Rating: WARTY!
From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
The secret explorers are a group of young children who investigate the natural world and help right wrongs. It's a series, so not all the kids go on every mission. They each have specialties and are selected because of what they can bring to making the mission a success. In this one, my first encounter with this series, Connor and Roshni are the underwater crew investigating why a pod of humpbacks seem to have lost their way. In process of pursuing the investigation, they encounter problems and issues that need to be worked through, and learn things about ocean life.
I was disappointed in this book for two reasons. While I appreciate its aim of trying to engage young people in developing an awareness of the natural world and the human-caused problems it faces, the natural world really needs to be left alone. The problem isn't the natural world, it's decades of human callous indifference to it that has caused the problems, and this is where efforts need to be applied. A Band-Aid and an aspirin isn't going to work where major heart surgery is urgently required. And you know, there's not a lot of point in saving one pod of whales if the Japanese or American Indians are going to hunt and kill them anyway.
The other problem I had with this ebook is that it simply did not work. I'm talking technically here. The book hung up on me around fifty percent in and crashed the entire app. I tried it in two different apps: Bluefire Reader, and Adobe Digital Editions. Both of these normally work perfectly, but this book failed at the same point in both apps, which tells me it's the publication, not the app. Just now, before I finalized this review, I tried it once more on both of those apps and the book wouldn't even open in ADR. It hung up the app. In BFR, it opened, but immediately hung the app.<.p>
I don't know if it's the intention to put this out as an ebook, or if that's simply how review copies were distributed (for my sins, I'm not the sort of reviewer who gets the hardback copy!), but given the poor quality of the e-copy, which prevented me reading half of it, and my misgivings about the priorities being set in this story, I can't commend it as a worthy read. Your mileage may differ.
