A cute side-story to complement the "main" adult novel The Rising Storm, Race to Crashpoint Tower is funny and simple in it's premise!

While I enjoyed the previous Junior novel more, as I felt the themes and messages more nuanced and developed, this one delivers a solid main character: Ram is quirky, interesting, and his struggles and different way to see things makes me feel he could be a kid's favorite if explored more.

Now, onto that, while this is clearly possible to be read as a standalone, I fear that we're approaching the MCU syndrome: a few times during the story I caught myself wondering if I'd be enjoying the second set of characters (Lula and Zeen) more if I had read the comics. Obviously, the answer is yes, but I believe a little more work could've been put into presenting them to a new audience, specially because the middle graders are not as likely to be the ones reading all the other works too, and this book is for them.

Still, it was quick and entertaining, even to someone way past the target audience, and I hope to see more of Ram and his mechanical skills in the future!