Readers' Muse: December 2014

BOOK TITLE: Aoléon The Martian Girl: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Saga - Part 1: First Contact, written and illustrated by Brent LeVasseur

CATEGORY: Middle-Grade, 94 pages

GENRE: Science-fiction and Fantasy

PUBLISHER: Aoléon Press

RELEASE DATE: January 31, 2015

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

Crop circles magically appear in Farmer Johnson’s field. A mysterious light sweeps over the night sky and awakens Farmer Johnson and Gilbert, the boy next door.
Curious, Gilbert ventures out to discover the source of the light and stumbles into a beautiful Martian girl sitting in a crop circle. Farmer Johnson also investigates the strange light, and thinking that Gilbert and Aoléon are vandals, he chases them. But they sprint to Aoléon’s saucer and escape only to be pursued by the U.S. Air Force.

Gilbert has never been attacked by swarms of giant killer robots. Never met strange aliens from other worlds. Never skyboarded across a megalopolis hidden deep inside an extinct volcano. Never trekked across a vast Martian desert. And never been eaten alive by a gigantic slor (well, almost never, unless you count Billy the fat bully at school).

And luckily, he has never ever confronted an evil ruler of Mars bent on conquering the Earth to steal its cows.

Never...until now!

This may be the adventure Gilbert always wished for.
If only he can survive.

GENERAL OVERVIEW:

Aoleon – The Martian Girl, is a science fiction novel written for and enjoyed by children. The story has everything in a story you would expect a sci-fi novel about Mars to have. There are your crop circles, the UFO and the blue skinned, antennae headed, large eyed Martian, Aoleon (a word resembling, Alien, for the uninitiated) and the tough sounding science terms. It is enjoyable for those who like science fiction novels.

SALIENT FEATURES:

Aoleon is a novel rich in graphics and that is the most notable feature of the novel. Whenever there is a difficult to understand scene, or you just cannot visualise a character just right, there is a picture to help you bring the description to life. From the simple character of Gillian to the Martian, and the crops on earth to the modern Martian city images, these are vivid, 3D and littered throughout the book.

NOW, THE STORY:

A little girl from Mars, Aoleon, takes a high tech spaceship and enters the earth’s orbit, choosing a field in Nebraska, USA to create crop circles in a wheat field. The reasons for why she does that are interesting. Meanwhile, Gillian, a small boy with a troubled house gets repeated dreams of strange lights, Aliens in space suits and when he wakes up from these, he is disoriented and afraid.

On seeing the strange lights one more time, he decides to follow the lights. Within minutes, he bumps into Aoleon, and they communicate in English. (Aoleon and her race are advanced enough to learn our language). But soon, another farmer, whose field Aoleon had just ‘vandalised’ chases them and they get into Aoelon’s spaceship (the size of a sports car) to escape. Aoleon takes him out of the earth’s orbit to Mars. They are chased by the USA military in a scene worthy of hi-fi military and spy movies.

Evading authority, Aoleon smuggles Gillian into Mars and while she shows him around the place, he notices that Mars is a society dominated by Artificial Intelligence and it has plans to somehow steal all milk bearing cows of the earth and over power us. What happens next? Well, read part 2 of the story, soon to be released.

PLUSES AND MINUSES:

1. Easily understandable story line.

2. Good effort with graphics – helps children visualise better

3. Interestingly worded – words are as good as the graphics used.

On the other hand,

1. The much beaten appearance of ‘Alien’, ‘Martian’ and spaceships are repeated

2. The Premise that Martians are way more cleverer and are more advanced than us as a race (though that might be critical to the story)

3. The fact that absolutely no aircraft from earth or highly trained military professionals can even come near to beating a little girl from Mars.

VERDICT:

A good read, given the fact that the book was advertised exactly as what it was. Expect a science fiction novel with lot of graphics and everything exactly as you would expect a novel about Martians to have – you won’t be disappointed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mr. LeVasseur enjoys crafting good stories based on lovable characters designed to translate well to multiple media formats such as books, games, movies, and toys. He lives in New York when he is not commuting between Southern California and Olympus Mons, Mars. His hobbies include writing, 3D animation, musical composition, and intergalactic space travel. He also enjoys various sports such as skiing, running, and exospheric skydiving.