An action, adventure, quest story; set in a near real world centred around England. DNA Thief is a young adult / middle grade book with agents, aliens, commandos, robots and loads of gear and gizmos.
Following a burglary Sean Yeager is swept up in a race to find the culprit and prevent him destroying whole cities. Sean becomes the target of investigation and intrigue while enjoying the thrills and spills of flying cars, missile wielding craft and the worlds of The Foundation and Egbert Von Krankhausen.
‘Rocket-fuelled mayhem that keeps you guessing to the last page.’ ‘A roller coaster ride of surprises.’
In full disclosure I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you to the author for this opportunity and a big thank you for signing the book as well.
There is a lot of attempted humour in this book, and for me almost all of it fell flat. The characters often make “cheesy” one-liners and personally I didn’t find them funny. Because there was a lot of this throughout the book, I find it hard to really enjoy it.
I also had a problem with the pacing. It moved along very fast, going from one fast-pace action sequence to the next with no pauses for a rest. This caused a number of problems. Firstly, because it is all action, the characters are never really explored in depth and we never really get to know what they are really like, in the way slower more personal scenes would allow. Secondly, in a similar fashion, the story itself lacks depth and sophistication. Thirdly, we are given very little background on the characters and the groups. This hurts because it makes it hard to understand their motives and also made me feel less connected to them
Because it is all action, I also found myself suffering from “battle-fatigue,” where I began to get tired of all the action and it became boring.
Having said that some of the sequences were interesting and exciting, and there was enough there to keep me reading.
The characters were good, they were nothing special but also they were not badly written or annoying. The characters are never really developed, and are pretty much the same as when the started out.
The characters also put Sean Yeager, a child whom they are supposed to be protecting, in constant and increasing danger. There was never any reason given to why he had to go, and considering we are told it was important to keep him alive, it really didn’t make sense why they kept putting him in very dangerous and unpredictable situations.
There was a minor issue with the alignment with the page breaks, in this case a series of asterisks between paragraphs, which are used to signify a change of scene. In this edition they were all left aligned instead of the typical center alignment. It was a little distracting and gave the impression of a book that hadn’t had a final tidying up.
I think this book is probably aimed at the younger end of the middle-grade audience, where perhaps they wouldn’t have the same complaints that I had with this book.
Overall I thought this book was okay. I thought it was hurt by the almost constant action without the juxtaposition of slower more thoughtful scenes that would give the characters and story more depth, background and development. The action also gets tiring and boring after a while. For me the humour fell flat and that hurt the book for me as well. I would think this book would be aimed at the younger end of the middle-grade audience (8-10 year olds)
Bought it for my 8 year old and he really enjoyed it. He needed a bit of help with some words but I was impressed with how well he read. He enjoyed the characters and jokes. Apparently I'm a bit like the mum.(Not sure what to make of that ???) Most of all he seems to like the shoot-ups and flying machines. My son's looking forward to the next one and I'm definitely going to have to read it myself now!
It was really for my son and then I read a bit too. He really liked it and I recommend the book to all youngsters from 10 to 16. I had to help him with some words (he's 9) and he was away.
According to my son - it's full of action, gear and humour. He loves the characters and the plot kept him guessing until the end. Now of course he wants the next one. I only hope there is a follow-up! It kept him busy for several days at the end of his holiday.
There was so much action in this fast-paced thrill ride that I kept seeing it as a movie in my head. Never sure where the story was going, I decided to sit back and enjoy the ride. What would have helped was to have put on some popcorn first! Although I understand that this is the first in the series I wanted to know more about Sean and indeed his mom who is quite the character and I laughed every time she shows up. I hope we see more of her in the series. What I also really liked was the fact that the bad guys really are bad guys and not some laughable buffoons like we tend to see in so many other kid stories.
My son who is 11 wanted something fresh to read and he likes space ships and things. I'd read good things about this book so we bought it for Kindle. Bit of a surprise it's written for older children than it looks. We had a laugh about the mother figure and the old Brigadier. My son said it was good because unexpected things happened and lots of things went wrong. He also likes the funny parts. We're looking forward to the next one, hope it's out soon.
My 7yr old son was completely captivated by this book, reading late into the night and searching for the ebook very early the next morning. When I asked him what he thought of it he looked up with wide eyes, nodded vigorously and gave a double thumbs up before going back to his read. He loves the car, Hermes, and all the machines. Oh yes, and the mad guys under the sea. He tells me there's another book on its way - we can't wait!
