BRAINBOY AND THE DEATHMASTER

Keith Masterly, billionaire software guru, uses his wealth to set up children’s shelters equipped with laptops loaded with his own interactive computer games. These allow him to identify brilliant kids whom Masterly then “adopts” and whisks away to his Paradise Lab where they work to discover the secret of stopping time. The lab is both spa and prison to the brilliant young scientists. Darryl and Nina are increasingly doubtful about Paradise Lab, a place with no windows, no communication to the outside world, and required daily doses of pills that have disturbing side effects. Two other kids are determined to find their way into the lab and rescue Darryl and Nina. Lacking the stylistic charm of much of Seidler’s other writing, this relies heavily on standard conventions of a child’s misplaced guilt over his parents’ death and a megalomaniac’s quest for eternal youth. Long on action and short on characterization and improbable, even for science fiction, this will nevertheless entertain readers who demand a fast pace and a cinematic, hair-raising but happy ending. (Fiction. 3-7)