Hover Car Racer by Matthew Reilly, Pan MacMillan Australia, ISBN 9781743283707
REVIEWED BY MILAN, 10, NSW
Milan reviewed his own copy of this title.
Hover Car Racer is a science fiction novel written by Matthew Reilly. This book is about two brothers who dream of becoming the world’s best hover car team. A hover car is a futuristic vehicle that is similar to a regular car but flies above ground and can reach a potential speed of 770 km/h. The story is set in the future where the two main characters are in a National Championship in Sydney and follows their journey as they compete around the world.
At the beginning, brothers Jason and the Bug are chosen to attend the International Race School after showcasing their skills. As the year progresses, the team is paired up with Sally McDuff, their new Mech Chief. Together they train and gradually improve in their pit stops, speed and accuracy.
I really enjoyed the journey Matthew Reilly described. It seemed very realistic because Jason had to face his fears and not everything went right for him. I have never read a science fiction book before this one and it was eye opening the way he described the futuristic scene.
I think Matthew Reilly could improve the description of Ravi Gupta and his motivations behind becoming a gambler. Although I disliked this character, I would have appreciated understanding him better.
I would rate this book 4/5 stars because it was exciting, fun and engaging. The racing scenes made it an absolute page turner. I would highly recommend this book to readers keen for adventure and those who love science fiction books.
Teams of kids on an alien planet competing to get into Starquest Academy, three clues and only three days to find their way to the finish line. Today we’re chatting with HM Waugh about her latest book: The Surface Trials. HM Waugh is a children’s author, educator and environmental scientist with a long-term love of wild places and outdoor adventures. She has handled dragons for a job, and dreams of one day blasting into space. Her books mix humour, danger and friendship with a dash of science and imagination.
From the publisher:
An epic page-turner full of twists you won’t see coming, set on an alien planet where, under the watch of a galaxy-wide TV audience, Ammy Antares and her fellow competitors must complete a challenging quest to gain entry into an elite interplanetary academy. Welcome to the Surface Trials.
In your novel, squads are groups of children competing and the groupings are assigned. If you were in The Surface Trials, what talent/knowledge/skills wouldyou bring to your squad?
I love the idea of a squad, because when I’m in an escape room there’s no way I’m getting out without other people’s ideas and points of view.
I think I’d offer my squad some halfway decent analysis of clues to try and break codes – I love pulling things apart searching for hints and patterns … Sometimes I’m even successful! I have a vast array of potentially unhelpful facts about science, gardening, and my favourite fantasy and sci-fi books. I can read maps and building plans like a pro, thanks to an early love of architecture and an ongoing commitment to epic fantasy novels. And I think I’d be pretty good at navigation and survival. I ought to be, since I teach that stuff as part of my job. Plus, every time I’ve become lost in the wilderness, I’ve made it out again!
I am also very good at eating chocolate …
The squads face some pretty hairy scenarios. How do you go about writing a scary scene for your characters? How do you let go of those ideas at night so you can sleep?
Hairy, huh? I think I know exactly what scene you’re referencing there! Scary scenes are so much fun to write! They’re important for making a story exciting, and they give my characters a chance to work out how awesome they are – which is kind of the purpose of a story, I think. For me, making words on a page capture a reader is the result of lots of little things added together.
First, I need scary subject matter. I like to get inspired by freaky science, weird facts, mind-blowing history and mouldering industrial ruins. I make sure the stakes are high – failure has to mean something bad, so the reader is on the edge of their seat. To have this work, I need to connect the reader to the characters before I launch into a big scary scene. I want the reader to see the characters as real people, people they care about. People they don’t want eaten alive by a newly-hatched alien.
Next I need rising tension – that ever-increasing sense of impending doom. This is what keeps a reader hooked to the page. I keep raising the tension throughout my books, but every big scene is a tension peak. Increasing tension in a scary scene is about shorter, sharper sentences. It’s about concentrating on what the characters would be noticing in that moment – they’re not going to be giving a monologue on the colour of the sunset if they’re being chased by a ravenous monster. They’ll be more concerned about where their friends are, where they can hide, and how hot the monster’s breath is on the backs of their legs. I also often add in little elements of humour, right smack bang in the middle of the scariness. Honestly, I don’t want my readers terrified! Plus, that dash of a laugh makes the rest of the scene seem even scarier.
Finally, to make it feel real I inject real emotions. I may not have been in any of the exact situations I put my characters in, but I think of the times I’ve been terrified and I try to write those emotions onto the page.
How do I sleep at night afterwards? Blissfully. Once a scene is written down, my mind knows it doesn’t have to keep thinking about it. It’s time to start dreaming about what my characters might face next! But if I’m partway through writing a scary scene? Yeah, that can sometimes mean a bit of a sleepless night, but that also gives me lots of great ideas about what could happen when I continue writing the next day.
The storytelling offers multiple points of view in this book; we hear from several of the squad members. Why did you decide to tell the story this way, rather than choosing to tell the story through the eyes of one character only?
Choosing points of view (POVs) is always difficult. Two of my main characters, Deneb and Ammy, are both drafted into the same squad but they’re very different people. So I felt we needed to hear from both of them. For instance, how Ammy sees herself is not always how others perceive her, and I wanted some of that vulnerability and self-doubt to show. Deneb’s POV provides this.
And, of course, I have a disguised character. Nobody in the Surface Trials knows which contestant is actually Rian Amalthea, the uber-famous and mega-rich heir to two massive space Dynasties. He could literally be anyone. I didn’t even know at first! Having Rian’s POV deepens that mystery. Where is he? Which squad is he in? Who could he be?
Do you have a tip for young writers who would like to write their own page-turner?
First off, rising tension is your friend. It works (like I’ve talked about already) with scary scenes. It also works across an entire story. Rising tension keeps the reader hooked. So … keep ratcheting it up. The stakes need to keep getting higher, the mystery more mysterious, the dangers more dangerous. But beware! Too much continuously rising tension weirdly means it stops being tense. The reader gets used to it, and it loses its impact. To avoid this, I drop the tension slightly after each peak scene so the reader can sigh in relief, before I crank it back up and they realise things are actually worse than ever! <evil laughter>
Secondly, experiment with ending your chapters on mini-cliffhangers. I like to picture all the kids out there (my own included) who have been told they can read to the end of the chapter and then it’s lights out. My aim is to have them still reading many chapters later because they just have to know what happens next. I hope they’re so deep in the book they don’t even realise they’ve read past the chapter end. If this is you, feel free to tell your responsible adult that it’s not your fault, the author (me!) did it on purpose 😊.
Can you tell us a bit about what you’re working on next?
I have three things I’m working on at the moment, and I’m in love with each of them for very different reasons. None are contracted to be published. Yet!
The Surface Trials is out now! Ask for it at your favourite bookshop or local library.
The Deadlands: Hunted by Skye Melki-Wegner, Walker Books, ISBN 9781529516241
Nick’sreview of this book was longlisted in the 2024 Young Reviewers’ Competition.
The Deadlands: Hunted is an action-packed book about two dinosaur kingdoms at war. The main character, Eleri, a dinosaur, joins a group of exiles after being banished to the Deadlands after an act of treachery to his kingdom. In the Deadlands, Eleri and the other exiles discover something that changes everything, but knowing this secret puts them in grave danger. Will Eleri and the exiles survive or be slaughtered trying?
When I read The Deadlands I was always on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen next. However, at the same time you get to see Eleri and the exiles build up heartfelt relationships that help them overcome challenges and be a stronger herd.
I would recommend this book for readers between 10-year-olds to adults because it is too complex for younger children.
My dad and I loved The Deadlands: Hunted and were disappointed there’s only three in the series. Five stars.
Nick’s review was longlisted in the Primary category of Alphabet Soup’s 2024 Young Reviewers’ Competition. The competition is now closed, but we publish book reviews by young writers all year round. To send us YOUR book review, read our submission guidelines. Happy reading!
HM Waugh is the author of books for children and young adults. She’s also an environmental scientist and an educator with a love of wild places and high mountains. This has led to icy feet and sunburnt cheeks in magical countries like New Zealand, Nepal, Bolivia and Switzerland! Her latest book is book 2 of a duology: Mars Underground, the page-turning sequel to Mars Awakens.
