Voyage to Nowhere by D.S. Weissman - NO

Weissman, D.S. Voyage to Nowhere (Deep Freeze 1), 208 pages.  Epic Press, 2017.  $19.  Language: PG (24 swears, 0 ‘f’); Mature Content: PG (peeing); Violence: PG-13 (bullying, some blood, undescribed death).

James, 15, has lived in the orphanage for ten, ever since the day he woke up and found that his parents had left and left him behind.  The children at the home are a family of sorts, even trying to look after each other when the day comes that they have to abandon their home when the world-wide freezing finally reaches San Diego.

Frankly, I am baffled by this book.  The cover and the blurb promise a book about an abandoned cruise ship and the kids escaping the freezing world.  In reality, the boat doesn’t come into play until page 199.  The rest of the book goes back and forth between kids’ arrivals in the home and the present-day, probably as a device to introduce us and hopefully invest us in the characters – it doesn’t work.  This feels like its supposed to be a hi/lo reader, but the vocabulary is weirdly erratic – throwing a higher level vocab word in occasionally (what 5-year-old uses the word emanate?).  There are six books in the series and they have already all been printed, so maybe the author felt that they had plenty of space to use the entire first book for character introductions, but that was a very bad call.  I wish they had dived into the action first and then brought us up to date on the characters, but that probably wouldn’t have saved this book either.  I forgot to mention – this book is only available in a library bound format.  It should have only ever been published in paperback.

NOT RECOMMENDED.  Cindy, Library Teacher