Changes

|title=Space Lizards Ate My Sister!

|author=Mark Griffiths

|borrow=Yes

|isbn=9780857071323

|pages=256

|publisher=Simon and Schuster

|date=August 2012

|summary=Amusing galaxy-crossing antics for two children, as Earth needs saving by them for a second time. This has reasonable comedy, but the drama is above average.

}}

On a school trip to an observatory, a scientist is being very stupid and silly in trying to impress the class of visitors about his work, which is very ironic considering what will happen to two of them. When the session leads to the discovery of an asteroid on its way to collide fatally with Earth, Lance and Tori are shocked to see the evil lizard they had to defeat in the first book in this series being asked for help. Soon they have to enter a cat-and-mouse chase across the very galaxy the scientist was so uncool about, to save the planet - and, as the title says, Lance's sister.

If anything I think the race-against-time side of the book is a bit more successful than the comedy. I did laugh - especially at the dinosaur's thought-bubble - but Griffiths seemed to go for a gag-for-everyone approach (witness the PM's name, which few youngsters will get) and not a sustained level for one particular target audience. That said, there is a good levity throughout, as opposed to joke-telling, and in among the sort of slapstick Douglas Adams style there is enough to make this enjoyable. This might be book two of three, five or more, but this is definitely a marker for a vivid, imaginative, pacey series, and one I can recommend.

[[Tommy Storm and the Galactic Knights by A J Healy]] covers very similar territory for a slighter older audience, with more parodies than you can shake a Babel-fish at.

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