"The Incredible Space Raiders (From Space!)" by Wesley King

Had this book been simply titled The Incredible Space Raiders, I would probably not have picked it up. The little "From space!" subtitle elevated it from "boring generic title" to "hilarious". TISR sounds like it takes itself seriously (actually, a book titled straight TISR instead of that just being an acronym for The Incredible Space Raiders goes back to being a reasonably cool title again), but TISR(FS!) is more self-aware-ly funny.

(Now, granted, this book is actually the other kind of deconstruction of the "kids on a space adventure!" genre. Instead of the deconstruction-to-hilarity--better known as "parody"--it's the deconstruction-to-this-is-actually-not-such-a-good-idea. But it's a good enough book of the second kind that I didn't mind when it turned out not to be the first kind.)

And (please read this in Galadriel's voice from the LOTR movies) some things happened that the mouse did not expect. </galadrielvoice> Namely some plot twists. My not seeing a plot twist coming in middle-grade fiction is a rare occurrence anymore, so I was pleasantly surprised. Which necessitates my being surprised at all, and again, rare occurrence.

This one falls fairly high on what I'm beginning to call the Sliding Scale of Why We're Trusting Kids With This. |And it does it twice, with the reason you get at the beginning and the real reason|. I may do a post sometime on the SSoWWTKWT, though I don't want to overwhelm the blog's main content (i.e. me rambling about books) with trope reviews.

When I was reading it, this book seemed like it was pasting funny and whimsical over serious story, rather than being (as I expected) funny and whimsical all the way through. |Which I think is actually intentional, as that's what happened in-universe as well in order to keep the kids from getting skeptical and rebelling during the long spaceship journey to who-knows-where.|

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A serious sort of E10+ for fight scenes.

4 stars.

(Endnote: The |fake| plot of the book is about sending a bunch of kids in a spaceship to fight the Entirely Evil Things [yes that's their actual name] that scientists have discovered in space.)