Level Up

Tom Nicoll's Level Up is a fast, funny gaming adventure for 8 year olds about a girl who ends up inside her favourite video game.

What happens

Flo is VERY good at Star Smasher. Her best friend Max is not a gamer at all. So when Flo sneaks into her mum's workshop to try out a half-built gadget (ignoring several signs telling her not to), things go wrong quickly.

Max vanishes. Flo presses the button again. And suddenly they're both standing on a moon in the middle of a tank battle.

It's the opening level of Star Smasher. Max keeps getting hit by stray lasers and popping back up a second later (poor Max!). The only way home, Flo reckons, is to finish the game. Which usually takes about half a year.

What follows is brilliant fun. A stolen tank. A rocket jump across a giant trench. And a space soldier called Gary, who happens to be the Emperor's son, would much rather be an actor, and insists on performing his one-man play to his prisoners.

It's the jokes that make it. Flo is cocky and bossy and completely sure she's right. Max is the sensible one making dry comments from the passenger seat. Kids who play games will spot LOADS of in-jokes (a blue hedgehog in a hurry, a moustachioed plumber). But you don't need to be a gamer to enjoy it, and Max is living proof.

There's a sweet thread about Gary and his dad too. Gary's a soldier who never wanted to be one, and plenty of children will know how it feels when a grown-up has already decided what you're going to be.

Is it violent? There's a LOT of zapping and exploding, but everyone just respawns a few seconds later, so it's all very cartoonish.

For a reader who loves games, or a reader who's always being dragged along by a bossier best friend, it's a treat. It also works well for a child who's a bit reluctant, since the chapters rattle along.

What to read next

If they love the jokes, Tom Nicoll's Boyband of the Apocalypse has the same laughing-in-the-face-of-danger feel. Sam tells jokes whenever he senses mortal danger, which at a boyband concert with four identical girls from school closing in is quite often.