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A review by the_fabric_of_words
Ambassador by William Alexander
5.0
We discovered William Alexander's fantasy middle grade work, his medieval faire-setting A Festival of Ghosts and A Properly Unhaunted Place, a few years ago and read and reviewed them for my annual December, Review-a-Day Countdown to the Holiday.
I'd been meaning to read more of his middle grade books (there are a bunch!) and came across this sci-fi duology. I passed them along to my teen son, who also loved them.
They really do read like one book that got broken into two for middle-grade reader expectations of length. The first is 222 pages, and clearly ends unresolved. In fact, by the end, it feels like it's just getting started. While the second book is a bit longer, 264 pages, and wraps up everything started in book one. I'd recommend reading one right after the other with no pause between them.
Eleven-year-old Gabe Fuentes starts the summer before 6th grade on the neighborhood park playground, watching his younger siblings, and learns his best friend, Frankie, won't be able to spend it with him. Earlier, the boys set off a "rocket" made from a metal pipe, instead of cardboard (can anyone say pipe-bomb?), and after the damage, which Gabe took the blame for, Frankie's mom is shipping him off to his father's house in Califas.
At the same time, "The Envoy," a sort of purple blob that had been hanging out on an abandoned USSR-era clandestine moon base, has built a genuine rocket and launched itself back to Earth to select another Ambassador to speak for Terra, Earth.
It lands in the park lake and spots Gabe, choosing him to be the next Ambassador. When it shows itself to Gabe, he takes the news equanimously, listening to its explanation why it chose a child to be its plenipotentiary for Earth with a marked lack of panic or disbelief.
According to the Envoy, which speaks in Gabe's mother's voice, "Adults of most species find it more difficult to communicate with anyone outside their arbitrary circle -- or even recognize that anybody exists outside it. So ambassadors are always young. Always."
The Envoy has repurposed the duplex owner's washing machine to properly "entangle" Gabe's being and get him, while he dreams, to the Chancery, where ambassadors of all the existing species hang out and "play" and negotiate.
The Envoy spotted a fleet of ships in our solar system's asteroid belt, and Gabe has to go to the Chancery and figure out who may be stealing water from us (humans).
It's not long before someone tries to kill him, sucking the entanglement device (the repurposed washing machine) and the basement and first floor of the duplex through a black hole. At the same time, Gabe's father runs a stop sign. Or, at least the patrol officer who stops him claims he ran a stop sign, and once Gabe's dad admits he has no "papers" to be in the US legally, he's carted off to an ICE detention facility. Along with his mother. He learns his older sister, Lupe, was also not born in the US.
While both his parents are from Mexico, originally, Gabe's mother came legally on a visa while his father got caught trying to enter when he was very young and was deported, which means Gabe's dad will be shipped back to Mexico immediately, while his mother is given a hearing.
But there's another twist: Frankie's house used to be a stop on the Underground Railroad. The Fuentes family's evacuation plan is to hide out there, in case of detection.
Gabe figures he can't hide out with his family in his best-friend's hideaway because someone's trying to kill him...and when he slips out, and a laser fires in the exact spot where he'd just been standing, he knows leaving is the only safe thing to do.
With the Envoy's help, and some very clever reasoning on his part, he'll physically out-run the assassins' attempts to kill him while walking a fine-line between our nearest galactic neighbors and a species known for its desire to exterminate all life in the galaxy, called the Outlast.
It's a great read, and in some ways is a very typical middle grade book. There's a scene when Gabe has to pee in space, zero-gravity, that had all of us laughing and kinda grossed-out at the same time.
A fun way to start your summer reading!
Visit my blog for more great middle grade book recommendations, free teaching materials and fiction writing tips: https://amb.mystrikingly.com/
I'd been meaning to read more of his middle grade books (there are a bunch!) and came across this sci-fi duology. I passed them along to my teen son, who also loved them.
They really do read like one book that got broken into two for middle-grade reader expectations of length. The first is 222 pages, and clearly ends unresolved. In fact, by the end, it feels like it's just getting started. While the second book is a bit longer, 264 pages, and wraps up everything started in book one. I'd recommend reading one right after the other with no pause between them.
Eleven-year-old Gabe Fuentes starts the summer before 6th grade on the neighborhood park playground, watching his younger siblings, and learns his best friend, Frankie, won't be able to spend it with him. Earlier, the boys set off a "rocket" made from a metal pipe, instead of cardboard (can anyone say pipe-bomb?), and after the damage, which Gabe took the blame for, Frankie's mom is shipping him off to his father's house in Califas.
At the same time, "The Envoy," a sort of purple blob that had been hanging out on an abandoned USSR-era clandestine moon base, has built a genuine rocket and launched itself back to Earth to select another Ambassador to speak for Terra, Earth.
It lands in the park lake and spots Gabe, choosing him to be the next Ambassador. When it shows itself to Gabe, he takes the news equanimously, listening to its explanation why it chose a child to be its plenipotentiary for Earth with a marked lack of panic or disbelief.
According to the Envoy, which speaks in Gabe's mother's voice, "Adults of most species find it more difficult to communicate with anyone outside their arbitrary circle -- or even recognize that anybody exists outside it. So ambassadors are always young. Always."
The Envoy has repurposed the duplex owner's washing machine to properly "entangle" Gabe's being and get him, while he dreams, to the Chancery, where ambassadors of all the existing species hang out and "play" and negotiate.
The Envoy spotted a fleet of ships in our solar system's asteroid belt, and Gabe has to go to the Chancery and figure out who may be stealing water from us (humans).
It's not long before someone tries to kill him, sucking the entanglement device (the repurposed washing machine) and the basement and first floor of the duplex through a black hole. At the same time, Gabe's father runs a stop sign. Or, at least the patrol officer who stops him claims he ran a stop sign, and once Gabe's dad admits he has no "papers" to be in the US legally, he's carted off to an ICE detention facility. Along with his mother. He learns his older sister, Lupe, was also not born in the US.
While both his parents are from Mexico, originally, Gabe's mother came legally on a visa while his father got caught trying to enter when he was very young and was deported, which means Gabe's dad will be shipped back to Mexico immediately, while his mother is given a hearing.
But there's another twist: Frankie's house used to be a stop on the Underground Railroad. The Fuentes family's evacuation plan is to hide out there, in case of detection.
Gabe figures he can't hide out with his family in his best-friend's hideaway because someone's trying to kill him...and when he slips out, and a laser fires in the exact spot where he'd just been standing, he knows leaving is the only safe thing to do.
With the Envoy's help, and some very clever reasoning on his part, he'll physically out-run the assassins' attempts to kill him while walking a fine-line between our nearest galactic neighbors and a species known for its desire to exterminate all life in the galaxy, called the Outlast.
It's a great read, and in some ways is a very typical middle grade book. There's a scene when Gabe has to pee in space, zero-gravity, that had all of us laughing and kinda grossed-out at the same time.
A fun way to start your summer reading!
Visit my blog for more great middle grade book recommendations, free teaching materials and fiction writing tips: https://amb.mystrikingly.com/