Always eager to do my master’s bidding….actually, no that’s not fair, on either he or I. Madsen Pirie sent me a copy of each of his two science fiction novels for teenagers and asked that, if (and only if) I enjoyed them I might bring them to your attention.

I did enjoy them and thus bring them to your attention. He’s bucking a number of trends here, as he’s had two published at the same time (with another on the way in a few weeks) they’re in hardback, they’re short and they are very definitely science fiction, not fantasy (or, horror, witchcraft or any similar nonsense).

They’re pitched very firmly at the sort of inquisitive teenager market, in a way similar to the Heinlein books for the teens (back when he had an editor, and boy, do his later books show he needed one). This of course appeals to me as I am fully in touch with my inner teenager (and as my wife will point out, inner toddler and inner baby as well). I read them over a couple of days ( sitting, pint in hand, enjoying the garden, occasionally looking up to see how the grapes, pomegranates and kittens are ripening), on successive evenings actually, as they’re easy to nip through.

There’s no need to read one before the other, they’re stand alone, in entirely different backgrounds.

The first, Dark Visitor, takes a well known plot line and adapts it well enough that I have to admit I got to the denouement before I realised that I’ve not only read other books using it, I’ve even suffered though an opera that did. Strong and feisty teenage girl heroine in a mixture of first adult responsibility and facing a mystery sort of thing. Oh, along with destruction of the planet, mass death, and redemption of a major character. All good gripping stuff (and I am indeed being honest: back in the day any number of pulps would have been happy to serialize this: I can see where the issue breaks would come too).

The second, Children of the Night, has a darker feel to it in a way. It takes a few pages for you (or it did me) to work out the scenario: think apprentice in a cathedral in the world of A Canticle for Leibowitz as a reasonable shorthand. Again, that main character is teenage. An interesting mixture of remembered technology and positively medieval economic and political backgrounds (and no, he doesn’t use them to push any economic or philosophical lines. These books are stories to be read, not seminars in classical liberalism) and it’s some of the remembered, but not well enough, technology that provides the plot driver. Goodies and baddies, confusion over who is who (or should that be whom?) murder, attempted murder and self-sacrifice. All good bloodthirsty stuff for that inner teen….

Again, we’ve got a potential end of the world, saved by plucky young ‘uns doing what is right to the best of their ability.

Both are 150 pages or so, read very swiftly and, well, it’s so long since I was (or was around any)  a teenager that I’ve no idea whether teenagers would actually enjoy them. Sorry, lost contact with that demographic. However, I enjoyed them (more than I did the last Tom Holt I read, he’s become rather too formulaic and, sadly, but no surprise, less than I did the last Terry Pratchett, that’s a tough hurdle to clear) so I’d pitch them as being entirely acceptable little books.

So, make my boss happy. Buy his books.