For their latest Book Club Wildcat and Wonderland Christopher Edge’s latest novel The Jamie Drake Equation. It is fair too say that the overwhelming majority were completely enthralled by Edge’s extra-terrestrial endeavour into outer space. The Jamie Drake Equation proved to be as exciting and thought provoking as his previous novel The Many World’s of Albie Bright, which many of our returning Book Clubbers had read last year.The novel follows Jamie, a ten-year-old protagonist, whose father (the famous Commander Dan Drake-astronaut extraordinaire) has just left earth to release Light Swarm Probes as part of the Lux Aeterna mission to search for alien life. In theory, you would think that this makes Jamie the happiest, luckiest and most popular child in the world, but Jamie has a lot to contend with here on earth: he is worried about his Dad’s safety, his Grandad (an old rocker) is driving him mad, the eccentric and illusive professor ——- has hijacked NASA technology and taken residency in the local observatory, his Mum is stressed, his Dad is missing Jamie’s birthday on earth and to top it all off his phone is behaving rather bizarrely. The Jamie Drake Equation is a story that has it all: intrigue, family drama, science and excitement. This is a novel that keeps you on the edge of your seat.
‘Adventurous’ and ‘captivating’ were some of the words, which sprung into our Book Clubbers minds when asked to summarise the novel in a word. Many remarked on the fast pace of the plot in relation to the novels length- it is a surprisingly short novel for one with so much action. Some members of Book Club described it as a real ‘page turner’, while others commented that they wanted it to keep going and would have liked it to be a little longer, so as to include more diagrams to explain the scientific theories. As a group we were shocked that Jamie’s family did not completely resolve their issues in the traditional Hollywood way. However, we also believed that this made the book all the more unusual and realistic.
If you enjoyed Christopher Edge’s previous novel The Many Worlds of Albie Bright or Ross Welford’s Time Travelling with a Hamster then you will probably enjoy this!
Year 4 book club film from Julia Marsen on Vimeo.