Book Review: Mission Manhattan by James Ponti (City Spies #5)

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Wonderful characters, fast paced story

Cons: Climate change discussions, although mostly kept in the background

The Bottom Line:

Protect activist

Story pulls you in but lets

The characters shine

Another Fast Pasted Adventure

After the ending of the previous City Spies book, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the new one, so as soon as I got Mission Manhattan, I dropped everything to read it.  Fortunately, it was another fun adventure for everyone’s favorite teenage MI6 agents.

If you have yet to meet the City Spies, you are in for a treat.  As I said above, they are a group of young teens from all over the world who have been recruited for a top secret MI6 program.  While they train to be full fledged spies, they also go on missions where adults would stand out.

For example, as this book opens, the team is in Venice.  MI6 has intercepted a threat against a climate change rally that is featuring Beatriz Santos, a teen who has gained quite a following with her outspokenness on the topic.  Since she is from Brazil, Rio has been tasked with getting close to her.  It’s a good thing they are there, since things don’t go according to plan.

But Venice was just the beginning.  As the team looks into what happened there, they realize that the danger isn’t over yet.  Can they figure out what is happening in time to stop it?

Yes, I’m once again being vague in my teaser.  That’s because so much of the fun of the series is watching the story unfold.  And I don’t want to deprive you of that fun.

This is book five in the series.  There is a rather strong overarching plot line, and we get some developments on that here.  Yes, that does mean eventually we find out a bit more about the cliffhanger from the previous book, but it’s not right away.  As I expected, we don’t get complete resolution yet.  In fact, we get another ending that will make you want to pick up the next book.  If only we didn’t have to wait as long for it to come out.

Anyway, my initial point in bringing this up is that you’ll best understand everything going on if you start with book one.  Trust me, you’ll be quite happy you did.  These books are great.

If you read my reviews, you’ll already know what I’m going to say next.  Yes, I was disappointed with the focus on a climate change activist in this book.  Fortunately, the scenes where we really got into climate change were brief.  That just means we got brief lectures on the topic.  Sadly, they also present some strawmen on the other side of the issue during those passages.  Most of the book is focused on the plot.

And what a great plot it is.  The story has several great action scenes and plenty of suspense to keep us turning pages.  It straddles the lines between adventure and mystery perfectly, and I enjoyed the twists along the way to the climax.

However, what I really love in the series are the characters and their relationships to each other.  That is a standout once again.  These characters are a family and a team in every way, and it is wonderful to watch them in action.

Mission Manhattan will keep readers of all ages turning pages as quickly as they came.  Now comes the long wait for the next book in the series.

Enjoy more missions with the rest of the City Spies books.

This review is part of this week's Marvelous Middle Grade Monday.