I just finished my free book,and it is a great story and I can not wait for the next book Hunter's Hunted. I will put this book into my reading cupboard for my high school students as they will enjoy it. This story had action and an interesting storyline and I want to know what is going to happen to Sean and why he is so important to the Founder. How do I get this next book? Sean Yeager and the DNA Thief D.M. Jarrett
Bought it for my son and ended up reading myself. It's fun, good plot and interesting characters. Doesn't take itself too seriously. Enjoyed the observations on a stressed out mum and middle aged agent and a boss who's not interested in who's been doing a great job. Where have we heard that before? More than you would expect in a book for a younger audience. Recommend it.
I like Dr Who and Star Wars. I was given this book as a present and its really cool. Its like a bit of both with lots of action. I didn't get the prolog. After that it gets really good. Now I've finished Artemis Fowl I'm looking forward to another series. Yipee!!!!
I was given this book as a free kindle copy by the Author. I finally got around to reading it and I was really impressed with it. It is an easy read, filled with fast paced action, keeping me stuck to it. It is a really interesting read that I would recommend, especially to lovers of YA books.
It was fun reading this on mums kindle. I like the battles and when things go wrong. It feels like you are there. Im looking forward to the next Sean Yager story.
Good fun adventure allegedly for all ages, but really just the younger end of mid-grade readers. The write up billed it as being funny and adventurous but with deeper nuance for older readers. There was no nuance. There was humour, but it was all trying a bit too hard, and had me groaning in places.
Sean Yeager is special. For some reason someone wants to steal his DNA and others want to protect him (although curiously then allow him to put himself at risk attempting to solve the mystery). There are aliens here and secret agents and (for some reason) a brigadier and a secret international task force. And as the book was definitely clearly American, I was confused by the brigadier and thought the author had maybe been watching Doctor Who? And then the influences on this tale kind of leap out at you, making it all a bit derivative.
The plot is a little preposterous, but fast paced and with various challenges and mishaps. Characterisation is weak, and for some reason the POV switches around but never really settling much on the protagonist, leaving his character underdeveloped.
As a simple plot based action adventure, this will work fine for 7-11s, but there is no reason anyone much older than that would want to spend time on this book.
Not what I was expecting, but it was cute! Some basic editing flaws in the ebook I read, but you basically got the point. My only worry (possibly not reading the next one though to find out) is all the mysterious, unexplained things about Sean and this organization will never be fully explained....
Sean Yeager and the DNA Thief is an action-packed Middle Grade science-fiction-y book that was seriously fast-paced and interesting. I did have a few problems with it, but overall there was nothing absolutely horrible about it, and let's go to the plot and characters and stuff first before get down to the nit-picky things.
First of all, plot. It was straightforward, it was fun, it was action-packed. Basically, this evil scientist man has stolen Sean Yeager's DNA... why?!?!? They don't quite know, but Yeager is one of the people that they need to protect, and the evil scientist man will probably do something nefarious with it. And that's basically it plot-wise. For such a short book, a straight-forward plot like that worked out fairly well.
Now, characters. I feel like the book sort of fell flat here. I could distinguish between characters, and I did grow attached to one - Reynald, if you're wondering, he was just a fun time - but for the most part, it was just like of like "ok." One thing that I found kind of interesting was that Sean Yeager didn't actually seem to be the main character? He wasn't as focused on as the members of the Foundation, and while I did like reading about the members of the Foundation, it sort of threw me for a loop when he wasn't really focused on. I barely got a feel for his character.
One thing I really liked about this book, though, was the science fiction aspect. I thought it was done very well. I feel like even though I didn't quite understand some of the terms used, it was explained and written in a way that I didn't get confused. I really liked that part. The action was also a lot of fun, but I feel as though this book could have been longer? I feel like there was a lot of story and a lot of action packed into such a small book that I feel like it would have been better had it been longer.
And one last little technical nit-picky thing - there were a lot of missing commas and typos. And if there's one or two I'll generally ignore it, but it was kind of distracting, especially at the beginning when you're thrown in and you don't know anything and so you cling to things you know, which is typos. I know typos! I know what's going on there! Let me cling to that!
But overall it's a good middle grade book. It's an enjoyable read and I didn't loathe my time reading it, which is always a good sign. So if you're way into middle grade or have a younger son/brother/nephew/et cetera, I'd pick it up. It's a fun time.
I bought this to read to my youngest child because I was fed up with the usual drivel and wanted something I would be interested in. Each chapter is a perfect length for a bedtime story and she is improving her reading at the same time. My Kindle kept disappearing because my eldest (an Artemis Fowl fan) would borrow it to read this ebook.
Certainly for a younger (7-14 years) audience. If your children like Artemis Fowl or, dare I say it Ben10, this would be for them. If you read bedtime stories for your kids and like authors such as Jasper Fforde, you'll enjoy reading this much more than the usual dross that insults your child's intelligence.