Swarm Enemy: Book 2 (Swarm Rising)

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Naturally, chaos ensues, and the race to save the world includes superpowers related to quantum physics, aliens trying to understand the concept of individualism, and the protagonists travelling across space as digital intelligences transmitted via radiowaves. The journey to defeat the “Malusonians” is action packed and features a lot of sci-fi hallmarks, including zombies, teleporting, DNA hacking, an antimatter bomb, cryogenic suspension and a trip to the International Space Station (ISS). Biography: Tim Peake (Author) Tim Peake was the first British ESA astronaut to visit the International Space Station. Join our community to get personalised book suggestions, extracts straight to your inbox, 10% off RRPs, and to change children’s lives. Tim Peake (Author) Tim Peake was the first British ESA astronaut to visit the International Space Station.

Tim was selected as an ESA astronaut in May 2009 and after arduous training Tim was assigned to a mission to the International Space Station in May 2013. These include the fight to be an individual in a society that expects you to be a certain way, the importance of empathy and understanding, and the realistic mental-health impacts of being thrown into a world of aliens. If this book is over 5 years old, then please expect the pages to be yellowing or to have age spots. With the help of bestselling children’s author Steve Cole, these books are Peake’s first forays into fiction.The notion that children – the target readers in other words – will have to fix the mess of previous generations runs strong throughout the books, and, although I think the environmental foreboding is perhaps repeated too often, the plotline is a clever way of inspiring action. Full of exclusive new stories, and astonishing detail only an astronaut would know, the book conveys what space exploration is really like: the wondrous view of Earth, the surreal weightlessness, the extraordinary danger, the surprising humdrum, the unexpected humour, the newfound perspective, the years of training, the psychological pressures, the gruelling physical toll, the thrill of launch and the trepidation of re-entry. When Danny's best friend Jamila goes missing, and no one remembers she exists, Danny knows the alien Swarm are back on Earth. They cover everything from radio astronomy and biosynthesis to computing and quantum physics, and there’s even a glossary of “science stuff” at the back to help. Best friends Danny and Jamila star in a new sci-fi adventure written by astronaut Tim Peake and best-selling children’s author Steve Cole.

He is also a best-selling author and an inspirational communicator of science to audiences of all ages. Aimed at ages 8–11, they are written from the point of view of 14-year-old Danny Munday as he and his best friend, Jamila al-Sufi, try to save the world from aliens intent on conquering the human race. As Peake is an astronaut and a science-outreach ambassador, I did have faith that the science in the books would be factual – which is just as well, because there’s a lot of it. The books might not become classics, but I would definitely recommend them for any child who’s interested in – or yet to discover – space, science or aliens. While this is a common sci-fi trope, the books are replete with science facts and sincere moral messaging – albeit with both often featured in quite a heavy-handed way.A ground-breaking human history of space by beloved British astronaut and bestselling author Tim Peake. Peake and Cole are often too overt with these for my taste, but they are incorporated well into the plotline. Having encountered aliens in their first adventure (NB Swarm Enemy works perfectly well as a stand-alone story), Jamila has been left with some strange, extra-terrestrial powers and this makes her a target for some very unscrupulous characters. But in brief, another alien race has come to Earth on the back of the teenagers’ trip across space in book one, and they don’t have good intentions. She compares it to rolling a dice with an infinite number of sides, explaining how she simply rolls it enough times to get the outcome she desires, no matter how improbable it is.

Century, 2016) Ask An Astronaut (Century, 2017) and The Astronaut Selection Test Book (Century, 2018)Steve Cole (Author) Steve Cole is a bestselling author who has written over 200 books for children, including Astrosaurs, Young Bond and Z.For instance, when Danny’s mum is talking about some previously detected signals, the conversation with Danny goes like this: “ ‘…the radio waves were being thrown out by a stellar remnant. In Space: The Human Story, astronaut Tim Peake traces the lives of these remarkable men and women who have forged the way, from Yuri Gagarin to Neil Armstrong, from Valentina Tereshkova to Peggy Whitson. With the action and science both in the hands of experts, this is really good reading, but I like too the way that it reminds us throughout that the future of the planet and our species is in the hands of young readers, who the authors clearly see as smart, committed and ingenious as their protagonists. Steve Cole (Author) is a bestselling author who has written over 200 books for children, including Astrosaurs, Young Bond and Z. Maybe it’s the massive rockets shooting out of the atmosphere, or the idea of floating in zero gravity while travelling in space.