Author:
Mark Walden

Number of pages:
299

What age group is this book written for?
Middle School

Category:
Fiction

Brief summary:
Thirteen-year-old Otto and three of his new friends are kidnapped and taken to H.I.V.E., a super academy for world domination where the particular talents encouraged are craftiness and daring. Students come from all over the world, speak varying degrees of English, and are often the offspring of H.I.V.E. graduates. Otto, however, is an orphan. He has real brilliance and a photographic mind. Both qualities made him relatively independent before he was kidnapped, and they now provide somewhat of a challenge to his would-be keepers at H.I.V.E. Otto spearheads the group's effort to escape and return home, an escape that is foiled in the course of an evening that involves H.I.V.E.'s electronic overseer, an out-of-control flesh-eating plant, and other technothrills. H.I.V.E. comes across as the shadow side of Hogwarts, but Otto and his pals aren't so much bad wizards as they are bright kids realizing they may be out of their depth. The cliff-hanger ending leaves much to be tied together in a sequel.