Monday, August 29, 2016

Hardy Boys Undercover Brothers #28-30: The Galaxy X Trilogy

The very first book in the Nancy Drew Diaries series, Curse of the Arctic Star, has this quote on page 42.
"Yeah," Tobias scowled.  "I wanted to go to Galaxy X.  That's what I call a cool vacation.  Not some stupid boat."
The Hardy Boys Undercover Brothers Galaxy X Trilogy consists of the following titles.

#28 Galaxy X
#29 X-plosion
#30 The X-Factor

In #28 Galaxy X, someone is threatening to sabotage the grand opening of the new theme park, Galaxy X.  Frank and Joe are asked to find the saboteur.

These sabotage plots are so original.  Not!

The end of this book is typical.  The culprit confesses but not to everything.  After the culprit is jailed, more sabotage occurs.  This means we have another saboteur!

In #29 X-plosion, Frank and Joe continue to investigate the sabotage at Galaxy X.

I enjoyed this book more than the first book, since the boys interact with a female skateboard champion who is quite interesting. In fact, she is my favorite part of the book.

This is a very good book.

In #30 The X-Factor, Frank and Joe are still stuck at the amusement park, investigating even more sabotage.


I guessed the probable final culprit fairly early in the first book, due to this person's ability to hot wire the roller coaster.  Over and over during all three books, the boys mention that the culprit has to be quite knowledgeable about electronics.

The boys never mention this one person's obvious knowledge until very close to the end of the third book.  Every trilogy is like this. The culprit is obvious, but the boys have no clue.

The trilogy is overall good, and once again, I am being generous.

The cover art for all of the trilogies is lame. The boys look so uninterested, which is fitting since the plots are boring.  The boys are extremely stupid in the books, and they look appropriately stupid on the covers.  So I could perhaps say that the cover art is excellent, since it captures how awful the series truly is.

1 comment:

CvilleTed said...

Great comments on the Undercover Brothers series and the trilogies! I have this theory that the models used for the covers portray a group of kids that would more than likely bully the kids who would read or buy Hardy Boys books. As a kid that loved books and reading I would have passed on these books, I had enough (negative) interaction with this type of kid at school that I certainly wouldn't want to read stories with them as the hero or main characters!