Author: Robert Rodriguez And Chris Roberson
Publisher: Troublemaker Publishing
Rating: WORTHY!
Illustrated by Alex Toader.
This illustrated novel began as a movie and later was transformed into a short novel by Rodriguez, who concocted the movie from stories his kids invented, and Chris Roberson - yes, he of iZombie and Cinderella graphic novel fame. The basis of the story is very much a rip-off of the novel The Neverending Story (which was then made into several movies). In that, a savior has to rescue the world of stories before darkness overtakes it. In the novel I review here, three saviors have to rescue a dream world before darkness overtakes it.
The rip-off doesn’t end there. Max, the main human character, long ago dreamed up a robot which he named Tobor ('robot' backwards). Tobor is ripped off from a 1954 movie titled Tobor the Great.
That aside, the novel is very entertaining and inventive with its amusing naming conventions. It’s well written for the most part with no great spelling or grammatical gaffs, except for page 62, where the paragraph which appears in the middle of the page is repeatedly word for word immediately afterwards, at the bottom of the page.
The novel is written for a juvenile audience without any effort made to appeal to more mature readers, but aside from that it’s written quite well. Shark Boy (rendered as one word: Sharkboy in the novel's title, but consistently rendered in the book itself as two words) wakes up on a cold beach not knowing who he is or where he came from. He quickly meets Lava Girl (again rendered as one word: Lavagirl in the novel's title, but as two words in the story) who is suffering the same amnesia. They discover their super powers quickly - she can literally produce lava and he can breathe underwater.
The novel differs from the movie in some ways. For example the movie begins with Max, the boy who dreams, describing how Shark Boy (S) came to be. We get no similar information on Lava Girl (L). This story is, Max assures his classmates, a true story, but Linus, the class bad boy makes fun of him.
In the novel this is omitted completely, and we first meet L & S on the beach where L saves his life by returning him to the sea. Immediately afterwards, a professor shows up who tells them very little but warns them they must save dream land, aka Planet Drool, by finding the dreamer, who is on Earth. He disappears from the story immediately after that, but in response to his advice, they take a rocket to a point where they can interact with the real world, and they contact young Max, a daydreamer in middle school, who can fix the world known as Planet Drool. Meanwhile, Mr Electric, with his cable beasts and electrical powers, is trying to thwart their every effort.
In an afterschool playground incident Linus steals Max's dream book, via which he has inadvertently created Planet Drool and L & S, but this back story isn't so clear in the novel. However, the end result is the same in that Max joins them on Planet Drool, transported there via S's shark rocket, and slowly starts putting things right.
They encounter the same cable beasts, and Mr Electricity, and eventually figure out who has distorted Max's dreams - it's Linus, using Max's own dream book. After almost losing L & S - she once again saves him after Mr Electricity has tossed electric eels into the water where he's swimming. Unfortunately, the water has a very negative effect on L and she's pretty much dead until S runs at super-speed to deliver her to the volcano which can restore her. After this, she realizes that she's a girl of light, and she can restore the light and banish the dark which has beset Planet Drool.
Linus and Max become friends when Linus realizes he should not be killing dreams, and Max realizes he needs to dream with his eyes open. Now he has no evil overlord, Mr Electricity rebels completely and becomes the villain, but he's subdued by Max.
The book carries no mention of the ice princess (in the move she's a classmate of Max's who also appears on Planet Drool) and is rather short, but the illustrations - comic book style line drawings - are very good. I recommend this novel for an age appropriate audience.