From the publisher:
Dee, Holt and Chayse set out to cross the planet via a network of subterranean tunnels. Can they reach it without encountering the Others – the sinister biocloud they’ve been running from? And if they make it, can they convince the Newtonians to work with Davinci – those they’ve been trained to hate?
Did you set out to write these books as a duology or did the idea for a second book come after you’d finished writing Mars Awakens?
I am not what you’d call an awesome planner – I start a project by thinking up a character or two, and the details of their world, and I have a basic idea of what the plot might be, but I work the rest out as I write. If you’ve heard of plotters (who plot everything out before) and pantsers (who plan nothing and write ‘by the seat of their pants’), I’m a hybrid of the two, a plantser. So I was happily plantsing along, still writing Mars Awakens, when one day it hit me: there needed to be two books to finish this properly. So the duology was born.
This is your first published series. How did you find writing a sequel as compared to writing Book 1?
Completely different! In some ways it was easier, and in other ways: much harder!
The easier bits were things like the characters and the world – they were already there in my head, fully formed. I knew the main characters like they were my mates. I knew what they’d say, how they’d act. Sometimes, when I’m starting on a new idea, I might get a big way through a first draft and have to rewrite it because the characters finally come alive for me (this happened about 20,000 words into the first draft of Mars Awakens!). But I didn’t have that sort of issue with Mars Underground. Also, all the nitty gritty work of world building had already been done (thanks, Past Me!) so I just got to have super fun expanding it to places I hadn’t been yet. That was all awesome.
Some things were definitely harder, though. I felt this expectation that I’d never really felt before. There were all these readers who had connected with Dee and Holt’s story and were keen to see how it ended. Aaah! I didn’t want to let them down! Plus, I had a deadline! For all my other books I’d already written a full manuscript before signing a contract. But suddenly I had to write an entire sequel by a certain date? Double aaah!
I actually wrote 50,000 words of the sequel before Mars Awakens had been released, but when I picked it up again months later I knew it wasn’t right. And I’m not saying that like, ‘This isn’t quite right, I need to work on it a lot.’ I mean I archived the whole thing. Gone. Fresh document page. Start again from scratch. I re-read Mars Awakens to remind myself of the voice, and then launched into writing an entirely new sequel. And that became Mars Underground. I loved the draft so much, but I was still terrified there would be something missing. So I did multiple happy dances when my publisher came back with several big thumbs up! Yay!
Mars Underground involves your characters travelling via tunnels and caves on Mars, were their adventures inspired by caving adventures of your own?
I love pulling inspiration from real life, so their adventures were like a mix of my own, and the sort of caving and rafting adventures I’d love to have!
I remember going caving on a school holiday camp when I was in my early teens, shuffling on my stomach, so tight to the ground, to get to this special crystal cave. My helmet kept getting jammed, the ceiling was so low. And the crystals were protected behind this mouldering underground gate, so rusty the key could barely work. It was amazing! But once we’d crawled back out, we realised our camp leaders had already decided to leave. Without us. Everyone had climbed up and out, we could see them up by the pinprick of daylight that was the entrance, about to lock the main gates! I’m sure they would’ve realised we were missing before starting the bus, but what an adrenaline hit to be almost left behind in that deep wintry place, our torches running low!
Another experience I drew on was rafting what they call the God River, in Peru. Once we’d got onto the river, the gorge walls rose so high the only way out was through days of rafting. Changed your mind about going? Too bad! It was tough and it was amazing and I loved it! We got to one huge rapid, and the guide told me a girl had been lost there the previous year. I was like, ‘Did they find her again?’ and he looked at me and said, ‘Lost, like dead.’ That definitely made me realise exactly what I’d signed up to do.
So I tried to inject some of that danger and beauty and excitement into my characters’ adventures.
You ran a writing competition for young writers in 2022 and the winner had a character named after them in Mars Underground (Alice!). Did you already have a character ready and waiting to be named, or did you write the character into the plot while you were finishing writing the novel?
I had a few characters I knew I could change the names for, but I waited to see who’d won and what they’d written before I chose which character I’d use. And during editing I changed that character around to be even more awesome!
Can you tell us a bit about what you’re working on next?
