I'm very tempted to give this book five stars, but I'm not sure I can give a young adult audio-book like this such a high rating.

Eleven CDs kept me entertained while I was on the road for work this week. Matthew managed to keep me wide awake despite the long drives. On many occasions I found myself holding my breath and gripping the steering wheel, hoping that Jason and The Bug were okay.

Hover Car Racer is essentially Matthew Reilly for tweens and teens. He makes sure that every teen angst and tragedy befalls Jason Chaser, to the point that you hate all the bad guys for being so mean. Yes, I'm probably too old to be calling characters meany-pies.

This isn't really a book for adults, despite how much I enjoyed it. My wife found it a little too childish in language use for her liking, were I was able to ignore that issue, as the pace rocketed along. As such, give this to any young boys you have in your family, especially if they aren't big readers. Hover Car Racer is likely to be one of those books that hooks kids on reading. ( )

Ah, I read this book years ago for a book club competition in high school!

It's not a book I would've picked up but I enjoyed reading it nonetheless. I appreciated the writing and I found it an easy read. I did like that the author included a character who seems somewhat on the ASD spectrum but I seem to remember not liking the fact that there weren't any particularly memorable female characters apart from one, Piper.

Even though I enjoyed it, I haven't picked up any of Reilly's writing since, and I just feel like he writes books that don't seem to grab me as much. While I enjoy reading them, I never really go for them if I'm in a bookshop.

But that's just me! ( )

My son read this in two days and loved it so decided to give it a go. It was great!! Fast paced and action-packed (although a bit far-fetched at times), I found it hard to put down. Absolutely loved the Bug!! ( )

Set sometime in the future.15 year old Jason Chaser and his younger brother, Bug, are into hover car racing. These formula 1 type racing cars hover on air above the surface. They are noticed at an amateur event and invited to attend the prestigious International Race School, which has taken over the whole of Tasmania. Jason is working against the odds; he is the youngest member in the school, he’s adopted and comes from a poor family and there are people out to make sure he doesn’t win. Jason never gives up, and ends up competing against the world’s best.
Fast moving. Action packed. Includes diagrams ( )

Jason Chaser, hover car racer (it is rather tasteless alliteration, is it not?) gets his chance to join the premier hover-car racing school to prove his mettle against a world-wide crop of rising stars. Racing school is where up-and-coming racers, like Jason, get to learn the intricate details of racing. And race hover cars, too. However, we only really get to read the parts where they race eachother in hover-cars.

Matthew Reilly's writing isn't really any different to any other book he's done. Punctuation marks and capitalisation abound, and, like his other books, has a fairly simple and unchallenging vocabulary. And, as with all of Reilly's books, there are plenty of diagrams to depict where the action occurs - this time, on various race tracks. Although the grey colour scheme for these pictures could have been done better, all of the diagrams are re-produced in their original colours (Hover Car Racer was originally an online release), for the middle section of the book, which is quite neat.

As to the plot of the story, it is quite cliched, and you've probably read it in a plethora of young adult stories. Young, smart kid against bigger, tougher, but less intelligent, counterparts. Lessons are learnt about friendship, and teamwork and other such things. The racing part of the story is equally cliched - the rivals who play unfairly, overcoming the odds to win the important races, and other such cliches.

Character development rarely passes beyond broad sketches, either.

I'm sorry if I spoiled it all, but there is really little doubt as to the results of what is going to happen before it does happen. Trom all that I've said, it sounds like I am going to give "Hover Car Racer" quite a low rating.

But I'm not.

There's one thing that I haven't mentioned yet that largely manages to trump all that. I had a lot of fun reading "Hover Car Racer". Although I knew the destination of where the story was going to go, I didn't know what would happen in the journey there (well, I didn't the first time I read it), and it was certainly fun finding out. Preposterous fun, certainly, but fun nonetheless.

Yes, it is cliched, and rather simply written. Yes, it is preposterous. It is also, in spite of this (or perhaps because of this) quite a fun read. ( )