Review by Jess Mountifield for "Kings of the World" by Matt Pike

Story Overview:

The galaxy is on the brink of war and only four dysfunctional, hormone-driven teenagers from Earth stand in its way. God help us all.

It didn’t take Cooper long to come to the conclusion that space sucks. It seems everyone there despises humans, everything’s too far away and the travel makes you heave. Worse still, Cooper’s stuck there with his best mate, The Ginge – who can’t tell where games end and reality begins - and two other former classmates who want to beat the crap out of him.

Oh yeah, and people, well… alien people are trying to kill them.

Space does have some good points. The boys can have anything they wish for, all they have to do is ask it … or think it. Plus they are now, somehow, Earth’s leaders - as in, more important than the President of the USA.

If Cooper can only stop the other boys from gorging on their every desire, chasing the most human looking alien women and fighting each other he might convince everyone humans aren’t the galactic equivalent of white trash.

But things are about to get a whole lot worse. War looms and Cooper and his inept sidekicks are caught in the middle. They, the Earth and the Galaxy will never be the same again.

Cover: 19/20

Love the cover for this book. Cute, quirky, geeky and a perfect portrayal of the mood of this book. Only drawback is that the titles a little difficult to read on the smaller sizes of cover.

Characters: 18/20

Only a couple of pages in and I was in love with the main character Cooper. The author had really got the teenage mindset down perfectly. Very occasionally some of the repetitiveness of the other character's flaws annoyed me but it was really only occasionally and for the most part they were perfect too.

I also really liked how big the alien world felt with all the many different aliens from all sorts of different planets. All of them were very well thought through.

Storyline: 16/20

I found the storyline a little stretched at times, but it was more minor things and mostly to do with the timeline. After all the time the boys were away from earth I'd have thought they'd have made a bit more progress in terms of trade and a few other things that I don't want to mention to not spoil the book but I liked the general storyline and how it built to the final events.

Style: 20/20

The style was almost spot on and was very quirky, cute and felt very much like I was reading a teenagers life. Really really liked the style and the battle scenes were very well done. Can't fault the style at all

Spelling and Grammar: 15/20

Only noticed a handful of mistakes so only knocked off a point for that but I did get confused a few times when the story changed scene and there was no break in the text or *** to mark that we were somewhere else or following someone else's thoughts. I really would have appreciated that and it's the only way this book really let me down at all. It's not technically a spelling or grammar issue but it's formatting so I figured it was best here.

Conclusion: 88/100

Great book with a fantastic cast of teenage boys and varied amazing aliens. I laughed aloud at several points and thoroughly enjoyed the whole read. I will definitely be picking up the sequel.

Buy Kings of the World from Amazon.com Buy Kings of the World from Amazon.co.uk