As I write this, it’s halfway through July which means I’m deep in writing a project during Camp NaNoWriMo. I love writing with NaNoWriMo (the National Novel Writing Month) because it really gets me into the flow of my writing. Plus, I LOVE a good graph, and NaNo track my progress and give me badges and pep talks too! Normally I’d try to write 50,000 words in the month, but this month I’m aiming for 30,000 because I was on holiday for the first week.
Anyway, I’m loving this project so much. Dangerous new planet. Kids in a competition. Everyone watching their every move. A new friendship based on deception. And then something goes really wrong (of course!) and everything comes to the surface. How are they going to get out of this? It’s so. Much. Fun!
Mars Underground is out now! Ask for it at your favourite bookshop or local library.
Wednesday Weeks and the Dungeon of Fire by Denis Knight and Cristy Burne, Lothian Children’s Books, ISBN 9780734420237
Emily received a review copy of this book.
Wednesday Weeks and the Dungeon of Fire is a thrilling science fiction book and the third book of the Wednesday Weeks series. In this adventure book Wednesday is given the chance to eliminate the tyrannical Goblin King, Gorgomoth, once and for all. But in order to do that she must beat the savage Gorgomoth to the powerful Stone of Power. To get to the Stone of Power Wednesday must face physical and mental challenges, all to save the world.
I loved this book because it’s a bit different from the other Wednesday Weeks books, seeing that the challenges that Wednesday and her friends have to confront are more exciting and harder. Another outstanding feature of this book is to explain about how meaningful having friends is.
I recommend this book to ages 7+ but it can be enjoyed by people of any age. Fans of Wednesday Weeks and the Tower of Shadows and Wednesday Weeks and the Crown of Destiny will also love this book.
Mars Awakens by HM Waugh, A&U Children’s, ISBN 9781760526979
The publisher provided a review copy of this book.
Mars Awakens is a sci-fi novel written by H. M. Waugh. The book is set in the future after humans colonised Mars. Something falls out of the sky near two separate colonies. Is it backup and resources from Earth? Holt from the first colony and Dee from the other one separately fly over to the crash site to investigate and meet for the first time. One of the colonies thought they already knew about the other colony and despised them, while the other didn’t even know that the first colony existed.
Dee and Holt face many troubles and will need to work together to survive and tell their communities about some new information they just obtained.
What I liked about the book was how the author used science and accurate facts to form the story. I also appreciate it because it has a fun and enjoyable storyline.
I recommend the book for people in primary school around 3rd to 6th grade, also for children that enjoy sci-fi and science.
HM Waugh is the author of books for children and young adults. She’s also an environmental scientist, and educator with a love of wild places and high mountains. This has led to icy feet and sunburnt cheeks in magical countries like New Zealand, Nepal, Bolivia and Switzerland. She has studied dolphins in New Zealand and rare plants in the Wheatbelt, and worked in mining and construction projects across Western Australia. Her latest book is Mars Awakens, the unputdownable first book in a duology.
From the publisher:
Raised in two colonies on Mars each long ago abandoned by Earth, Dee and Holt have been brought up to hate even the idea of each other. But when a mysterious object crash-lands on a far-flung plain, they are both sent to investigate and their fates intertwine. Together they must battle epic storms and deadly bioclouds while unpicking the web of lies they have been told about their planet.
What brought you to write a book set on Mars? Did you need to do much research before you began writing?
I love space and the idea of going to other planets, and we’re so close to being able to send people to Mars – kids reading my book could absolutely be a part of this – that one day the idea to write a book based on Mars just popped into my head. Mars is a real place, so I did have to do a lot of research. Not only about the Mars we know – like its gravity and size and moons and what it looks like from the surface – but also into the Mars we could create. The plants we would need to make wax and rope and clothing. To feed the population. To stabilise the planet. It was a lot of fun!
What’s your favourite unusual fact about Mars?
There are so many! I think one of my favourites is how rovers have been detecting strange levels of methane (like fart gas) on Mars. And recently they discovered rocks on Mars that contain substances that, on Earth, can be created by methane-producing bacteria. Did Mars once have life? Does it still?
