Matt Myklusch lives in New Jersey with his wife and two sons.
The Secret War (Jack Blank Adventure Series #2)
Paperback
(Reprint)
- ISBN-13: 9781416995654
- Publisher: Aladdin
- Publication date: 06/26/2012
- Series: A Jack Blank Adventure Series , #2
- Edition description: Reprint
- Pages: 560
- Product dimensions: 5.26(w) x 7.48(h) x 1.54(d)
- Age Range: 8 - 12 Years
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Picking up a year after the events of Jack Blank and the Imagine Nation, Jack and his fellow students are now well into their School of Thought training and are "sidekicking" for official, card-carrying super heroes. But, even though Jack feels more at home in the Imagine Nation, he’s still hiding secrets from his friends Skerren and Allegra, both about his shocking connection to their enemy Revile and about his “Top Secret” school assignment, which involves investigating the Rüstov computer virus that affects the Mechas. Jack is busy trying to find out how far the Rüstov sleeper virus has spread, working to find a cure, and striving to avoid the dire future that Revile warned him about. Meanwhile, Jonas Smart is working just as hard to discover what Jack is hiding from everyone. When a rogue Secreteerthe protectors of secrets of inhabitants of the Imagine Nationstarts selling secrets to the highest bidder, Smart is ready and waiting. Jack knows that if Smart finds out the truth about him and Revile, he’s as good as dead. When Jack discovers that the Secreteer causing all this trouble also has information about his father, the distractions really start piling up. If Jack is going to help prevent a second Rüstov invasion, keep Smart from discovering his secrets, and find out what a shadowy, half-mad Secreteer knows about his long-lost father, he'll need to learn to trust his friends, and to find the true path toward becoming a hero himself.
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Library Media Connection
Myklusch squanders much of the promise of series opener Jack Blank and the Imagine Nation (2010) with this unwieldy middle volume.
Intercepted messages indicate the mysterious Rüstov will spring some nefarious surprise upon the Imagine Nation (a land populated by "superheroes, ninjas, androids, and aliens") in just five days, putting a deadline on young Jack's efforts to counter the invader's insidious computer virus. Some traces of the inspired whimsy that animated the earlier episode remain: Jack invents "Nuclear Knuckles" to crank up his fighting prowess for instance, and he encounters Lorem Ipsum, a texting teenaged superhero whose power compels her victims to speak only faux-Latin gibberish. Neither they nor occasional bursts of comics-style hyperviolence are enough to rev up a labored, wandering plot that eventually culminates in a climax featuring lots of standing around for talky explanations and exchanges. (An explosive closing twist is described only in retrospect.) The fluid prose style may carry patient readers through, though familiarity with the first volume is a must; even veterans may need reminders of Jack's background, the significance of a certain major character who turns out to have been only temporarily killed off in the previous episode or even why the Rüstov are considered a threat. Myklusch promises a closing, or at least a next, volume in 2012.
The wheels are grinding, but they haven't quite fallen off yet. (Fantasy. 11-13)