An exciting middle-grade graphic novel about best friends, giant
robots, and monsters from another universe!
In Dan McCloskey's debut graphic novel, best friends Pen and Olive live
in Cloud Town, an impoverished community on Floating Island, a
mysterious landmass that drifts above the earth and happens to sit
dangerously close to the Rip--a tear in the fabric of the universe. No
big deal or anything.
While Pen is brash and brave, Olive is quiet, kind, and also fearful of
bullies at school. That is, at least until the day they are nearly
squashed by a Care Corp Storm Catcher, a giant android built to protect
Cloud Town and the rest of Floating Island from Hurricanes, monsters
that travel across the Rip. It isn't the event itself that changes the
girls' relationship. It isn't the fear of death that drives them apart,
or the questionable decision-making that leads Pen to drag Olive into
the cab of the crashed robot. It's the fact that Olive can move the
90-foot-tall machine and Pen can't. Care Corp recruits Olive to train
as a pilot, so that she can protect Floating Island when the next attack
comes. It's a role reversal, for which neither of the girls are
prepared.
McCloskey's original art style shines in this wild adventure--it sets
the tone for a story that is not only filled with fantastic monsters and
mad science, but also the journey of two friends growing up and growing
apart in a border town on the edge of the possible.
