The Frankenstein Factory
The Chaos Connection
Spy High Episode I & II
By A J Butcher  

     So far Atom, Time Warner's new teenage range of novels, has offered some impressive stuff and if you don't believe me, check out the Dangerous Angels series by Francesca Lia Block (also reviewed on this site). Here is the latest new series about the exclusive Deveraux College for gifted students-no mere school for geniuses, but a training ground for spies who are going to guard the world from some desperate criminals when they graduate, and in some cases even before! It centers around the six members of Bond Team who are each talented in their own way but have their own very different problems and are having troubling bonding with each other. Maybe a little field experience might help them pull together and work as a team…

     A. J. Butcher sets the scene for a bleak and disturbingly plausible world of the future in the first few pages and gives his readers six totally different protagonists to explore it. I assume that in each of the six books the team will work a bit closer together and the more peripheral characters will feature larger. To date, Lori could do with some feminist literature to read and Eddie seems too far behind the rest of the group to be useful, but perhaps it is early days yet! They are gripping adventure stories, with plots that suffer a little from a lack of originality but are redeemed by the well-realized setting and a genuinely believable backdrop of six young people with their own issues trying to get to know each other and themselves. Well worth a look.