Mars Evacuees

December 1, 2014
In a future in which alien intervention has drastically reversed global warming, British schoolgirl Alice Dare discovers that, instead of beginning a new semester at Muckling Abbot School for Girls, she's been drafted into basic training on Mars, fighting the enemies of the human race.Science-fiction novels have always borrowed from one another, but it's surprising how many different tropes McDougall employs. There's plenty of space warfare, of course, but there are also scenes that resemble stories about boarding schools. And when the students meet the Morrors, the dialogue owes a huge debt to Adam Rex's The True Meaning of Smekday (2007). Oddly enough, all this sampling and shifting of tone increase the novel's suspense. The second half of the story is one reversal after another, and that makes up for the much slower early chapters. People reading the first 50 pages may start to list things the characters aren't doing: They don't encounter aliens. They don't fire weapons. They don't go to Mars. There is, however, a fair amount of schoolwork. Alice's deadpan narration is always entertaining, and a few sentences are dazzling, like a description of Earth from far away: "And then we saw a pale bluish star that was brighter than the others, and it grew in the dark, like a flower." The strange pacing sometimes makes the book feel unbalanced, but the action sequences are worth the wait. (Science fiction. 8-12)

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November 1, 2014

Gr 5-7-Alice Dare's mother is a pilot, fighting the Morrors in space, and her father works on a submarine, laying mines. Just 15 years in the future, the world is slowly freezing-making it more comfortable for the invading Morrors, but worse for humankind. Sooner than expected, Alice is evacuated to Mars, and enrolled as a cadet in the Exo-Defense Force, under the watchful eyes of a variety of robots and in the blustery command of Colonel Dirk Cleaver, who is determined to whip the children into a fearsome fighting force. Mars has undergone intensive terraforming and now sports a somewhat breathable atmosphere and the beginnings of plant life, along with a low gravity bounciness that's hard to resist. With new friends Carl and Josephine, Alice participates in drills, has some fun, and steps into a leadership role when the adults on the base disappear. Determined to get help, Alice, Josephine, and Carl steal a Flying Fox and cross paths with a Morror their own age. These young friends help the adults see that the real threat is not from one another, and the story wraps up with hope that humans and Morrors can coexist. This book has plenty of action, with middle school humor and an occasional, but mild, swear thrown in during times of stress. Suggest to fans of Margaret Peterson Haddix's "The Missing" series (S. & S.) and Emma Clayton's The Roar (Scholastic, 2009).-Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX

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