Dee uses kites to travel long distances across Mars on her own. What gave you the idea? Did you test a prototype or put trust in your imagination?
The kites came from an epic brainstorming session. I knew Mars was too big to walk around, so I needed some low-tech way for Dee and her colony to travel long distances. And what did Mars have going for it? Much less gravity than Earth so you can leap higher and run faster, and some serious windstorms. And I thought about sailboats, and umbrellas in storms, and kite-surfers, and combined them all to create the Martian kites. I did not test this out! I’m not even sure they’d work on Earth? But I did use my experiences doing things like sailing, skydiving and ziplining to create the feel of kiting with the wind.
If there was a callout tomorrow for volunteers to move to Mars – would you be tempted to put your hand up?
Absolutely! Try out for all the things. What’s the worst that could happen? Either I don’t get selected and I’ve lost nothing, or I do get selected and get to decide whether to accept the place or not. If it was a one-way ticket I honestly think I’d find it very hard to say goodbye to my family. Maybe they could come with me?
Can you tell us something about your next writing project?
Well, obviously, my next project is Mars Book 2 and I’m not giving away any spoilers! Beyond that, I have ideas simmering away in my head for a new project and I’m just letting them develop. It can take a while for the right collection of ideas to come together, and then I suddenly know I’ve got the ingredients for a book.
Mars Awakens is out now! Ask for it at your favourite bookshop or local library.
When Gorgomoth steals an oh-so-important crown he unleashes power that only the crown holds. Then, wanting revenge, he turns Wednesday’s Grandpa into a frog. However, this was only the beginning …
I liked the fact that Adaline, who had been really helpful, got a good title as the summer princess and that everything went well in the end. I also liked how I had to keep on guessing what would happen and it certainly kept me on the edge of my bed.
I recommend this book to anyone who likes magic and evil (stinky) sorcerers, regardless of your age.
Science fiction and fantasy author Denis Knight is a computer programmer who grew up geeking out about the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. He has also worked as a technical writer, a delivery boy, a tutor, and, for one glorious summer, a tour guide on Rottnest Island.
Cristy Burne has worked as a science communicator for nearly 20 years across Australia, Japan, Switzerland, the UK, US, South Africa and beyond. She has performed in a science circus, worked as a garbage analyst, and was a reporter at CERN when they turned on the Large Hadron Collider. Her books include To The Lighthouse, Off The Track, Beneath the Trees, and a non-fiction book, Zeroes and Ones. In 2020, she told the story of the inventor of spray-on skin in Aussie STEM Stars: Fiona Wood.
Denis and Cristy decided to collaborate on a book and the result is a hilarious new series featuring the adventures of a girl named Wednesday Weeks. Today Alphabet Soup is super excited to have Denis and Cristy visiting to tell us about co-writing Book 1 in their series – Wednesday Weeks and the Tower of Shadows.
From the publisher:
Wednesday Weeks never wanted to be a sorcerer’s apprentice. She’d rather study science than magic. But when her cloak-wearing, staff-wielding grandpa is captured by a power-hungry goblin king, Wednesday must find a way to embrace her magical heritage and rescue him from the dreaded Tower of Shadows.
One book, two authors. What was it like trying to write a book using two brains?
DENIS: Writing a book with two brains! I love that. It’s actually a great way to describe it. Although sometimes it feels like we only have half a brain between us. Ouch! Cristy just kicked me under the table.
CRISTY: Only because you kicked me first! It was actually really exciting, writing with Denis, because I could never predict what he would write, and I was always literally laughing out loud to discover what Wednesday and Alfie had been up to while I was away.
DENIS: Right. It was a lot of fun. But it was challenging, too – in a good way. When you’re working on your own, you can let yourself get away with stuff. But when you’re writing with a partner, you can’t do that any more. You have to level up.
How did you come up with/agree on the name for your main character?
CRISTY: Denis came up with the concept of Wednesday Weeks, a reluctant sorcerer’s apprentice, and in that very first chapter, he invented many of our favourite characters and names: Wednesday Weeks, Alfie, Mrs Glock … and of course, Abraham Mordecai Weeks (otherwise known as Grandpa).
