Galaxy’s Most Wanted #1. By
John Kloepfer. Illustrated by Nick Edwards. Harper. $6.99.
Galaxy’s Most Wanted #2: Into the
Dorkness. By John Kloepfer. Illustrated by Nick Edwards. Harper. $12.99.
Another day, another
world-threatened-by-aliens situation. So it goes at Northwest Horizons Science
Camp, where Kevin Brewer, Warner Reed, TJ Boyd and Tara Swift encounter and
must cope with various reptilian and/or four-eyed and/or fuzzy and/or tentacled
and/or blobbish beings and keep Earth safe for Earthlings. Hence the naming of
this redoubtable quartet as the Extraordinary Terrestrials (ETs – get it?). And
hence the plot of John Kloepfer’s Galaxy’s
Most Wanted series for ages 8-12, whose first entry appeared last year and
is now available in paperback, and whose second hardcover offering is
brand-new. That is, the book is new,
but the plot, like that of the first entry, is an old one. Galaxy’s Most Wanted starts as a standard preteen group of
not-very-distinguished and not-very-distinguishable friends makes contact with
actual alien life and gets to meet an actual alien named Mim, who is cute and
purple and fuzzy and four-eyed (literally
four-eyed; this has nothing to do with wearing eyeglasses). But Mim tells the
kids he is in trouble because of some galactic baddies who are after him, so
the Earth kids have to hide him (they have him put on a hoodie) and help him.
Soon enough, a pursuer shows up, yelling “‘Gluck-gluck-Mim-yim-yarkle’” and
being as scary as only a giant extraterrestrial insect can be. Mim explains
that the “space poachers” are after his entire species, “hunting us down and
killing us for our fur so they can make coats out of us. It can get really cold
in outer space.” So now the kids really
need to help Mim, and they do a pretty darned good job of it, too, until they
begin suspecting that maybe Mim is not telling them the whole truth, as in
maybe not even 1% of it – and soon there are issues involving positron force
fields, a “half-cyborg ET tracker,” a holographic rap sheet, a giant spiderish
thing named Poobah, and all sorts of other nonsensical goodies that will
undoubtedly delight preteen readers who are tired of earthbound zombies (like
the ones in Kloepfer’s Zombie Chasers series)
and looking for alternative amusements. This first book is neatly summed up at
the start of the second: “Over the course of a few days, they had summoned the
galaxy’s most wanted alien, a purple fuzzy creature named Mim with an appetite
for destruction, fought off a giant arachnopod – a humongous half octopus, half
tarantula – and saved the world from annihilation.”
But life can’t be that easy (well,
all that world-saving seems easy) in
a series like this. So, having set up the basic premise of Galaxy’s Most Wanted in the first book, Kloepfer – abetted by Nick
Edwards’ illustrations, which do little to add to the action but certainly
nothing to detract from it – brings the kids up against different alien bad
guys in Into the Dorkness. This time
Mim’s associates show up, set off a freeze-ray bomb, and learn about the heroic
foursome because of tattletale “Alexander Russ, Kevin’s longtime science camp
nemesis,” who is a “nerd bully.” Then the Extraordinary Terrestrials,
accompanied by alien space cop Klyk (who looks like a toy and for a while
pretends to be one), get together with a soccer-camp girl named Marcy – who happens
to be a big fan of Max Greyson comics, which happen to contain some important
clues to what is going on all around the intrepid preteens. Soon there are
encounters with a brainwashed camp counselor and a swarm of robotic wasps that
inject nanotech-based mind-control serum into their victims. And in case that
is not enough drama and utter ridiculousness, the wasps inject the serum into
“the entire all-girls soccer camp,” after which all the girls resemble the
zombies in Kloepfer’s other current
series, just to be sure kids get enough of a dose of Type A so they will also
enjoy Type B (or, in the case of zombies, Type AB – or is that vampires?). There
are occasional funny lines here: “You don’t seriously think humans invented
Google, do you?” But by and large, both the action and the writing are quite
straightforward and very much in line with the easy-to-follow, easy-to-read
formula of series like this, in which the characters are virtually identical
and the plots are packed with just enough fun to keep preteens reading. Into the Dorkness includes a chase scene
in which Warner’s video-game capabilities help him steer an alien spaceship to
victory – and, more interestingly, a search for the aforementioned Max Greyson,
during which it turns out that the cartoonist disappeared a year and a half
ago, but “‘Max’s comics have continued to be delivered even after his
disappearance,’” as his former assistant explains. The assistant continues,
“‘I’m pretty sure he was abducted by aliens. But I’m not supposed to talk about
that. Every time I start talking about it, it just seems so unreasonable.’
‘You’d be surprised how reasonable it sounds to us,’ said Kevin.” And there you
have it: the intricacies (if that is the right word) of the plot of the second
book, and also the setup for what will become the third. Galaxy’s Most Wanted is harmless, lighthearted (and lightheaded)
entertainment, especially suitable for young readers who are thrilled by
dialogue such as, from the first book, “‘Umm, hey, nimrods… There’s kind of
more important stuff going on here than the Invention Convention. Like saving
the world.’” And, from the second, “‘They’ve just taken over Oregon and pretty
soon the entire planet!’”
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