HIVE: Dreadnought by Mark Walden

September 2009, Bloomsbury

304 pages, Paperback

Review copy

Children's,

Cushions: 4/5

Daggers: 1/5

Smiles: 2/5

Yunaleska's recommended rating: ♥♥♥♥♥

There are countless stories about schools which turn out heroes, but the HIVE series looks at the other end of the spectrum: villains. Students at H.I.V.E (Higher Institute of Villainous Education) are generally stuck on HIVE's island base. Some got off it in previous adventures, but generally they remain there. Apart from the students going on a training trip into the Arctic where not everyone makes it back.

Or at least that's where the students think they are heading. Along with their instructor, the mysterious Raven whose backstory in the first chapter has me eagerly waiting for the next book (and tracking down the previous ones), they get captured by one of the top villains. It wasn't a simple taking over their ship. The students weren't exactly on the ship - they were on a state of the art, never been put into practice Dreadnought. Which gets in the hands of the bad guys - well, in this case the man most wanted by heroes and villains alike. How do the students get out of the mess? How do they subdue a man who is situated on one of the most impenetrable vessels in the sky?

They use their super powers, I cheered as I learnt about these. There's Otto, with his ability to hack into any electronic system just by opening up to it with his mind. He's a bit worried about the voice he hears when he's inside the electrics. Laura is a natural hacker - no mind control involved other than her incredible knack for cracking codes. Shelby is an expert at lock picking, while Wing fights with muscle. Then there's the new student Lucy, whose power and mysterious past are only brought up when the stakes are at their highest. They aren't alone either: they have their teachers, back up (when they can trust it and when it can arrive in time), weapons - lots of things go boom in this book.

There's action in every single chapter of Dreadnought. I know I missed continuation of plots from previous stories, but I enjoyed watching the darker plots of the super villains unfold as the HIVE students tried to outdo them. Having both viewpoints in the story heightens the suspense, which had me groaning when I had to return to the real world. The students feel like my friends, I like the banter between them and find myself wishing to be a villain at HIVE.

There's nothing I would want to change in this book. All I ask is that Mark keeps writing more!

Mark Walden's website can be found here.

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