Review for Noah Zarc: Mammoth Trouble by D. Robert Pease

Noah Zarc: Mammoth Trouble
By D. Robert Pease
Published by Walking Stick Books
Source: Review copy from author (thank you!!)
320 pages

"Noah lives for piloting spaceships through time, dodging killer robots and saving Earth’s animals from extinction. Life couldn’t be better. However, the twelve-year-old time traveler soon learns it could be a whole lot worse. His mom is abducted and taken to thirty-first century Mars; his dad becomes stranded in the Ice Age; and Noah is attacked at every turn by a foe bent on destroying a newly habitable, post-apocalyptic Earth.

Traveling through time in the family’s immense spaceship, Noah, a paraplegic from birth, must somehow care for the thousands of animals on board, while finding a way to rescue his parents. Along the way, he discovers his mother and father aren’t who he thought they were, and there is strength inside him he didn’t know he had."-Goodreads

I throughly enjoy this book, from start to finish it held my interest and kept me entertained. Its  a middle grade book but I think even older audiences would enjoy reading it!

We follow Noah Jr. (his father is also called Noah) as he goes through adventures based in the future. I really liked Noah as the main character. He had a lot of drive in him and even though he was stuck in a wheelchair - he did the best he could all the time. His love for piloting, animals, and his family really create a sense of person.

Now, you're probably wondering, is this a christian thing? Yes, it does have that Noah Ark story going on BUT that is as far as it goes. So NO it is not. The names of the characters, the ship, and what they are doing (saving animals) is as far as it goes. There are no references (besides the tale of Noahs Ark) to God or anything preachy. I was so thankful for that! It made me enjoy it so much! The writing, though more MG, held a quality to it that made it easy to follow and yet described enough to get a mental image of the setting. The actual time travel flew over my head but even the characters don't know how it really works (well except Hamilton) so I didn't feel to bad.

I found myself following the plot/events easily. Some books it is hard to follow because the author jumps around from one idea to the next - not the case with D. Robert Pease. Everything fits and has its place. I must warn readers though - I believe that it is part of a series/trilogy. The ending was exactly what I wanted (I felt very satisfied) but it held it open for more. The world building wasn't great but considering it was MG, I think it definitely works for younger readers.

Overall, I didn't expect to like it as much as I did! I recommend it to readers who enjoy futuristic, science fiction, action, mystery and a general good quality book!

Excerpt:

Fire roared beneath me even as the ever-thinning air grew colder. The thrusters on my boots shuddered. The thermsuit popped and rattled, and I felt sure it would disintegrate before I tore free of Earth’s gravity.
And if it didn’t, my sister would kill me.
The blue sky darkened. I didn’t dare look down. Turning my head could send me careening off course, plummeting toward the surface fifty kilometers below. A blip on my heads-up display beeped. I’d pulled away from the assassin-bots, but I knew they were still there, watching me rocket toward the cold depths of space.
Hamilton had said the suit would never hold up if I left Earth in it, but I figured my big brother just wanted to keep me from trying.
“You’d most likely lose control and burn up on reentry,” he said. “Then we’d have to tell Mom and Dad why their youngest son is nothing but an ash cloud drifting over the Atlantic.”
“Then why’s the suit retrofitted with a second-stage booster?” I asked.
“Because,” my sister Sam said, “someday we might need it in an emergency.”
Well, if outrunning a half-dozen killer robots wasn’t an emergency, I didn’t know what was.
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