A little behind schedule with this review, the reading is coming much easier than the writing of my thoughts.
Pax and the Missing Head
David Barker
In a country beset by civil war, New London defends itself behind a giant wall. Inside the city, children are forced to work from an early age, except for the lucky few who train to be leaders in the re-purposed Palace of Westminster.
12-year-old orphaned Pax is brilliant at recycling old tech. He enjoys working on the verti-farms and just wants a bit of peace and quiet. But when that is taken away from him, his only hope is to pass a near-impossible exam and join the other students in Scholastic Parliament.
There he’ll make new friends and new enemies. He’ll get tested like never before. And he’ll discover that not everything is quite what it seems under the mayor’s harsh leadership.
Goodreads | The StoryGraph | Amazon
It’s been quite some time since I read a middle grade book and I was looking forward to a bit of an adventure. Pax and the Missing Head originally jumped out at me because of the setting, a dystopian version of London in a world where the cities are at war with the Countryside Alliance, it just seemed like an exciting background to the story and I was looking forward to exploring it.
Pax was an interesting character, a bit of an outsider and very gifted with technology, he seems to have a knack for bending rules and getting away with it. This was often in aid of getting parts for his little robots or as the book went on to help get better team rankings in school; I have to say that I really liked the robots because they had a bit of personality.
I enjoyed the school setting and the competition between the school teams, I was cheering on the Judges when they were going up against the other teams in the different tasks they were set. It definitely made me more tense when Pax was doing things he shouldn’t knowing that he could lose points that his team really needed.
I found the idea of what was outside of the wall surrounding New London very intriguing, we get a little glimpse of that but I would be interested to know more. I felt the same about the civil war aspect too, I would like to know more but I’m conscious that I am reading it as an adult and that that might not be something younger readers would feel. There were also a few plot points that I felt lost themselves throughout the book, but I think this might be the first in a series so there is a chance that these are things that will be resolved in the future.
This book was a nice easy read, fun with some lovely friendships and a lot of action. I was easily drawn into the story and I would be interested to see where it is going next.
I attended the Faber Academy in 2014 and from that had three climate-fiction thrillers published (The Gold Trilogy, Bloodhound Books). I joined SCBWI in 2018 as I shifted my focus to a younger audience. My MG debut, Pax & The Missing Head publishes with Tiny Tree in late 2023. I live in Berkshire with my wife and daughter. I have a passion for stories, sport and boardgames.
everywhere-and-nowhere.com 