Richard Newsome, The Curiosity Machine (Billionaire #6), Text Publishing, 1 August 2016, 368pp., $16.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9781925355246
Move over, Tomb Raider, and stand back Indiana Jones. Gerald and his friends are hot on the action and exotic adventure in this pacey final installment of the Billionaire series.
It’s Gerald’s birthday, and he’s supposed to be celebrating it as only a boy billionaire can – partying with his family and friends on a yacht. But Felicity is acting strangely, Ruby is angry with him because… reasons, Sam is eating everything in sight, and now the yacht is being boarded by sinister forces with machine guns. What’s a boy billionaire to do but escape with his friends in his very own submarine?
Gerald and his friends now have to save their parents, escape from the guys with machine guns, work out just how many evil criminal masterminds are behind all the plots and counter-plots, figure out what exactly the Curiosity Machine does, and save the world.
Behind the almost cinematic pace and humour of the story is a rather interesting ethical and moral question: how far should you go for what you believe in and care about? Gerald finds out that his close friend, Felicity, has betrayed them because the villain has kidnapped and threatened her parents if she doesn’t help him. Gerald himself is sorely tempted by a promise of even greater wealth, even though he’s pretty certain that Mason Green is up to no good. Mason Green himself, the villain they’ve faced before, is willing to threaten and extort to rebuild his wealth. And, most seriously of all, the supervillain behind all the plots turns out to be willing to unleash plague and kill off a third of the world’s population in order to save the planet from human destruction. Even Mason Green thinks that that may be going a bit too far.
In a low-key way, the implications of the moral dilemma are played out. Is Felicity wrong to sell out her friends to protect her parents? The consequences of her actions put not only her friends, but everyone else on the yacht in danger, and fail to rescue her parents. Is Gerald right to consider Mason Green’s offer of unspeakable wealth? Gerald knows that Mason Green is probably up to no good, and that handing him the Curiosity Machine plans is probably a bad idea, and yet he’s sorely tempted.
Most significantly, is Jasper Mantle entirely wrong to want to go to extreme lengths to protect the planet and the animals he loves from the damage that people do? Gerald and his friends, in the course of their adventures, have certainly come face to face with evidence of this damage.
The strength of The Curiosity Machine, though, is the action-packed adventure across icy glaciers and tropical jungle islands, by helicopter and mini-sub and jet boat, to solve the puzzles and save the day. After a couple of choppy chapters at the beginning, the story settles into a fun and frequently funny adventure that kids, and particularly boys, aged 9 to 12 will love.
Reviewed by Emily Clarke
