The Bad Guys Episode 5: Intergalactic Gas product reviews

The Bad Guys is one of my son's favourite series. He reads them non stop.
Episode 5: Intergalactic Gas, picks up right where the previous book left off and sees the unlikely group of heroes embarking on a dangerous space mission to save the world. My son read the book cover to cover as soon as he got his hands on it and I had to pry it off him so that I could read it and write this review.

My son loves the comic strip style as he doesn't like to read books with too many words plus pictures can sometimes express certain actions and feelings better than words can and really draw you into the story. There is a lot of toilet humour which is perfectly suited to the books target audience but if you don't want to encourage that sort of thing then this is not the book for you. The story is fast paced and full of action from the get go. It is entirely dialogue driven and each character has their own quirky personality - the perfect mix of silly and sincere and blunt honesty, that you can't help but fall in love with them. This book had me laughing out loud at parts and my son in absolute hysterics. You definitely need to read the previous books to understand what's happening in this one but they are fairly short and quick to read (another reason my son likes them so much).

I was getting a bit concerned that the story was starting to drag on and get too over the top silly but it still works. It's definitely not for everyone but I think that most kids will like this series and I'm interested to see what the next book will bring.

I know you are not suppose to judge a book by its cover and it is exactly what I did with the first book - I saw it was review and instantly skipped over it. As fate would have it I ended up winning that book along with some others from a KR competition. I was bored one night and I picked it up and started reading it, I was laughing so much my husband came to check on me and I tried reading him parts of it thru tears. The next morning I read my girls the story and they were also laughing. I requested the second book and thankfully got to review and loved it. Too scared I would miss out on anymore I ended up purchasing the next two from the Lucky Book Club and thankfully I just received the fifth one to review. My daughter adores them and has quickly put ownership on all the books.

Although I am not a huge fan of the drawings I love the story and the characters personalities are fantastic, especially the Mutant Sardine aka Mr Piranha. Basically it is about Mr Wolf who is tired of being classed as a 'bad guy' and so enlists some of his friends help Mr Shark, Mr Snake and Mr Piranha and tries to change there reputation from bad to good. Obviously it does not go well as only Mr Wolf is really passionate about the 'good guy' agenda.

Although this book is good and still had me laughing in a couple of places, I feel it has kind of lost its way and gotten rather silly. Thankfully (without giving too much away) they finally take a win but really it is a loss as Dr Marmalade true character emerges. As I was turning the pages coming to the last page I assumed that this was the end to the series but now a whole new villain has appeared and a new path has opened up and I am very interested in to seeing how this all develops.

My daughter who is eight, took this book to bed with her on Friday night and read it within about an hour and even wrote a book report on it. She found it very funny and enjoyed Mr Piranha being stuck in the space suit with Mr Wolf after eating 37 Burritos, yes you can imagine how it ends up. I have to admit I was even laughing at this part and I am not usually one for toilet humour.

I think this series is fantastic and the characters all have me laughing at some stage or another. They are smart yet extremely dumb and naive and just so lovable. You are routing for them as there hearts are in the right place they just don't really seem to think things thru very well. A brilliant, quick series which is great for kids and adults.