The world is conquered in ten seconds? Come on. Also, the voice itself isn't particularly scary. Not like the breathy, booming voice of, say, Darth Vader. It's more of a whisper and a little squeaky around the edges. In fact, I'm kind of disappointed that the imagination of my damaged mind couldn't do better. But then I notice what I've been too freaked out to notice before. No one is moving. Every single person, including Mrs. Whitehead, looks sound asleep. I feel a shadow over me then, and it practically knocks me off my feet. I struggle to breathe. I force deep breaths. Then I do what you do when people are sleeping at a totally inappropriate time and in a totally inappropriate place. I try to wake them. I shake Carlee Thorton, who is the best student in school and would never, ever fall asleep in class. I punch Jackson on the arm.
"Jackson, dude, it's me, Jess. Wake up," I plead. He doesn't....
I try my cell but it's dead. I go out into the hall and try some good old-fashioned screaming. No one screams back.
I'm all alone.
It's so quiet.

As the story progresses, Jesse is taken to work in Lord Vert's compound, where he cautiously makes a few friends among the other slaves and finds his own psychic powers growing to the point that he starts hearing another human's mental voice in his dreams. As Jesse loses some of his fear of his captors, he begins to plan an escape. The action ratchets up from there, as Jesse and a few companions do get away and the aliens use their technology to try to hunt down the missing product.

Yansky does some interesting things with the idea of colonialism that should bring to mind what European nations did in places like Africa and Southeast Asia in the nineteenth century. That is, in Sanginian society, sentience is measured on the basis of psychic ability. Anyone lacking that ability is considered an animal and can be killed without compunction. But when Lord Vert's people recruit human servants with a little psychic ability, their interactions prompt that ability to blossom. This means that a planet full of humans with negligible sentience is becoming a place with signs of greater sentience. The answer to Lord Vert's dilemma is, of course, to create a cover-up so that product-rights activists back on his home planet won't take up the cause of the humans on Earth. (Compare his decision to limit the evidence of psychic skills to the efforts of colonial Europeans to prevent native peoples from learning to read and write, which might indicate that they were as intelligent as their conquerors.)

We get the Sanginian point of view from Lord Vert's correspondence, mostly with his politically powerful and intimidating father. Because Vert is comically afraid of his father and of making bureaucratic screw-ups, it's easy to forget that Vert is himself very powerful, has personally committed genocide on a scale of billions, and uses the humans as slaves, including sexual slavery. If you take the time to think about it, this juxtaposition is a little jarring. But Yansky's point is a good one: we tend to imagine alien invaders as soulless monster-machines. Yet isn't there something even more terrifying about a rather ordinary personality with such power over others? A guy like Lord Vert, who happily justifies doing horrible things and then worries about what's for dinner?

The human point of view in Yansky's book is also poignant, as people who thought they were pretty independent and relevant are suddenly treated like animals. (Again, slavery and colonialism would have felt like that. Or the way Jews were treated by the Nazis.) As Jesse tells a fellow slave, a girl he's starting to like, "We matter." And she asks, "Why?"

Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences is fast-paced, often funny, and deeper than it seems at first glance, when it appears to be just another action-adventure tale. The book ends with a little group of human rebels in place as Jesse's powers take a surprising turn, clearly setting us up for a sequel. I hope that Brian Yansky can sustain his clever balance of humor, suspense, and even philosophy in the second book.

Note for Worried Parents: This isn't exactly a happy scenario, and Lord Vert has taken one human character as a concubine, a fact that, while it is never exploited, is quite clear (as well as necessary to the plot). A book for teens.

Vordak is an expert at the kinds of things kids who like video games, fart jokes, and books along the lines of Diary of a Wimpy Kid will greatly appreciate. Vordak really covers the bases, offering advice on everything from supervillain costumes to how not to talk to your arch-nemesis in clichés.

His suggestions about lairs are especially good, beginning with the "Starter Lair," AKA your bedroom. Vordak includes an "Evil Lair Gradual Upgrade Chart" to show how he began his own career by turning his bedroom into a lair (using saved-up birthday money), next remodeling a tree house (financed by money earned mowing lawns) before moving on to a converted garage (paid for by bagging groceries at Smart Mart). Oh, and then there's Lair #4, a Geosynchronous Doomsday-Class Orbiting Space Station. Vordak financed that one as follows: "Received $100 billion ransom from the League of Nations after threatening to use my inconceivable evaporation ray to completely drain the Atlantic Ocean."

