The Six by Mark Alpert - OPTIONAL

Alpert, Mark The Six, 368 pages.  Sourcebooks Fire, 2015.  $17.  Language: PG; Mature Content: G; Violence: PG (machines fighting machines)

Ever since Adam was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, his father, the super smart inventor/computer expert, has been looking for a way to Adam enjoy a better life.  In order to fund his project, however, Adam’s father has contracted with the military.  When Adam’s father also inadvertently creates Sigma, a computer program hellbent on taking over the world (think Avengers: Age of Ultron - and hope that this author never gets sued), the military stuffs (downloads) Adam and a few other teens with major medical problems into the mechanical bodies that have been built for them.  Now they have very little time to learn how to uses these new bodies, learn to trust each other, and hunt down Sigma and destroy it before it destroys them.  

I found this book to be seriously flawed.  None of its parts are original thinking and the writing isn’t compelling enough to overlook the lack of originality.  The only saving grace is that this will be interesting to that subset of students who adore books with LOTS of fighting, because there really is A LOT of it.

MS - OPTIONAL.  Cindy, Library Teacher