DENIS: That’s true. Although, Wednesday’s character started out as something quite different from where she ended up. Cristy doesn’t know this, but my first idea was for a space bounty hunter named Serenity Weeks.
CRISTY: A what? Pardon?
DENIS: Then she was going to be a paranormal investigator named Wednesday Weeks. Wednesday’s character and voice started to develop when I wrote some short scenes where she and Alfie were searching for Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster. Then the reluctant sorcerer’s apprentice idea popped into my head, and that was kind of the final piece of the puzzle.
CRISTY: More like the first piece of the puzzle. From there, we started writing. At first, it was literally a game. Denis wrote Chapter 1, and after reading this chapter, I wrote Chapter 2, and then Denis wrote Chapter 3. And we just trusted the story to evolve.
DENIS: I think the lesson here is to give yourself the time and space to play with an idea and see what develops. Also, that space bounty hunters are awesome. What do you think of the name Serenity Jones?
CRISTY: …
CRISTY: …
CRISTY: … I hope you’re not asking me?
How did you know/agree when Book 1 was finished and ready to submit?
DENIS: We wrote our first super-quick, super-short draft of Book 1 in early 2018.
CRISTY: That first draft was only around 25,000 words long, but it was enough for us to get to know Wednesday and her world, and to know we wanted to write more.
DENIS: We had the first ten pages critiqued by a publisher in June 2018, and she gave us some really good feedback.
CRISTY: Over the next year, we both worked on other projects, but we kept coming back to Wednesday.
DENIS: We rewrote the opening chapters based on the publisher’s feedback, and we fleshed out the middle section, adding in the Sword of Reckoning and the laundry kraken. In June 2019 we had the opening chapters critiqued again by a different publisher, and she loved it. So that’s when we knew it was ready to submit.
CRISTY: Later, as we worked with Hachette to progress the manuscript through the various editing stages, we had three different editors all offering their advice, and there were thousands of new notes on each fresh edit that we completed. Getting the story just right was a whole lot of work!
Do you have any ‘Must Do’ or ‘Must Not Do’ tips for young writers who might like to collaborate on a story?
CRISTY: Respect for the other author’s creative brain is really important. A big part of the game we play as we write each Wednesday Weeks book is to take up the reins from where the other author has left off, and to then drive the adventure where we think it needs to go.
DENIS: Be open to your partner’s ideas, and have fun.
CRISTY: Another Hot Tip is to trust. As you write, remember that you teamed up with this other creator for a reason, and although smooshing two brains into one story can be difficult, the results will be worth it.
DENIS: Also, don’t expect it to be brilliant right away. It won’t be! But if you keep working on it, you’ll get there.
Can you tell us a bit about what you’re writing next?
CRISTY: We’ve just finished putting the finishing touches on Book 2 of the Wednesday Weeks series.
DENIS: It’s called Wednesday Weeks and the Crown of Destiny and it’s out in September 2021.
CRISTY: We love it because it has all our favourite characters, plus more page-time for Adaline, our punk faery-friend from the laundry.
DENIS: There’s also some advanced magic for Wednesday to tackle, a hippo-bugamus, a giant pinball machine of death, a visit to outer space and, of course, some snarky Bruce-jokes.
CRISTY: And don’t forget a whole lot of dirty-rotten evil-doing from Gorgomoth.
DENIS: Right. Oh, and also, Grandpa gets turned into a frog for a while.
Wednesday Weeks and the Tower of Shadows is out now! Ask for it at your favourite bookshop or local library.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, Penguin Books Ltd, ISBN 9780241331163
Matilda borrowed this book from the library.
This is a science-fiction novel about a family whose dad is missing. The little brother discovers three ladies who seem to be able to travel to other dimensions, and they tell Charles Wallace that they know where his father is.
I like time-slip novels — this is sort of a dimension-slip novel. I really enjoyed it because it was so different from our world, and I liked the characters in the other world.
The copy of the book I read was a movie tie-in, and had photos from the movie in the middle pages of the book. That was annoying because I had an idea in my head of all the characters and then suddenly I came across the movie photos and they were completely different. (But I’d still like to see the movie.)
Kids who love weird fantasy adventure books will love this.
REVIEWED BY MATILDA, 12, WA
alphabetsoup.net.au 