Read Dax Zander, Sea Patrol: The Hand in the Moon free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Noah Knox Marshall's Dax Zander, Sea Patrol: The Hand in the Moon is a science fiction adventure for 9 year olds about a boy who lives under the sea.
It's the year 2077. Thirteen-year-old Dax lives with his family on an old military seabase, twenty-eight metres under the Pacific off Hawaii. His mum is a brilliant engineer. His dad is the captain who ran the base during the pirate wars.
Dax spends his afternoons free-swimming in a clever suit that pulls oxygen from the water. He hitches rides on humpback whales. He's also always, ALWAYS hungry, and he keeps a secret stash of jerky under his bed because his mum's cooking is mostly vegetables.
The book opens with a jaw-dropping scene. Dax is kilometres from home when a pilot whale grabs him by the ankle and drags him about like a rag doll. He gets free with a very clever trick (and an orca turns up at just the right moment). Then he has to race home before his air runs out.
It's properly exciting stuff! But what makes it fun is how much of an ordinary kid Dax still is. He tries to use his bitten ankle to get out of eating salad. He teaches his little brother Kai about cowboys. He loses at Scrabble because Kai insists "tacklum" is a word.
Something bigger is brewing too. It starts far away on an icy ocean planet, where a peaceful race of sea creatures has just been found by someone who shouldn't have found them. Back on the seabase, Dax's dad has had some news he isn't ready to share.
The writing is quite rich, with lots of long sentences and plenty of science words (skinsuits, N-packs, Graphenex). It's pitched towards the older end of the shelf. A confident reader who loves gadgets and the sea will probably whizz through it. A younger one might enjoy it more read aloud.
For a reader who dreams of swimming with whales, try the first Survivor Diaries book next. Travis is on a whale-watching trip with his family, surrounded by orcas and humpbacks, when something goes badly wrong and he ends up in the rough, cold sea.
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