Lost Dogs by Garrett Carr

Lost Dogs by Garrett Carr
Buy Lost Dogs by Garrett Carr at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Teens
Reviewer: John Lloyd
Summary: A sterling effort with little problem with its mixture of fantasy and reality, and realistic teenagers combating a potential global arms crime.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 240	Date: November 2010
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Books
ISBN: 978-1847385994
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Some extraordinary children are to be found in the Northern Irish port-town of Hardglass. One, Akeem, has in fact just arrived - a stowaway on a cargo ship. Elsewhere, friends Andrew and Ewan are waiting to see the result of Ewan's father's trial for being a weapons dealer. While their friend May is newly residing at a most unusual school, one whose pupils have talents to match her singular one of sensing and empathising with the thoughts of animals. It's a gang of people brought together in a natural, realistic way, with some fantastic factors to their lives that are only going to get heightened. For said weapons, allegedly going on their way to be decommissioned, will soon be on the same cargo boat Akeem has just left - and they're weapons from the darker side of horror...

This is quite an extraordinary mix of reality and genre fantasy fiction for the 9-13s. It's clearly an Irish setting, due to some phonetic dialogue, a Catholic/Protestant divide and mentions of the Peace Process. But the awkward name Hardglass only hides a welter of invention, from the X-Men lite of May's new friends (here given a nice religious twist and not the old one of accepting differences in others), to the truths the gang are going to encounter.

Luckily, Garrett Carr can switch from the fantastical to the real easily enough, abetted by his characters having being fully realised. They're smart, determined, doggedly individual, using mobile phones and the inquisitiveness of young teenagers to see this adventure through. Both sides to the story's telling allow Carr to put them in a very modern, recognisable world, and make great salient points about global arms and other trades.

I have to mention other skills this author proves he has under his belt. Principal among them is pace, for this book never flags, is brisk or more throughout, and with a padding-free nature never outstays its welcome. Related to that is the fact that the longer chapters - all of, ooh, ten pages, more often than not feature a sterling visual experience for the reader, from the great opening, featuring Akeem's deliverance, on. When we see the weapons in action halfway through it's perfectly easy to see how much spectacle some Hollywood version would give.

This all told came right out of the leftfield to hit my pile of review books, and I'm not just saying that to mean Northern Ireland. You will be hard put to see the modern society's woes so reasonably put - as opposed to bluntly shoe-horned - into such a fantasy book, and one with all the snappy concision, characterisation and creativity we could reasonably wish for. The inclusion too of at least a pair of 'oh, so THAT'S what all that was in aid of' reveals, means this has scope to entertain far beyond its target age bracket.

What's more, this works without reading the author's debut, The Badness of Ballydog, and never seems like the middle book in a trilogy.

I must thank the kind Simon and Schuster people for my copy.

A further school for the talented, such as mentioned here, can be found in the series including Going to Ground: Shapeshifter Book 3 by Ali Sparkes, with a second forming from the franchise opening that is Meteorite Strike by A G Taylor. For a fictional Garrett, I loved Boot Camp by Todd Strasser.

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You can read more book reviews or buy Lost Dogs by Garrett Carr at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Lost Dogs by Garrett Carr at Amazon.com.

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