AWESOME LAVRATT Review - Ann Wilkes

When Ann Wilkes approached me to review AWESOME LAVRATT, I was told that if I liked the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books by Douglas Adams, I would like AWESOME LAVRATT I agreed, believing that there would be some entertainment value in the book but thinking that there was no way that it could compare to the hilarious story of Arthur Dent and towel-loving Ford. I am happy to say that I was mistaken. AWESOME LAVRATT was quite the entertaining read with a riveting story and realistic characters.

Awesome Lavratt by Ann Wilkes
Publisher: Unlimited Publishing LLC
Pages: 104
My Recommended Age Group: Older Young Adult to Adult
Released: January 2009
Other work: Published Works

From Wilkes' Website:

Beautiful Aranna Navna plans to conquer the galaxy one planet at a time. She steals the Awesome Lavratt, a mind control device, from a freighter in Horace Whistlestop's junkyard. She takes Horace, too. With the Lavratt, Aranna manipulates the thoughts and desires of everyone around her—until she gets to the Emperor of Calistania. Then things go from bad to worse for Aranna.

The Lavratt, however, has only just begun! Oh, the fun you can have from a small cube with mind control powers. Travel the galaxy with Tyrantz Lavratt. Silly science fiction at its best. All puns intended.

My thoughts:

Horace Whistlestop runs a spatial junkyard. He seems to do fairly well until the day that three ships arrive, all after the same junker vessel. Of course, as the story goes for most men, a beautiful woman appears, creating mass chaos and destruction for Horace. Enter Aranna Navna. After the Awesome Lavratt, a mind control device uncovered on a planet and hidden on the junker vessel, Aranna will do just about anything to get her hands on it. When she does, a whirlwind series of events occurs, drawing the mysterious black box back to its home.

AWESOME LAVRATT was a short read at only 104 pages, but it was worth every second. It was funny, lighthearted and thoroughly entertaining. Wilkes has a great way with creating depth to her characters and adding realism to the story. For a story set in outer space with mind control devices, this is quite extraordinary.

I would love to tell you more about the other characters in AWESOME LAVRATT but I'm unsure how to do it without giving too much of the story away. You'll just have to trust me when I say that Wilkes creates fantastic characters and each one really brings a special element to the story.

Fantastic characters, colorful writing and a fun atmosphere are what make this book superb. Add on a fantastic ending that will leave you dumbstruck and we've got a winner on our hands. The only thing that caught me up a little was the change in time. Not every event was explained in great detail. Perhaps I'm just used to longer stories that have the room to explain every movement and every facial twitch. AWESOME LAVRATT, being the shorter book that it is, didn't have the room to do that. I pondered this for a while and finally came to the decision Wilkes did a good thing by swiftly taking us through parts of the story that wouldn't really make impact the general course of events too much. Overall this worked great.

Fair warning time: You know we have to have one with pretty much anything that isn't Young Adult and then even some Young Adult novels. There are a few adult scenes in AWESOME LAVRATT. I would give it a sensuality rating of 3 meaning that while the adult theme is there, the scenes are not very graphic.

Writing: 9
Interest: 9
Passion: 8
Originality: 10
Characters: 9
Pace: 8
Overall: 53/60 - B

Book Cover: 2/3

AWESOME LAVRATT was a fantastic book and I highly recommend that anyone looking for an entertaining and fun read should pick it up. Fans of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will enjoy it immensely I think. Remember, the scores above are for our more visual readers. Just because a section scores below a perfect 10 does not mean that it is less than fabulous. The Passion and Pace dropped off a little due to the timing issue that I mentioned above. Due to the short nature of the story, there really wasn't a lot of time to go into detail with some of the movement but it did take a moment or two for me to reread and figure out where I was.

It should be no surprise that as I finish writing this I have AWESOME LAVRATT sitting next to me, waiting for me to come read it again. This is definitely one of those books that one could read over and over with the humor only getting funnier each time.

Ann Wilkes can be found online at http://wilkes.zftp.com/. You can learn more about her as an author and even read the first chapter of AWESOME LAVRATT.