5 Worlds Book 3: The Red Maze by Siegel, Siegel, Bouma, Rockefeller & Sun

I am bad at reviewing books in a timely fashion. And that can lead to being bad at reviewing books, period. I'm going to keep this post short, but I reserve the right to decide it's pointless to begin with and delete it all.

(If you're reading this, I didn't.)

5 Worlds is a young-readers graphic novel series, coming out roughly annually. I missed the first book, The Sand Warrior. If any of what I type below sounds interesting, go check out that book. I did look at the second one, The Cobalt Prince, during my 2018 Book-A-Day run. I've now just read the third book, 2019's The Red Maze. Last year there was a new book, The Amber Anthem. And the finale, The Emerald Gate, is coming this May, but doesn't seem to be available for pre-order yet.

I didn't remember Cobalt well when I dove into Red, and I obviously never went back to Sand, and won't move on to Amber or Emerald. So most of what I could say about this book is beside the point - and that pains me, since a publicist actually sent this to me, back in the spring of 2019, in the hopes I would give a little attention to it when it was new and shiny and looking for an audience.

The five worlds are an interesting, mildly complex soft-SF universe, with five habitable spheres (I think four are actually moons, though it's not super-clear if they're moons of the same thing or not) and different governments and people on each of them. It's all pitched at a level for young readers, but these stories are about ecology and corruption and believing in yourself and doing the right thing and finding the people who can make things better. All good things, obviously.

I read this too quickly, and I'm not going to get into plot details. There is a mild case of Chosen One-itis in our heroine, Oona Lee, and maybe almost as much in her friend Jax Amboy. Actually, the third major character, An Tzu, might be equally chosen for other things.

This isn't really a book for me: I try to engage with YA graphic stories, since I love their energy and the sense of possibility in great books for young readers. But I somewhat bounced off of this, after not quite clicking with Cobalt. So all I can do is point to it, say that it looks to be quite good for what it is, but that I've been reading it half-assedly, and that's not good for me or the book.