In a country beset by civil war, New London defends itself behind a giant wall. Inside the city, children are forced to work from an early age, except for the lucky few who train to be leaders in the re-purposed Palace of Westminster.
12-year-old orphaned Pax is brilliant at recycling old tech. He enjoys working on the verti-farms and just wants a bit of peace and quiet. But when that is taken away from him, his only hope is to pass a near-impossible exam and join the other students in Scholastic Parliament.
There he’ll make new friends and new enemies. He’ll get tested like never before. And he’ll discover that not everything is quite what it seems under the mayor’s harsh leadership.
Middle Grade fantasy isn’t my usual wheelhouse but Pax and the Missing Head, the first in what promises to be an intriguing new series from David Barker, proved to be an engaging adventure story set in a dystopian future London.
Twelve-year-old Pax lives within the walled city of New London. Outside the walls, civil war is raging but the people of New London are protected. Or rather, they’re protected for as long as they can work. Get too old to contribute – or refuse to undertake your assigned job role – and you’re at risk of being banished to the clutches of the Countryside Alliance. With freedom almost non-existent, Pax’s life is a constant round of work but at least the verti-farms aren’t too bad an assignment, whilst his shifts in the electronics recycling centre give him plenty of opportunities to exercise his talent for engineering.
But when all of this is taken away from him by Commandant Hanson, Pax’s only chance of escaping a life of menial drudgery is to pass the exam that will get him into the Scholastic Parliament: a school for talented young people. Bigger things lie in wait for Pax as he enters the Parliament’s doors and his life will certainly change. But can he ever escape the grasp of the system he was born into?
It took me a little while to find my feet with Pax and the Missing Head. Although Pax himself was an immediately likeable and engaging central character, there was a fair amount of world building to get through before the story really kicked into gear and, for the first few chapters, I wasn’t entirely sure what the book was going to be about.
Once Pax arrived at the Scholastic Parliament however, we’re in much more familiar territory, with some good old-fashioned school-based shenanigans. Pax is soon making friends (and enemies) whilst learning new subjects and trying to help his team – The Judges – win the parliamentary championship. All of which is immeasurably complicated when the Parliament’s Head Teacher goes missing and sinister government forces try to impose their will on the school and its residents.
There’s a lot to like about Pax and the Missing Head and it’s certainly a boisterous adventure that will appeal to upper middle grade and younger YA readers. The world is interesting and engaging, with shades of both Harry Potter (in the Scholastic Parliament setting) and the dystopian worlds of both 1984 and The Hunger Games (within the wider world), and David Barker does a great job of keeping the dystopian elements the right side of middle-grade appropriate whilst still conveying the oppressive atmosphere of an authoritarian state. However, some elements didn’t come to the fore as much as I had expected given their prominence earlier in the book. This may well be world-building for future titles in the series but, personally, I’d have liked to know a little more about the civil war between the City-States and the Countryside Alliance, as well as about the divide between older and younger residents of New London.
That said, I really enjoyed the focus within the book on supportive friendships and loved seeing Pax grow in confidence once he’s given the support and encouragement that has clearly been lacking from his life. All of the characters are lively and interesting – even the villains – and, once Pax arrives at Scholastic Parliament, the plot rattles along nicely and has plenty of action to keep the pages turning.
Overall, Pax and the Missing Head is an enjoyable start to what promises to be an interesting and engaging Middle Grade series.
Pax and the Missing Head by David Barker is published by Tiny Tree Books and is available now from all good booksellers and online retailers including Hive, Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Wordery.
If you can, please support a local indie bookshop by ordering from them either in person or online! Some of my favourites include Booka Bookshop, Sam Read Booksellers, Book-ish, Scarthin Books, Fox Lane Books, and Berts Books.
My thanks go to the publisher for providing a copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review and to The Write Reads for organising and inviting me onto this blog tour. The tour continues until 02 November 2023 so please do check out the other stops using the #TheWriteReads #UltimateBlogTour for more reviews and content!
Reviews on The Shelf are free, honest, and unbiased and I don’t use affiliate links on my posts. However, if you enjoy the blog, please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi!
The Shelf of Unread Books 