Diego and the Rangers of the Vastlantic

July 1, 2017

Gr 5-8-More than 100 eye-catching full-color illustrations showcase this fantasy's diverse cast of characters and their world of seagoing dinosaurs, horse-drawn carriages, flying skateboards, and giant robots. Thirteen-year-old Diego Ribera lives in the coastal city of New Chicago on an Earth cataclysmically transformed by the Time Collision. Continents have moved, and the Vastlantic Ocean has overtaken the eastern third of the United States. The Collision brought several periods of time together, and the resulting mixture of animals, people, and technology from many eras has created a politically unstable world. A faction from ancient Rome kidnaps the protagonist's father as part of a violent plot to reverse the Collision, and in the ensuing chaos a pirate ship picks up Diego and three companions. The rest of this sprawling novel follows the newly dubbed Rangers of the Vastlantic as they attempt to rescue the teen's father and defeat the Romans. The writing is less polished than the illustrations, and a character list would have been helpful for readers trying to keep track of the massive cast. While the racial diversity of the main characters is welcome, it's disappointing that the only black female Ranger ends up as the pirate ship's cook while others become a navigator, pilot, and ship's engineer. VERDICT The stunning artwork is the real star here. Sure to be popular with middle school fantasy readers.-Beth Wright Redford, Richmond Elementary School Library, VT

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Starred review from August 21, 2017
In this ambitious adventure set after the catastrophic Time Collision restructured Earth into a world where dinosaurs coexist alongside steam technology and giant robots, four children team up with pirates to rescue their loved ones from marauders bent on destroying society. Thirteen-year-old Diego Ribera, his best friend Petey, streetwise Paige, and Victorian-era Lucy join a last-ditch effort to thwart the forces of the Aeturnum to preserve the only world they’ve ever known, but first they have to learn to work as a group, mastering their respective skills and uncovering the secrets of the mysterious Vanguard. This epic tale from Baltazar, a former art director for Disney and Pixar, is not only wildly imaginative and attention-grabbing, it’s downright beautiful: more than 150 full-color photorealistic art pieces bring the characters and setting to life in a manner suggestive of film storyboards. A series opener that conveys a true sense of wonder and excitement on every page, with a setting and premise that lend themselves to further exploration. Ages 8–12. Agent: Seth Fishman, Gernert Company.

August 1, 2017
The great Time Collision ripped apart time and space and remade it: dinosaurs in the distance, spaceships in the skies, robots, and humans of all eras now inhabit this remixed world. Santiago Ribera is a Pinoy engineer whose inventions are aiding postwar stability in New Chicago, the home he shares with his wife, Siobhan, an Irish fighter pilot and war hero, and their son, Diego, whose otherworldly power begins to make itself known on his 13th birthday. Baltazar's story is a captivating adventure lavishly illustrated with beautiful full-color paintings worth lingering over. Diego is a likable kid who sometimes gets it wrong but makes it right. The women and girls avoid both one-dimensionality and overcompensatory badassery and have emotional depth--for the most part: one of two prominent black characters in the book, Paige, outruns her role as sassy best friend but not by far. None of this nuance is given to the other black main character, Ajax. Not only is he a humble but incredibly strong man over 7 feet tall, but he fought for the Union after escaping enslavement, and he's bought into the dominant American narrative that includes the misapprehension that Paige, a black girl in Chicago, is not fighting systemic racism and has the "freedom to choose a better way"--that she is not "bound to [history]." His earnest articulation of this lesson makes it very hard to overlook the use of two common black character tropes and undermines what is otherwise an exciting new series. Expert illustration and imaginative worldbuilding with unfortunate stereotyping. (Steampunk. 8-12)

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