Mark London Williams

time travel, alternate universe travel, nasty govt. handlers, smart teenagers: 2 human, 1 dinosaur. Entertaining, complex, thoughtful.

That concepts are not explored or explained in any detail is par for the course in juvenile Science Fiction; there’s no need to add irrelevant detail that takes away space from the actual story. The story itself is action packed and entertaining, but doesn’t yet seem to go anywhere…yet. There are indeed some strange phenomena occurring around the world and there are hints that something large is affecting the Earth’s experience of TIME. There’s so much going on that this book is obviously meant to be a staging area for the real story. This book is merely introducing us to the main characters and their individual characteristics—and some back-story. The book begins with many loose ends and ends the same way. For my taste it was way too short with 240 small pages/large print and will require several sequels to tie everything together into a satisfactory ending.

But I’m impressed with the story flow: we meet the boy hero AFTER his mother is lost in time and learning of his actions in ancient Alexandria with a dinosaur BEFORE he actually goes there. I suspect that I would be captivated by the intricate temporal twists and turns if I were a young teenage boy reading this. And yet I also would probably prefer the stories to be compiled into a large tome rather than the small booklets that tease us and then force us to wait until we can find the next episode.

Until I find an appropriate youngster to read it and give me his/her opinion I’ll give the book a tentative 4.… (mere)

I almost passed up this book because of the cover, but then I would have missed out on a delightfully dark zombie tale. From the cover, I thought this book might be silly, even slapstick. Not so! Aurora and Max, two 12 year olds, are stuck in a horrible situation. Set in the near future, the world is coming to an end because of the Nano-Zs – zombies created by nanites.

Aurora has recently lost her parents and hasn’t been able to talk about it. he literally crashes into this story and Max speeds in on his enviro-friendly go-kart to rescue her. She becomes the story teller for this dark tale. While she’s an interesting character, it was Max that truly captivated me. His interface isn’t the usual. He answers questions straight forwardly, sometimes states the inappropriate truth, and tends to go off on tangents. Perhaps it’s autism, perhaps it’s something more.

The story has several interesting minor characters. Dr. Lulu and Tilda were my two favorites. Dr. Lulu has been hiding out at a hospital and perhaps she has figured out something about these nanites. I loved all the little science-y bits. However, the story does have one flaw and that has to do with Dr. Lulu. At one point, Dr. Lulu uses a needle and both kids think it’s for one reason. Later, the story completely changes that up and it doesn’t make sense. That’s not how that works. I felt that the author decided to change directions a little by the end of the story but didn’t take the time to go back and clean up that previous scene.

Anyhoo, then there’s Tilda and her husband Roger. I loved this part of the book because it shows that humans can be as dangerous or more so than the zombies. Along the way, Aurora and Max have adopted a cat. I felt that the cat would have fared better off leash but the kids manage to keep it alive throughout the book. Roger doesn’t like the cat but he’s not long for the story.

The Fungos were a great touch, being a dangerous gang that’s in love with chaos. Aurora and Max have to go toe to toe with this new enemy and things look pretty bleak there for a moment. The story ends with our heroes still marching forward, looking for something they may never find. I really look forward to the next book in the series. 4.5/5 stars.

The Narration: Luna Cross did a great job as Aurora. I love her voice for this brave 12 year old. She also had a great voice for Max, whose voice is described in the story as often lacking emotion, being so straight forward and almost robotic. Cross also had distinct voices for all the side characters and her male voices were masculine. The pacing was good and the emotional scenes were done very well. There were no technical issues with this recording. 5/5 stars.

I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.… (mere)