Looking For a Good Book

Bear Company (five stuffed bears who are now armored and aggressively protect their charges (children) are helping Timmy, who is looking for his father. Timmy’s father is a scientist who created the Bear Company. But it isn’t as easy as just searching … an evil alien force of shape-shifters, known as the Dark, are looking to capture Timmy and other children.

The search for Timmy’s dad brings Timmy and Bear Squad into the city where they soon find themselves out-numbered by the Dark.  Fortunately for Timmy and the bears, Timmy’s father also created an urban squad of warriors – Wolf Squad, a team of armored wolves.  The wolves are only too happy to take on the Dark – relishing a chance for some serious action and the ability to show their thanks to Timmy’s dad.

I picked up this book as part of my Kindle Unlimited subscription. It looked like a quick, fun, middle-school read, which is exactly what it was.

This is the second book in a series but it wasn’t too hard to figure out what happened in the first book.

For the most part I enjoyed the book, but I found it to be pretty average middle-school fare.  There’s a little bit of danger, there’s the cue and cuddly teddy bears who’ve ‘grown up’ with the kids and have become armed warriors.  And now there’s warrior wolves fighting on the side of good as well.

I can’t honestly say that I gave this book my fullest, most devout attention (it didn’t grab me enough) but there were too many characters that I couldn’t tell who was who.  I’m not sure I needed to know the difference between the wolves or the bears, but since enough of them got ‘speaking roles’ it seemed I should know the difference between them and why there was a difference.

There are sixteen books in the series so there’s clearly an audience out there for these books and I can understand how they might really appeal to the right audience. Still, this overall is quite average, and I’ve rated it thusly.  If you’ve got a young reader, looking to dig into a new series, maybe they liked K.A. Applegate’s Animorphs series or Tony DiTerlizzi’s Spiderwick Chronicles, this is worth the read.

Looking for a good book? Cameron Alexander’s Wolf Squad is middle-school-dark with some action, walking, talking, fighting teddy bears and wolves, and a child’s search for his father.

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Wolf Squad

author: Cameron Alexander

series: Dark Corps #2

publisher: Bickering Owls Publishing

ISBN: 9780999113837

paperback, 164 pages