Moonlight Robbery - David Barker

Children's author David Barker returns with a new standalone YA heist thriller

This reader first became aware of Barker's output when he wrote adult tilted thrillers around the then impending doom of water as the next valuable commodity, and the thing that wars may well be fought over. His high-thrilled conspiracy thrillers across the Gold trilogy was well told.

Those books at the tale end of this century's first decade may not have connected with as deserving an audience as it should have. Barker then transitioned to young adult fare starting with the dystopian boarding school set mysteries of Pax. Those three books again showed Barker's talent for tight plots and proudly wearing the influences on his sleeve.

The new book, Moonlight Robbery, combines two of Barker's passion - science and space exploration. We meet Max, a young orphan who lives under the stairs of his grumpy Uncle and Aunt in a moon colony. He lives with them following the death of his parents, so far so JK. However, Max is then cast aside by his Uncle and banished or pushed out to the vast of the moon-base he lives on. 

From then on the narrative never lets up on the pacing - Max falls in with the Jetsams, a band of scavengers who live off-the-grid and without the highly trusted wrist tabs that hold people's identities. Max has one so the Jetsams led by Fagin-like Quinten sees the opportunity to use Max to their advantage. Max is entrusted with Art (short for Artemisia), a young girl with a gift for pickpocketing.

Barker has fun with taking the genre of a fish-out-of-water, such as Oliver Twist but putting in new words for our familiar terms. Every time a character messes up, they say 'Craters!' as a sign of self-admonishment. He uses science fiction for the technology, jetpacks from Bond's foray in Moonraker for instance - but while these influences are at times obvious, the keen sense of plotting and control of tone is effective throughout.

When they first meet, Art knows more than Max because she has lived in the slums longer, and Max's naivety gets them into trouble. Later on, though, when Art is captured, it is Max who has to grow up very quickly and with his ability to code and handle technology expertly - there is a shift between them when the damsel is in distress.

At just over 200 pages, this is a speedy read but entertaining nonetheless. A biting read at the present day control of corporations over natural resources but transplanted to the yet uninhabited moon surface. We will be moving to the moon in a few more decades time for sure, and the work of NASA and the recent Artemis launches bode well for that. However, Barker like all good science fiction writers does feel there should be a note of caution before colonising the moon.

Moonlight Robbery is out from Tiny Trees on 17th September on all formats.

My thanks to Tiny Trees for allowing me the opportunity to review and be part of the blog tour on 16th September

Pax and the Secret Swarm

 

Final book in the Pax trilogy by David Barker

David Barker is a prolific writer, whose first published books were about the threat of global warming and the impending threat of water and eventual lack of it in three books that were scientific thrillers.

Following that successful publication run, he has turned his head to young adult fare in the Pax trilogy which has reached its conclusion.

Short sharp books that elicit fond memories of bygone schooldays and the lore of English literature ranging from Tom Brown to Grange Hill with a hint of a wizarding school on top.

The story revolves around the eponymous Pax, an assertive and industrious young boy, who gains admission to the elite school in the hope of becoming an Engineer in New London. This New London is run by a powerful Mayor who has built up new walls around London effectively keeping everyone they do not like out of the capital. 

Pax over the three books disrupts plans by the Mayor to garner more control over his population by way of mind-numbing propaganda and lies about those outside the walls namely the Countryside Alliance. 

Throughout Barkers's work he has always been able to bring an element of real-world truth to his writing as all the best science fiction does; the writing elicits an element of fear of what may be. And with the unsavoury images and stories coming out of America and that countries insatiable desire of total authoritarianism it certainly does ring true. 

Author David Barker 

Pleasingly, Barker knowing his main readers will be young adults he writes with a simpler good versus evil template with Pax and his erstwhile friends the ones wearing capes and flying around doing heroic things with robots, while the bad guys are those that wear masks and hold guns. Again, images all the more familiar nowadays in the days of ICE. 

While this book itself does not hit the heights of the second book in the series in this reader's opinion, the book is a fine straight-shooting end to this thrilling dystopian trilogy.

Pax and the Secret Swarm is out from Tiny Tree Books now on all formats.

My thanks to them for the review copy for an honest review.