Ned Rust

I paid $19.99 for the hardback (published by Hachette Book Group), a sum the average teen would be hard-pressed to part with for a book that didn’t also slide neatly into the slot of his Wii.
As a woman squarely in middle-age (depending on how you calculate my potential life-span), I am clearly not the target audience for this testosterone-fueled romp, but I liked it nonetheless. Each short chapter ended in a mini-cliffhanger that kept me turning the page, much like a snowball rolling down show more a steep slope, picking up whatever is in its path and flinging bits of detritus to the wind.
If I were a teenaged boy, I’d eat this stuff up, assuming my usual diet was filled with stomach-turning descriptions of slimy aliens and the nasty ways they kill and devour people. It almost felt like I was reading the script for a television show on Nickelodeon, you know, except for the graphic violence. Although, given the average Spongebob episode, even the violence isn’t that bad—for a teen thoroughly inured to it, as I suspect most these days are.
This is the second in the Daniel X series (I haven’t read the first). I had a hard time pegging the exact target-age the authors were going for, especially after the huge, blobby fish-alien antagonist has impregnated all the unfortunate women in a small American town with its wriggling tadpoles. It’s meant to be horrific in a humorous way, and it is. Only—as the mother of a young boy who is an advanced reader—the objectification of these zombified pregnant gals gave me a twinge of concern if the reader happened to be, say, a fifth-grader who isn’t even clear on how babies are made. I’m not here to start a debate on what’s appropriate in a young adult novel. In this book, people are forced to carry alien progeny, and people die hideously; it’s all in good fun.
As I continued reading, I found myself wondering: if Daniel has the imaginary power to point his finger with his thumb cocked like a gun and blow a hole a mile deep into the ground, turn himself into a mosquito, or teleport himself away from danger, where’s the room for a plot to even develop? He should be able to breeze in and out, enemies smoking in a burnt-out crater behind him—but no. Daniel wants to know what the bad guys are up to, and his snooping ways let the creepy-crawlies get the jump on him. This allows for moments in the storyline where the reader is *almost* tense at the outcome (if I’m a thirteen year old boy, then I probably *am* tense). Will Daniel succeed? Will his imaginary friends get hurt or killed, and if they do, how long until he simply brings them back to “life?” The story is told in first-person point of view in Daniel’s voice, and I kind of felt like he wasn’t being honest with the reader. He’s got the power to do virtually anything with his mind. He’s young and his powers are just developing, but does he know he’s going to win; is he just playing with the bad guys like a cat toys with a cricket? Of course, his parents were killed by the topmost baddie on the most-wanted aliens list when Daniel was three, but we don’t know (maybe the first book answers this question) if his parents had the same powers as he does. If so, then Daniel’s mom-and-dad-slaying nemesis would have to be invincible indeed, and the reader can assume Daniel and this super-villain will definitely clash in a sequel near you.
Sprinkled throughout the narrative are some not-so-hidden messages for the reader, as if the authors couldn’t resist tossing in a few political opinions about our broken school systems (what better platform than a bunch of pre-voting adolescents?) These messages are not preachy; on the contrary, they are quite amusing, like when Daniel’s imagined mother provides the school with sarcastic lists of why he’ll be absent on successive days (“Dr. I. M. Trubbell is assessing the state of his bureaucratic mumbo jumbo allergy.”)
All-in-all, Daniel X qualifies as a “good” read in my book, but it’s probably an “awesome” read to its target audience, red-blooded teenage boys who’d like nothing better than to be like Daniel; whipping out the biggest gun, smearing alien guts all over the place, getting the coolest, prettiest girl—anything he imagines.

(Review originally posted to Booksquawk) show less

Wow. This was bad. I'm a fan of the first book, but this one was horrible. The humor was exceptionally juvenile and the big-bad's evil plan is to impregnate the women of Earth with his offspring (which he succeeds at with a few hundred/thousand women) and to eat the liquified remains of murdered humans (also a partial success). It's sickening and extremely inappropriate for the intended demographic (there're few demographics forced impregnation is appropriate for).

Daniel X is a teen-age alien hunter with some special powers of his own. He rides a motorbike and can do wheelies on his front tire. He has four imaginary friends, but unlike most kids, he can materialize them and they often help him out when he needs help, or just keep him company when he needs company.

The town of Holliswood is being taken over by aliens - from outer-space. These particular aliens are able to manipulate the radio waves, and t.v. stations to control humans. They also like to show more eat humans, after they make them dance around, filming them for entertainment. The head alien is a director. Even though there are some horrific things that happen to humans, the way it's written it's not very graphic or gross. Most teens have watched plenty of movies and shows that contain much worse than is shown in this book.

Daniel X needs to find a way to stop the aliens from taking over the town, and eventually the whole world for the purpose of filming, eating and using the world and it's inhabitants as entertainment for the rest of the universe. But the alien in charge of this epic project, (alien no. 5) seems to always be one step ahead of Daniel X, and in fact is planning to use Daniel in the finale of the series that he's filming. Daniel X meets a young girl and her strange parents. He is has quite a challenge solving this crisis, things go wrong but he perseveres.

I found the narrative of this book interesting, and the dialogue between characters was pretty good. There's some snarky dialogue between aliens and Daniel X, and intelligent dialogue between Daniel X and his friends/family. Though gross things are happening, there isn't over the top descriptions, but there is enough to keep a teen or tween interested in the story. Daniel X also is not a do it yourself type of hero, he takes advice and help from his friends...although they are a product of his imagination. Maybe because it's written from the pov of a teenage boy, one who has been hunting aliens, but there doesn't seem to be much to his personality - there's a little history we learn as we read, and little things he quips. He seems to care about animals and humans. It's just not very in depth - the presenting of his personality.

This was a cute, light/horror sci-fi book. The only thing that kind of got to me, was more the set up of the book. There are 91 chapters in this 251 page book. How can that be, do you wonder? most of these chapters are two pages long. As in half of one page (the beginning of the chapter) and half or a little over half of the second page (that would be the ending of this epic chapter). So really, I believe this book could have been condensed into 125 pages (approximately). I don't know if the authors meant for the book to be set up this way as a dramatic way of separating scenes, or if this was done to "flesh out" the book. There were quite a few of the 2-page chapters that could have been combined. A few of the chapters were really a continuation of the previous chapter. That's my only complaint of the book, and it's not anything to do with content or writing talent.

Overall this is a entertaining book, a light read even with the horror aspects. show less

I know a lot of adults probably haven't read the Daniel X books as they are for young readers but I find them quite entertaining. They're very light reads you can read in a just a few days. It took a lot of imagination to come up with all the gadgets and story twists. Pure escapism! No serious minded people allowed.