Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon

Small Spoilers :Overall it was a very gripping read. Though I do have a few nit picks, I was really happy to see Bad Penny, Reviled, and eClaire back in action. I will say outright, this book was not as FUN as book one, but it was perhaps more meaningful in the harsh lessons Penny learns while she and her minions set out for a Space Adventure. I was expecting hijinks and dashing derring do... and there is that. But unexpectedly this second book also went to some pretty dark and Space Horror story themes. When I heard Mutated Goats in the story description I was thinking something more amusing rather than horrifying. But in the classic traditions of the Thing, mixed with semi occult imagery of lots of goat parts, read it you'll get what I'm trying say.I was a bit disappointed in, during book two, we didn't get an expansion on the histories and personalities of Penny's two best friends, Ray "Reviled" and Claire "eClaire" - They are there backing up Penny who IS the main focus, but they might have been just another part of her arsenal rather than her best friends from childhood for all the development they got. Much of the story was fleshing out the setting of the stage, OUTER SPACE, and the not so much secret as just plain heretofore UNKNOWN space colonies of humans out on the moons of Jupiter. Yes, mad science and space alien gate technology and apparently taking people from a time period a hundred years or so in the past to give a sort of space age steam punk style -- which brings me to technical peeve number one.CORSETS in steam punk costume play are often seen as outer wear. But as the space people are descended from the time period corsets were part of your regular girl garments, and that was when adult women didn't so much as show any bare ankle, corsets are part of your UNDERWEAR, like a girdle or a bra or your panties. Parading about with your corset outside your clothes is like Madonna wearing her bra as outerwear, meant to be overtly sexually provocative. Yes who wears corsets in super costume culture? Emma Frost in her White Queen days when she was a scion of the Hellfire Club. Who doesn't wear corsets as outerwear? School girls and normal women of a century ago. Yes this is an alternate earth history and these are space people living with aliens and automatons. There is still no good reason why they would suddenly decide to as a whole culture make underage school girls wear their undergarments as part of their outer wear, especially while trying to portray a very prissy and rule oriented society. Okay, that is my corsets are not the t-shirts of the past rant.Back to Penny and her crew. Penny does do a lot of character expansion as she experiences the dark side of her power when she begins to dabble in biological mad science, and the horrors that lie beyond. We get disturbing but kinda cool things like living space ships and weaponized kitty cats :D and we get some side history of the mad science and super hero / villains of Penny's reality as she runs into the outcome of the Red Panacea's relocation from her earth's past to the present day moons of Jupiter. It isn't pretty. In fact, things get really kind of icky horror dark. If you read other books by the same author, its not unusual for him to dip into the darker horror themes, he does it Very Well in very original ways while still paying homage to the classic themes they were birthed from.Okay lets jump to Remmy. 11 years old and a mad scientist in the making, and the girl Penny really wants to have as a friend. Remmy, to me, is... um. Bearable. Just. I didn't mind her as a guide character who could show our Inscrutable Machine team around the colonies and explain what was what. At the end there, things happen, and Remmy... Let's just say a space asteroid could have fallen on her and made her a little 11 year old pink mush splat, and it would not have made me unhappy. Didn't like her. Didn't like her brothers. If she'd been a large boy with the same attitudes, you could see how she and her brothers are cut very much from the same clothe. What she experiences from her brothers, one who sweet talks and lies to get his way and the other who basically gets what he wants by sheer intimidation and beating up or coercing those around him, are not lost on her, and I would say show her a bad way to get results, so I would not completely blame her for what happens in the end. Penny however is older, and wiser in comparison, and she learns some stuff here I think will be very helpful in her character building. You can't be friends with everyone, even if you think you have a lot in common. Also. Some people are just nut bar, and you can't fix that. Recognize it and move past it before they damage you too much.I think the story matured Penny. So even though I sorely missed getting more time getting more in depth with Claire and Ray, this was a good adventure for the Inscrutable Machine over all. Expanding their horizons, seasoning them a bit heavier plot lines of revolution, civil war, the horror of forced versions of utopia, and showing them their normal lives back on Earth are pretty privileged and something to be thankful for.What this book helps underline is Penny is still discovering who she is, with and without powers involved, and what is important to her, and what she's willing to sacrifice to hold to her inner resolves. And because I do really like Penny, I think that is awesomely cool.Can't wait for book two. Hope its out sooner than later. We're back on earth and dealing with a whole new generation of supers!!! woo hoo!!!

Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain was a great YA superhero novel. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but quite entertaining. The protagonists were adorable and included a character whose superpower was, literally, incredible cuteness. It was funny, entertaining, and made me happy to have read it. The sequel? Mostly, the same. Accent on mostly. Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up The Moon isn't as good as the original. It's got a lot of science-fiction world-building and out-of-context focus on a Steampunk Jovian colony Victorian humans which is pretty far removed from the original premise of superheroes vs. villains. It is good, though, and advances the characters even if it was in a way I wouldn't have. The premise is it's been months since the events of the previous novel and our antiheroes have been inactive. This was a bit disappointing as Ray and Penny kissed at the end. It's not unrealistic, though, since thirteen-year-olds are rarely able to sort through emotions in ways which don't explode horribly in their faces. Likewise, I imagine schoolwork and distractions keep them from any crazy plans to take over the world. Events open up a new opportunity for them, though. The Spider, the cordial archvillain who hopes to turn the trio into her allies, has a mission which will put the trio into space. Geeking out as a pair of science geeks invited into space would, they proceed to do grow a flying fish spaceship and head out to the stars. What follows is the discovery of lost mad science colonies from the Victorian Era and dealing with a pair of alien menaces which threaten to destroy the people thereof. The scenes in space were both good and bad in equal parts. I was a big fan of the X-men when they went into space to deal with the Brood and Shi'ar. This despite the fact many readers wondered why a comic about prejudice was suddenly a space opera. The good thing about taking the Inscrutable Machine (our protagonist's team name) into space is it's a fresh take on the characters and true to comics. Captain America can fight vampires one day, aliens the next, and street crime on the weekend. Watching Penny and Claire deal with things like 19th century fashion is quite entertaining. There's also a touching scene where Penny gets to explain to a Jewish man who fled the Nazis into space during the Thirties that, yes, the good guys won. The bad thing is it's a little too far removed from the original setting. It's also a much more serious storyline with direr consequences than the lighter and fluffier first book. People get shot at, nearly-die, and there's lots of terrible genetic horrors which almost eat or enslave our protagonists. The solution to the problems of the Jovian colonists left a sour taste in my mouth, too. Specifically, it left a new "hero" hating our protagonists' guts. I preferred to see our teenage protagonists triumphant and loved rather than failing. In short, I feel the series lost its sense of humor for the sequel and I hate that. The best part of the novel was when the Inscrutable Machine breaks into a laboratory owned by a much more powerful supervillain and trash it. They get to deal with people familiar with superheroes, a murderous antihero (who isn't as bad as she sounds), and play off against the setting. None of that gets to happen in space because no one has any familiarity with what superheroes and villains are. On the plus side, I loved the steampunk aesthetic of the Jovians. The Jules Verne and HG Wells-style technology combined with a Bioshock sort of setting, complete with clockwork robots, makes them a fun group to imagine. I actually wish we'd got to have more time with them and under less dire circumstances. Unfortunately, the actual Jovians prove to be less than likable with nasty attitudes and a tendency to backstab the protagonists. A shame. In conclusion, this was a fun but flawed book. I'm sticking with the series, though, and look forward to seeing what happens next. I just hope the future novels are a little more fun and a lot less angst.7.5/10

This book is reasonably entertaining, though far inferior to the previous book.The thing that annoyed me most about this book was the constant deliberate conflicts in the internal logic.Considering the amount of times the main character says how she doesn't want to be a supervillan, why does she go out of her way at EVERY opportunity to tell everyone she is in fact a supervillan? In a place where noone knows them and it is entirely their own decision how they introduce themselves and are presented, why call yourself a villan if you don't want to be? This is annoyingly stupid because it makes the entire story arc of the book look stupidly contrived. With just a little effort and some work on plot devices this could have been integrated into the story, but instead it just looks kinda dumb and is an obviously manufactured plot device to enable her superhero nemesis.The story arc of the creating of her superhero 'nemesis' is dumb for the reasons above, but also because it is her nemesis who acts entirely irrationally and is totally driven by emotional rage. Again, it just comes across as a little stupid.The characters do not particularly act their age. This is the problem of an adult author writing about and from the viewpoint of children. At times they kind of do act their stated ages but then they start acting older again. Whether or not this is an issue for you will depend on the reader.

I have been waiting for this book since I finished the last one and I wasn't disappointed - if you haven't read the 1st go do so :) In parts it was a little confusing as it seemed to rely on world building that hadn't happened in the first book (unless I missed very big chunks or it happened in another series) it is however well written with only a couple of typos.Con: They (the mini villains) don't seem to have a plan for mucking around and were very irresponsible with the weapons created, also the mechanic they befriend I don't really get why all her attitude was aimed at Bad Penny (except she was jealous) and all the characters they interact with in space seem a little nutty - ok a lot nutty I don't know about you but the one place I lived that had bed bugs made me want to burn the place to the ground to make sure they were gone so why you would move back to a place that had been over run I just don't get. The characters don't really move forwardPros: It was a fun read, I've always wondered why a superhuman would stay on earth - come on if you were superman why not set up a nice pad on mars? so seeing the Jupiter set up was cool - but again no real explanation of the plan and were those robots come from. I guess I liked this book because it had the same vibe as the 1st, it made me laugh and was a frolicking ride without the normal doom and gloom Superhero books seem to have

The first book in this series was a good read, despite the pedestrian writing style and occasional grammatical errors. The author doesn't seem to have grasped the principle of "show don't tell", and there's not much attempt at characterisation beyond the individual's superpowers. But the enjoyable plot made up for this in the first book. Sadly, I didn't find the same in this sequel. The constant little asides about the main character's crush on her supervillain team-mate Ray became really boring after a while, and the point of their random wandering around in space was difficult to follow. I'd still read a third novel, if one comes out, in hopes that it'll get back to the zany, amusing quality of the first.

As others have commented, I was eagerly awaiting this book after reading the previous book in the series. And I have to say that while it was good, it didn't live up to the standard set by "Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillian". The author made the unfortunately choice to ditch a lot of the good characters from last time in favour of a limited set of much flatter characters living in outer space, and there seemed to be a lot of flitting backwards and forwards that didn't accomplish much. It was still worth it to find out what happened next with Penny and her friends, but I think I would have preferred another book set on Earth.

While the book was okay I really didn't enjoy it as much as the first book in this series as it seems to try too hard to make a very different and outrageous story-line with lots of new enemies and a new big bad. It is also very annoying that given they are off where no-one knows them they don't try to become the hero she wants to be and instead consistently insists she is a supervillain and manages to alienate everyone.But saying all of that its worth giving it a go because the first and third books in this series are well worth a read.