Let's go fly a spaceship, up to the highest......... oh, hang on! (The Hardy Boys: The Skyfire Puzzle - Franklin W. Dixon)

Member Name: pmcds

Product:	The Hardy Boys: The Skyfire Puzzle - Franklin W. Dixon
Date:	06/05/09 (77 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A good read

Disadvantages: Almost too fast, a little dated

The Space Race has been visited by the Hardy Boys before, but The Skyfire Puzzle, the 85th book in the series, features teenage brothers Frank and Joe Hardy potentially going up in space in an effort to put an end to the mysterious attempts to sabotage the US Skyfire space shuttle.

Yes, it's a ridiculous notion, but the adventure starts off with some semblance of normality, with the boys setting off on a jaunt in Florida swamps and somehow ending up in the Kennedy Space Centre in a kind of 'blink and you miss it' kind of plot hurrying.

What we usually get from the Hardy Boys is an unlikely plot with little characterisation for the two main characters. All-American brothers, and sons of supersleuth Fenton Hardy, Frank and Joe Hardy regularly go off on adventure, whether they be sought out to solve a mystery, or they stumble into it.

What we get here is one of those where the brothers fall into the adventure, and things progress quickly once this happens. The plot is a solid one, and makes much of the space race. As it was written in the 1980s, the result is what now seems a rather dated exploration into spacial developments. Twenty years is a long time when you're dealing with something so advanced and so unknown, and it shows a little.

For those of you willing to look beyond the technologically dated plot, the adventure is actually quite enjoyable, its fast and frenetic pace sometimes too much, but due to its target audience being teenage boys, it doesn't really get too complicated. I found that it was quite a quick book to read, and what seemed to be too fast and frenetic ended up being a highly enjoyable book. Sure, I had to put behind me the fact that it was a little unlikely, especially when the story winds towards the boys having to go up into space, but it was an enjoyable read indeed.

The Skyfire Puzzle is more readily available from amazon.com than anywhere over here in the UK, and you'll likely find that with most of the books published under the rights of Simon & Schuster, which includes any books published since 1980. A recommended read.

Summary: An enjoyable 85th Hardy Boys book