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Mindwarp #8
Face the Fear
A story of spooky and supernatural proportions is set in a horror-filled future world beset by such elements as nuclear radiation, perpetual earthquakes, mutants, giant rats, and the evil Omegas. Original.
144 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 18, 2024
This installment of the 90s middle-grade Mindwarp series moves the larger story forward, but as the second volume in a row to take place entirely in the dystopian future, it doesn't feel especially distinctive. There's less worldbuilding on display too, with the majority of the plot concerning the superpowered teenage protagonists sneaking into the enemy's base to plant a bomb, rescue their friends, and hijack the time machine to return to their present. Slaughtering the Omegas en masse feels like a pretty major escalation of the stakes, since the heroes had previously only killed them individually in desperate self-defense, but as with the morality in having Ashley use her mitosis to create sacrificial clones of herself, it doesn't really get examined or debated much here. I can't help but compare this unfavorably to similar developments in K. A. Applegate's Animorphs, which would have given rise to plenty of angst, guilt, and dread over the lack of an easy answer.
(It's also wild that both cases do have everyday American teens carry out what any reasonable observer would have to call acts of terrorism, and that this novel in particular seems to blithely endorse the strategy. For a title that came out in 1998, one wonders how a delay of only a few years to post-9/11 might have impacted that storyline.)
I'm disappointed by the poor follow-through, which extends to the overall goal that the kids are pursuing at this point. Are they trying to get home just to resume their regular lives, or is there something they can do back there to avert this timeline in advance? Why bother striking a blow for the resistance by taking out the facility, if the whole scenario is going to be undone and prevented later on? Or if it's not, why are they fleeing rather than sticking around to continue the fight and overthrow the inhuman conquerors? These are fairly basic questions of motivation and logistics that sadly don't get addressed at all, and while that was understandable back when the characters were in the dark and the genre was an X-Files conspiracy thriller, it's less acceptable now that they appear to have all the relevant facts to make informed decisions.
In the end, two-out-of-three missions succeed, destroying the target and leaving the good guys reunited with their classmates but still stranded in 2118. With only two books remaining, I'm hoping author Chris Archer has a satisfying conclusion planned, as this antepenultimate adventure ultimately doesn't do much besides deliver some solid action thrills and incrementally shift the status quo.
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(It's also wild that both cases do have everyday American teens carry out what any reasonable observer would have to call acts of terrorism, and that this novel in particular seems to blithely endorse the strategy. For a title that came out in 1998, one wonders how a delay of only a few years to post-9/11 might have impacted that storyline.)
I'm disappointed by the poor follow-through, which extends to the overall goal that the kids are pursuing at this point. Are they trying to get home just to resume their regular lives, or is there something they can do back there to avert this timeline in advance? Why bother striking a blow for the resistance by taking out the facility, if the whole scenario is going to be undone and prevented later on? Or if it's not, why are they fleeing rather than sticking around to continue the fight and overthrow the inhuman conquerors? These are fairly basic questions of motivation and logistics that sadly don't get addressed at all, and while that was understandable back when the characters were in the dark and the genre was an X-Files conspiracy thriller, it's less acceptable now that they appear to have all the relevant facts to make informed decisions.
In the end, two-out-of-three missions succeed, destroying the target and leaving the good guys reunited with their classmates but still stranded in 2118. With only two books remaining, I'm hoping author Chris Archer has a satisfying conclusion planned, as this antepenultimate adventure ultimately doesn't do much besides deliver some solid action thrills and incrementally shift the status quo.
Like this review?
--Throw me a quick one-time donation here!
https://ko-fi.com/lesserjoke
--Subscribe here to support my writing and weigh in on what I read next!
https://patreon.com/lesserjoke
--Follow along on Goodreads here!
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6...
--Or click here to browse through all my reviews!
https://lesserjoke.home.blog
October 21, 2022
Had more fun in the books where the kids were in the ‘90s, and the story is getting pretty cliche, but it’s a middle grade book so my expectations shouldn’t be very high.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews