Yzabel / February 19, 2015

Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Blew Up The Moon, by Richard Roberts

Genre: middle-grade, science-fiction, superhero action-adventure
Publisher: Curiosity Quills Press
Date of Publication: January 29, 2015
Cover Artist: Ricky Gunawan

About Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Blew Up The Moon:

Supervillains do not merely play hooky.
True, coming back to school after a month spent fighting – and defeating – adult superheroes is a bit of a comedown for the Inscrutable Machine.  When offered the chance to skip school in the most dramatic way possible, Penelope Akk can’t resist. With the help of a giant spider and mysterious red goo, she builds a spaceship and flies to Jupiter.
Mutant goats.
Secret human colonies.
A war between three alien races with humanity as the prize.
Robot overlords and evil plots.
Penny and her friends find all this and more on Jupiter’s moons, but what they don’t find are any heroes to save the day. Fortunately, they have an angry eleven year old and a whole lot of mad science…

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Review:

My rating: [rating=3]

I read the first installment of this series, Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m A Supervillain, last year, and thought it was a pretty good novel. So, of course, I couldn’t pass up on the invitation to read the second one.

I found it weaker, though I still liked it. It contains a lot of good ideas and concepts, and it’s perfect if looking for a wild adventure in space, with alien technology and bio-weapons, lost space stations hidden on asteroids, and a steampunkish flavour to boot. Those parts were highly amusing, in terms of Weird Science, and Penny’s power developed in a way that clearly forced her to rethink a few things and decide whether she wanted to go (too) far or stop while it was still time. Archimedes, for instance, was both fascinating and creepy in its uses and in the possibilities it introduced.

Remmy’s character, too, was an interesting counterpoint to Penny: two girls with similar powers, with a basis for strong friendship, but also for jealousy and competition. I could se where Remmy came from, why she eacted the way she did, out of stubborness more thananything else, probably… but then, she’s also only eleven. I’d certainly like to see her appear again later in the series, if only for a chance to see how that relationship could develop if given more time and more distance.

On the other hand, the fast-paced plot sometimes left me dangling, as I wondered “wait, when did this character walk into the room?” or “why aren’t they paying more attention to the fct that [character X] has basically done a huge mistake?” It made me feel like the story carried the characters where they needed to be, but not always with a clear reason.

Two things I regret:

– The somewhat lackluster presence of Claire and Ray. Their antics are funny, and they make good sidekicks. However, at the end of the first novel, we had been given more to see about Ray, in particular, and I had hoped this arc, among others, would be explored. However, apart from playing sidekicks, those two didn’t really get much development.

– The very feeble involvement of Penny’s parents and other adults (although I laughed at the Audit’s interpretation of the situation, because… it did make sense, in a “I’m a parent who cannot imagine my daughter is evil, so I’ll unconsciously find another solution”). In the first book, I really liked the “please don’t tell my parents…” concept, and how the Inscrutable Machine had to go to various ends to hide their identity, make people think they weren’t Penelope, Claire and Ray. Here, since most of the story unfolds in space, the pressure of not being discovered was much less a problem (even though Penny’s realisation at the end—how to make a Hero appear—gives me good hopes for the next installment’s potential plot).

In general, it is still a pleasant story to read, though its predecessor will remain higher on my list.

About Richard Roberts:

Richard Roberts has fit into only one category in his entire life, and that is ‘writer’, but as a writer he’d throw himself out of his own books for being a cliche.
He’s had the classic wandering employment history – degree in entomology, worked in health care, been an administrator and labored for years in the front lines of fast food. He’s had the appropriate really weird jobs, like breeding tarantulas and translating English to English for Japanese television. He wears all black, all the time, is manic-depressive, and has a creepy laugh.
He’s also followed the classic writer’s path, the pink slips, the anthology submissions, the desperate scrounging to learn how an ever-changing system works. He’s been writing from childhood, and had the appropriate horrible relationships that damaged his self-confidence for years. Then out of nowhere Curiosity Quills Press demanded he give them his books, and here he is.
As for what he writes, Richard loves children and the gothic aesthetic. Most everything he writes will involve one or the other, and occasionally both. His fantasy is heavily influenced by folk tales, fairy tales, and mythology, and he likes to make the old new again. In particular, he loves to pull his readers into strange characters with strange lives, and his heroes are rarely heroic.

Find Richard Roberts Online:

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