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cornflower's review
adventurous
funny
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
snazel's review against another edition
5.0
FANTASTIC. Funny, and heartfelt, and so good. Sophia McDougall is now an auto-buy author.
limabean74's review against another edition
3.0
3.5/5 this was cute just very long but I did adore the character. Review coming soon
yapha's review against another edition
5.0
It's been 15 years of war with the Morrors, and for 12-year-old Alice Dare that is more than her whole life. Her mother is a heroic spacefighter in the Exo-Defense Force and her father is onboard a submarine when Alice and a couple hundred other kids are evacuated to Mars to begin their army training. Mars is being terraformed into an inhabitable planet, but it still has a long way to go. There is not much out there other than the kids, some scientists, a few army trainers, and the civilian robots who take care of them. When things start to go horribly wrong (think Lord of the Flies), Alice and her two friends Josephine and Carl, as well as as Carl's younger brother Noel and a robot goldfish set out for help. Along the way they discover what exactly is going on with the aliens. This is action-packed and funny, science fiction at its best! Highly recommended for grades 4-7.
christophertd's review against another edition
5.0
Wonderful adventure, with invisible aliens, and talking fish. Featuring girls and women in lead roles throughout, in a way that feels effortless and perfectly normal (as it should be, dammit). I wish I knew more children to recommend it it to, so in the meantime all you adults had better read it instead.
trixie_reads's review against another edition
4.0
This was quite a fun science fiction book for middle grade kids. So much is fantasy these days (which I love, don't get me wrong) that it's nice to see actual aliens in a book.
the_fabric_of_words's review against another edition
5.0
This is one of those rare books I purchased from Amazon. I read book 2, Space Hostages, first, and loved it. Then COVID struck. I waited a year and a half for my library to re-start inter-library loans, but it still hadn't by the end of 2021. The only way I was ever going to get my hands on the start to the story was to purchase it. Of course later, my library subscribed to Hoopla, which has it, but I had no way of knowing that was going to happen.
In any case, I bought it and I wasn't disappointed.
Alice Dare is plucked from the Muckling Abbott (wink, wink! Get it? Mucking About? Anyway…) School for Girls in England to become a cadet in the Exo-Defense Force. She's always known, like all kids her age, she would end up in the military, learning to destroy the barrier the Morror aliens are erecting around the Earth so it cools to their Antarctic-preferred temps. She just had no idea it would happen so … fast. At age 12, no less.
Her mom's an ace space pilot, though, so when Alice learns she's being shipped off to Mars to train, that's kinda cool, right? She quickly meets her fellow cadets in this misadventure: Carl, who jumps into the ocean for one last swim before taking off, and his little brother, Noel; and Josephine, who's brilliant but super-angsty about spending a life in the military, even if she knows it's inevitable (and note: longing for gills -- yes, gills). On Mars, they're in basic training, under the command of Colonel Dirk Cleaver, who's as clueless to bullying as he is insistent the kids train every day; and the Goldfish robot teacher.
It's boot camp, no fun. But it's not so bad -- at least until all the adults disappear. One day, they're celebrating something. The next, they're gone. It takes about four days of routine instruction before the kids notice, and when they do, initially it's paaaartaaay time. Until the adults still don't come back, and then the whole place breaks down, aka Lord of the Flies, every kid for themselves.
Josephine and Alice, and Carl and Noel and the Goldfish escape the horror that is marauding bands of unsupervised teens in a spaceship and head to Mars' bigger outpost, where they figure the adults "went." On some kind of emergency, but what could cause them to abandon the kids to themselves like that?
Along the way, they encounter another, far deadlier enemy than the Morrors -- the equivalent of space locusts -- mindless eating machines working their way through entire planets in the galaxies. They stumble upon a Morror kid, Thsaa, whose parents' ship also crash-landed on Mars, damaged by these same space-locusts. And it turns out the cooling barrier the Morrors are building around Earth? It's to shield it from these voracious pests.
Now, all the kids -- and the Goldfish -- have to do is survive the Martian landscape long enough to get this info back to the adults, so they can do something about it.
But it's never that easy, is it?
This was a great, innovative start to this sci-fi duology.
Enjoy!
Looking for more book suggestions for your 7th/8th grade classroom and students?
Visit my blog for more great middle grade book recommendations, free teaching materials and fiction writing tips: https://amb.mystrikingly.com/
In any case, I bought it and I wasn't disappointed.
Alice Dare is plucked from the Muckling Abbott (wink, wink! Get it? Mucking About? Anyway…) School for Girls in England to become a cadet in the Exo-Defense Force. She's always known, like all kids her age, she would end up in the military, learning to destroy the barrier the Morror aliens are erecting around the Earth so it cools to their Antarctic-preferred temps. She just had no idea it would happen so … fast. At age 12, no less.
Her mom's an ace space pilot, though, so when Alice learns she's being shipped off to Mars to train, that's kinda cool, right? She quickly meets her fellow cadets in this misadventure: Carl, who jumps into the ocean for one last swim before taking off, and his little brother, Noel; and Josephine, who's brilliant but super-angsty about spending a life in the military, even if she knows it's inevitable (and note: longing for gills -- yes, gills). On Mars, they're in basic training, under the command of Colonel Dirk Cleaver, who's as clueless to bullying as he is insistent the kids train every day; and the Goldfish robot teacher.
It's boot camp, no fun. But it's not so bad -- at least until all the adults disappear. One day, they're celebrating something. The next, they're gone. It takes about four days of routine instruction before the kids notice, and when they do, initially it's paaaartaaay time. Until the adults still don't come back, and then the whole place breaks down, aka Lord of the Flies, every kid for themselves.
Josephine and Alice, and Carl and Noel and the Goldfish escape the horror that is marauding bands of unsupervised teens in a spaceship and head to Mars' bigger outpost, where they figure the adults "went." On some kind of emergency, but what could cause them to abandon the kids to themselves like that?
Along the way, they encounter another, far deadlier enemy than the Morrors -- the equivalent of space locusts -- mindless eating machines working their way through entire planets in the galaxies. They stumble upon a Morror kid, Thsaa, whose parents' ship also crash-landed on Mars, damaged by these same space-locusts. And it turns out the cooling barrier the Morrors are building around Earth? It's to shield it from these voracious pests.
Now, all the kids -- and the Goldfish -- have to do is survive the Martian landscape long enough to get this info back to the adults, so they can do something about it.
But it's never that easy, is it?
This was a great, innovative start to this sci-fi duology.
Enjoy!
Looking for more book suggestions for your 7th/8th grade classroom and students?
Visit my blog for more great middle grade book recommendations, free teaching materials and fiction writing tips: https://amb.mystrikingly.com/
mslibrarynerd's review against another edition
4.0
Kids get stuck on Mars and befriend an alien enemy. Parental notes: some swearing, discussion of alien sexes and reproduction, although boring. Pretty bleak with war and invading aliens, a bit lord of the flies for a minute.
lyndiane's review against another edition
5.0
Really good. Story written for a younger readership but immensely enjoyable for all ages.