Alien Abduction! The Owls Have Come to Take Us Away by Ronald L. Smith

"I think something happened," said Max. "We were camping. I was getting some firewood. I saw a light and like, an owl looking at me. And then I passed out. When I woke up, there was this little hole in my stomach. I think they put an implant inside of me!"

I thought Tony would burst out laughing, but he didn't. "I believe you, hombre," he finally said. "You have to tell somebody. What about your parents? I mean, they have to help you, Dude."

"I did. They thought I was crazy and took me to a doctor. They're making me take pills."

Tony bolted up. "Man, we gotta get you off of those!"

Mom thinks he needs medicine, his dad thinks he needs toughening up, his psychiatrist thinks he's delusional, and only Tony and his brother's girlfriend Miranda seem to believe what Max saw in the woods and the owls he keeps seeing in his window. Max believes he's been the victim of an alien abduction. And when Miranda takes him to a meeting of alien believers, what he hears convinces Max that what he feels is happening--the Grays, the extraterrestrials, is real. And they will return--when they are ready to use him.

If climate collapse weren't scary enough already, beware. Aliens are back, and we're not talking ET, either.

Not for the faint of heart, Ronald L. Smith's The Owls Have Come to Take Us Away (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019) is for those readers who like to get goosebumps. Max is a wholly believable kid, one who hates gym class, never manages to please his military dad, but loves to read, one who would never seek out a ghost or an alien. But there it is--an owl, a loss of consciousness, something implanted just above his belly button and big-eyed birds watching him everywhere. Is he a just a disturbed child or can he see what the others cannot see is happening around them?

This is not your father's Boy-Meets-Bug-Eyed-Monsters story. Middle readers who like to get their pants scared off now and then will welcome this venture into the sci-fi tradition by veteran thriller writer Smith, who builds his tale of a seemingly normal summer vacation that builds to quite a climax, managing to blend British faery legend into a a tale of aliens with their own plan for saving the world.

Roland Smith's latest is ready to pair and scare thriller lovers with Smith's award-winning and bewitching Hoodoo (see my review here).

One Wisdom to Rule Them All: The Spinner Prince (Pride Wars) by Matt Laney

I AM LEO, PRINCE OF SINGARA, and I am about to die.

Time of death: tomorrow afternoon.

Cause of death: slaycon bite. It's not a pleasant way to go.

It is the custom in the Kingdom of Sinhara that on the first full moon after the thirteen anniversary of his birth, a crown prince must travel to the borderlands and kill a beast, the venomous slaycon, before he can succeed to the throne. But Leo, the grandson of the revered Raja Khan, feels unready.

I'm not exactly a textbook specimen of the Singa race. Most younglings at thirteen are nearly full grown and ready for battle. I'm small for my age. My mane has not yet bloomed. My roar is a cublike yowl.

But Leo is unlike his peers in an even more dangerous way. In a kingdom which values science and logic above all, he is a Spinner with the forbidden fiction affliction, the urge to storytelling. If discovered, Spinners are under penalty of having their tongues cut out and being exiled to the land of the enemy, the Maguars, and Leo has long struggled to conceal this trait which forces itself upon him at unwonted times. His grandfather is old, and the time has come for Leo to prove himself. worthy of his succession. But as he begins his journey to face the slaycon, he suffers an attack of the affliction which leaves him weakened but with a stranded spirit companion who promises to appear on his behalf in his ordeal.

Leo slays the beast with the advice of the spirit Oreyon whom he summons by name, but when he makes his return to the Khan's Palace, he is not feeling triumphant. His uncle Tamir is clearly gathering forces to overthrow his claim to the throne, and when Leo journeys to the Academy for his two years of required training, he finds that the corps there is also filled with followers of Tamir. Only his quadron, the four fighters to whom he is assigned, are loyal to him. And then comes fearful news.

The Academy leader reaches the high table, her eyes downcast. "We are .... honored to have General Dagan visit, but she brings difficult news.

Our great leader and lord, Raja Kahn, is dead. He took his last breath this morning."

His rivals are spreading the story that the Border Wall has been breached by the Maguars and that invasion from their ancient enemies is imminent. And when Leo returns to Singara, guarded only by his youthful quadron, his enemy Tamir is clearly determined that he will never assume the throne of the Khan of Singara. But one of his spirit mentors, Shanti, shows him a different way.

"The only way to vanquish Hasatamara, the true enemy, is not with war but by bringing the Singa and Maguar back together as one Pride of Leos."

Can young Leo, who shares the storytelling second sight of the Maguars, be the force that reunites the long separated lion people into one peaceful kingdom? In his first book in a proposed series, The Spinner Prince (Pride Wars) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), author Matt Laney draws on diverse folklore and literary (shades of J.R.R. Tolkien!) roots to create a story of post-apocalyptic times when humans are replaced by a race of highly evolved lion nation-states, once one people but divided for centuries into two warring kingdoms, one devoted to reason and science and one which follows religion and art.

There is a deep metaphor at the heart of what appears to be a heroic adventure story, in quasi-medieval martial setting, of the grand division of mind into its two opposing areas, left brain and right brain, art and faith vs. science and logic. The stripling Prince Leo, still far from his mature physical powers, has been both cursed and blessed with the power of understanding both lineages of their race, and the closing of the book ends with Leo leading his meager but loyal forces through the Border Wall into the lands of the Maguar in a quest for the one wisdom to rule them all.

Young Leo's struggles with what it means to lead and its vivid settings and fast-paced martial action keep this thoughtful story of power and wisdom moving along in an intriguing fantasy hero story for middle readers, one which promises several sequels.