Rusthead

Stand by for taut writing punctuated by regular explosions – Ross MacKenzie is back and once again in peak form. This time two fourteen-year-old lads, Kol and Sully, find themselves on a mission to free the galaxy from the oppressive rule of the robotic Reaper Empire. On their side they have Solene, the ice-cold commander of the spaceship Rose, which helpfully also possesses human understanding. 

Happy to leave behind their former lives as rustheads – the name given to treasure hunters searching for scrap on their own barren planet – the boys join Solene on a mission to rid the galaxy of the robotic Reaper Empire now in grim control. With Solene backing away from her former threat to snap the two boys’ spines and throw them out of the air lock, the main action then gets under way.

Maintaining perpetual tension is always a challenge, but this author’s almost demonic energies are equal to the task. In prose that constantly crackles and pops, the two boys exchange laconic sides after surviving multiple dangers that would surely have eventually slayed lesser mortals. 

Written with the aim of supporting busy teachers with truly popular learning resources, it is easy to imagine that many young readers, perhaps more male than female, will fall on this novel, swept away by its all-consuming energy and general absence of anything like reflection. 

Fine writing it is not, but continually exciting it certainly is. Saving the Star System, after all, might be considered enough in itself to bother about occasional prose over-kill. Already a multi award-winning author, Ross MacKenzie in this current story keeps up the standards he has achieved in the past while also promising more to come in the same vein in the future.