A few months ago I interviewed Ken Lamug about a kickstarter campaign he was running. Since then, I’ve been waiting patiently for the finished product, hoping it would live up to my expectations. The book, the first in Ken’s series about the young hero Talbot Toluca and his somewhat unwilling sidekick Damien, didn’t disappoint.
The story revolves around the title character, Talbot, and his friend Damien who are on an epic adventure across several dimensions to rescue their teacher and friend, Professor Bozwald from the evil Dr. Kadoom. Talbot and Damien are summoned to the secret government lab hidden under their school after the professor is zapped into atomic particles by his nemesis, Dr. Elroy Kadoom. Jim-bot, the professor’s mechanical assistant, gives the boys a device that will allow them to travel across the dimensions and collect the particles of Professor Boz along with the Ore Crystals, an energy source that powers the lab, and which Kadoom can use for unspeakable evil.
This is where the book gets interesting. As Talbot and Damien hop from dimension to dimension, readers are treated to hidden object spreads reminiscent of Where’s Waldo. Each scene is a rich, independent world that contains Talbot, Damien, Boz, Kadoom, a Kadoom-bot, and six ore crystals. There are also additional objectives associated with each world, like finding all of the batteries for the port-a-poddy in the robot world of Spackulus. I’m not going to lie, it took me a very long time to find all of the hidden objects in all of the different worlds, but I had fun and never ran out of new things to look at as I was searching. Of course, I was pleased to have a reason to take another look later on, when I found the list of additional hidden objects and characters based on Ken’s backers at the back of the book.
The robot world of Spackulus.
The story picks back up with the boys having collected all of the atoms. They’re zapped to Kadoom’s robot factory, and readers are treated to another two page spread of puzzles, this time in the form of a maze. (Full disclosure: I did not complete this one, it frustrated me and I wanted to read the rest of the story.) On the other side of the maze is one last hidden object spread, where you can see the multitude of robots Kadoom is hoping to power with the Ore Crystals. Talbot and Damien port back to their own lab, only to find Joe-bot unresponsive. The boys have to solve more puzzles to start up Joe, catch Kadoom, and crack into Bozwald’s computer, all of which took me longer than I’d like to admit.
The story itself is fun, funny, and the interactivity makes the whole thing seem a lot longer. The dialogue feels a bit off at times, but there’s always a disconnect when kids are talking to older adults. The art is bright and colorful, and makes the whole thing feel a little less dangerous than it otherwise might. The only thing that really threw me in the whole book was the introduction of Samantha at the beginning of the book when she doesn’t show up anywhere else.
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