Jed has been taught extreme survival skills by his parents and I do mean extreme. On the morning of his twelfth birthday he wakes up and his parents are gone. He finds some instructions about climbing through the back of the dishwasher. He must wear a strange watch and NEVER tell anyone his name.
Jed does climb though the dishwasher and he finds himself in a very strange world where everything is made from junk. His parents have told him to search for Grandpa Jenkins but Jed only has vague memories of this man. He finds himself on a wild pirate ship where food comes from tin cans. By lucky chance one of the things inside the pack his parents left for him, along with batteries and water, was a can opener. He uses his opener to prepare their first taste of hot food not just strange cold meals straight from the cans.
"The crew were supposed to take one whiff of the cooking food and suddenly realise how tragic their every meal had been up to that point. Probably too much to ask but they weren't supposed to be disgusted just by the preparation."
If you enjoy raw adventure stories with lashings of steampunk, and a little violence, I think you will really enjoy this dystopian story BUT I have a warning. Nothing is really resolved at the end so you will want to find the sequel. Oh and I should say the ending of this first book is going to utterly shock you. I would recommend this book for ages 11+.
I picked this book up from a major book chain because all kids books were 20% off. The book was published in 2016 and my copy has languished on the bookstore shelves since April 2019. The cover really appealed to me - do you like it?
Publisher blurb: Jed is a regular kid with a normal, loving family . . . that is, if it's normal for a loving family to drop their child off in the middle of nowhere and expect him home in time for Sunday dinner. Luckily, Jed excels at being a regular kid who-armed with wit and determination-can make his way out of any situation. At least until the morning of his twelfth birthday, when Jed wakes to discover his parents missing. Something is wrong. Really wrong. Jed just doesn't realize it's floating-city, violent-junk-storm, battling-metals, Frankensteined-scavengers kind of wrong. Yet. A cryptic list of instructions leads Jed into a mysterious world at war over . . . junk. Here, batteries and bottled water are currency, tremendously large things fall from the sky, and nothing is exactly what it seems. Resilient Jed, ready to escape this upside-down place, bargains his way onto a flying tugboat with a crew of misfit junkers. They set course to find Jed's family, but a soul-crushing revelation sends Jed spiraling out of control . . . perhaps for good.
If you like Steampunk look for this series by Peter Bunzl. Spoiler alert - the ending of Cogheart resonates with the ending of Jed and the Junkyard war.
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