strong character who misses her parents deeply. She is discovering psychic powers that she does not understand fully, and this is a constant reminder of her parents, who had started to train her before they disappeared. She would be a very lonely girl were it not for her closest friend, the fantastically named Wortley Flint, Alannah's partner in crime, a twelve-year-old boy with a talent for breaking into houses. Wortley is the perfect sidekick, and provides many of the laughs in the story as he hates the whole ghosthunting aspect of their work and would much rather be sat in the safety of his own home. In fact, I was chuckling to myself before I had even reached the end of the third page as a result of Wortley's unfortunate run-in with a pair of hyenas. The banter between these two is another fine aspect of this book; they are constantly bickering but there is always an underlying note of affection in this, as they genuinely care for each other. This becomes even more apparent as they take it in turns to face mortal danger, with the other coming to the rescue in some way or other.

This book is laugh-out-loud funny in places, but it also has many moments of extreme tension and fast-paced action. I said it took me a few chapters to get into it, but once I had it became another book that I wanted to complete in one sitting. The quieter, poignant moments where Alannah is missing her parents, or is fearing over the safety of her friend, are also an important element to the story as they help the reader relate to her character more. Thus, when she is in peril, we become even more fearful for her safety.

Despite only mentioning three characters in this review so far, the story hosts a wealth of colourful secondary characters, both good and evil (and some a little in-between). Each one adds to the story in their own little (or big) way, and the dialogue is always well written and believable. I believe this book is intended to be the first in a new series of A.N.G.E.L. Patrol books and I hope we will see many of these characters again in future books. Whenever this may be, I will be at the front of the queue to get my hands on a sequel.

Demon Strike is due to be published by Chicken House on 1st March, but Amazon already have copies so you may spot one on the shelves in stores a little early too. I would suggest it is best suited to the 9-12 age group, although older readres may also find it an enjoyable read. You can also find out a little more about Andrew Newbound and Alannah, as well as read the opening chapter, at the Go Away Ghosts website.