The Bug Boys

The Bug Boys is a fun book to read. As an adult I was able to enjoy it, but I wish I'd had the chance to read it when I was younger. This is Young Adult done right; it respects the audience. The fun, superhero sci-fi story gets a healthy dose of humour. Good humour at that. A wry, mature approach to comedy that I would've craved as a young teen. Yeah, this is a book for those kids who raced ahead of the class and were forced to choose between books they'd outgrown and adult books that, whilst they could enjoy and appreciate, sometimes wanted something a little lighter to enjoy. Hoffman delivers something that can be enjoyed young and old, but more than anything fills that niche well.

I've called a sci-fi comedy type book because that's the easy description, in truth it's more a wry superhero comic story. Two schoolboys go on a trip and develop buglike superpowers. I think that alone qualifies it as a warm and affectionate parody of many origin stories. Throw in some nice touches of rural Britain and you end up with a pair of very British superheroes. I have the obvious benefit of some familiarity with the world but the footnotes would undoubtedly make it more accessible to readers of other backgrounds.

The book offers more than just fun though. Touching on some pretty intense topics this book doesn't shy away from confronting some of society's less pleasant aspects. It could be uncomfortable reading for some but I believe it handles the delicate issues well. It takes a certain courage to consider including them, and Hoffman displays a lot of skill in negotiating them the way he does.

A great read, and an impressive debut from this author. Definitely someone to watch.

I didn't like it from the beginning I couldn't feel the story even though I tried many times to read it.

The Bug Boys is a fun read. It tells of two boys who somehow eat the wrong food and then after eating other bugs can take on some of their traits to become almost super hero's. Of course two boys in a Yorkshire town don't know exactly what to do with these powers so their story is one of mistakes, laughs and farts...quite a few of those. They set about to try and improve things but find out that life can sometimes be a little more complicated and that super hero's don't have it their own way.

Aimed at a young boys market this works well as a fun, diverting read which is very predictable but has enough of the emphasis on fun that you don't mind. The characters are a little two dimensional though so it can feel a bit lightweight.

There is space here for a follow up and that would be interesting. For now this is enough fun and makes eating bugs almost palatable.