Of course, Vordak has additional lair ideas, ranging from "The Abominable Abandoned Waterfront Factory" to "The Dastardly Deserted Amusement Park." He even offers readers "Four Signs You May Have Outgrown Your Current Lair." E.g., "You have to add a card table to the end of your Conference Table of Iniquity in order to seat everyone."

And wait till you see Vordak's take on superheroes. Here we get my favorite chapter title: "SUPERHEROES—Noble Upholders of Justice or Big, Fat, Stupid Jerks?" A running joke is that supervillains always put superheroes in "diabolically clever yet extremely slow-acting death traps." (Vordak complains that this tends to give the superheroes time to escape, but cites regulation 71b of the Superhero/Supervillain Official Rules of Etiquette.) Keep an eye out for the three reasons superheroes bother having sidekicks around, too.

Then there's Vordak's advice on writing ultimatums. Note that his author's bio states, "[Vordak's] previous writing includes his half of witty repartee with various Superheroes as well as numerous ultimatums to world leaders."

Seegert has a marvelous time playing with comic book, TV, and movie tropes about supervillains. He writes Vordak's voice with consistent arrogance, all the while keeping up a tongue-in-cheek tone. (Vordak reminds me just a little of Doctor Drakken, the main supervillain in the Kim Possible TV series.) The icing-on-the-cake touch to this book is that Vordak toys with his reader as he goes, pulling the kind of page-turn pranks on them that only a supervillain or an 11-year-old boy would dream up.

Considering the simplicity of the Vordak character's design (his face partly obscured by his evil helmet), John Martin's art is surprisingly effective. The illustrator depicts all manner of costumes and weapons and lairs, not to mention visual in-jokes, with clean cartoon lines, complementing the text perfectly.

Now, can you tell this is the kind of book you might be driven to read aloud to your relatives every few minutes, till they finally bellow, "Stop it! Just let me read the whole thing when you're finished, all right?"

With that in mind, I'll quit quoting already and point out that your 8- to 13-year-old son will probably get a real kick out of this book. And you might, too!

Note for Worried Parents: If you have a sense of humor, no problem. Because the worst this book could inspire your child to do is tease his sister for a few days and hang a few jokingly dire signs on his bedroom door.

Boarding school Dining Halls are not what you imagine. I've seen six, and put all Hogwarty thoughts from your mind. There will be no mahogany paneling, or portraits of old dead guys, or feasting on roasted wild boar by candlelight. The Finch Dining Hall is strip-lit, smells of beans, and looks a bit like a posh McDonald's. The food is just as enticing: Oil Pie, Lettuce in Soup, and the ever-popular Armored Pizza. (If the Mothership's Red Peppers stuffed with Red Lentils, Red Onion, and Red Cabbage don't kill me, their Fish Surprise will.)

Once Heidi invents Ed Hartley, she has to back him up, which includes putting him on the Internet. "Ed" ends up having e-mail conversations with Heidi's friends, which gets a little complicated, especially when Heidi sets out to solve their problems: Ludo and Peroxide Eric are having relationship troubles, Fili is desperately unhappy and won't say why, and Dai keeps doubting rich-boy Henry's love. Then someone who calls himself "E" and "a real boy" starts e-mailing Heidi, saying he knows Ed's a fake and why doesn't she choose him instead? Heidi tries to guess who "E" is, selecting just about everyone in sight and getting it wrong every time.

You, the reader, will probably figure out who "E" is right away, as I did, but it's sort of fun watching Heidi flounder. You might even appreciate her ongoing conversations with "Mycroft Christie," or watching the gingerbread man who represents Ed Hartley slowly going stale. (Um, symbolic much?) This book is very post modern and self-conscious, but it's also very funny. If this kind of style doesn't drive your teenage daughter crazy, she'll probably like My Invisible Boyfriend!

Be sure and check out the book jacket, or rather compare it to the cover—the full jacket shows three couples on a couch, including Heidi with a ghostlike figure, while the cover shows Heidi sitting alone. Nice design.

Note for Worried Parents: There's quite a bit of kissing going on, also teen angst and some mention of teens smoking and drinking.