X's For Eyes

Please give me a helpful vote at https://www.amazon.com/review/RNU99NQB9DBNG/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

Other reviewers have mentioned the “Jonny Quest” aspect of this book. That element gives this book a lot of its charm, but it is Jonny Quest with a dark side.

Mac and Dredd Tooms are 12 and 14 and they belong to the secretive, elitist, mysterious Tooms family which runs one of the wealthiest corporations in the world. The boys are back for a summer vacation at a Tibetan monastery where they are being trained in martial arts and assassinations and they get involved in a secret rocket ship launch to Pluto, which is odd because the story is set in the mid-1950s. The technology available to the boys also includes artificial intelligence crystals. The boys are precocious beyond their years, consorting with hookers and being oblivious to the body count that piles up among their friends. Their adventure takes them into the Cthulhu mythos and a very disturbing discovery about their family.

The story is actually the first part of a longer project.

I enjoyed the story. I thought it moved at a nice clip. I thought it might make a decent YA for boys if the part about the hookers was left out. It certainly is an odd one in terms of genre, and if adolescents who might end up as human sacrifices is not inside your comfort zone, give it a miss.