Book Title: Aoléon The Martian Girl: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Saga – Part 1: First Contact
Written and illustrated by Brent LeVasseur
Category:  Middle-Grade, ​94 pages
Genre: Science-fiction and Fantasy
Publisher: Aoléon Press
Release date: January 31, 2015
Content Rating: G

Synopsis

Crop circles magically appear in Farmer Johnson’s field. A mysterious light sweeps over the night sky and awakens Farmer Johnson and Gilbert, the boy next door.

Curious, Gilbert ventures out to discover the source of the light and stumbles into a beautiful Martian girl sitting in a crop circle. Farmer Johnson also investigates the strange light, and thinking that Gilbert and Aoléon are vandals, he chases them. But they sprint to Aoléon’s saucer and escape only to be pursued by the U.S. Air Force.

Gilbert has never been attacked by swarms of giant killer robots. Never met strange aliens from other worlds. Never skyboarded across a megalopolis hidden deep inside an extinct volcano. Never trekked across a vast Martian desert. And never been eaten alive by a gigantic slor (well, almost never, unless you count Billy the fat bully at school).

And luckily, he has never ever confronted an evil ruler of Mars bent on conquering the Earth to steal its cows.

Never…until now!

This may be the adventure Gilbert always wished for.

If only he can survive.

Buy The Martian Girl Song!

Another World – Single, Featuring Élan Noelle

Download on iTunes

Review

I don’t normally read books aimed at middle grade aged people, but this one sounded interesting so I had to check it out.  So glad I did because the book is fast paced from the beginning and doesn’t stop until it leaves you hanging waiting for part 2!  Gilbert is a typical boy and Aoléon is your typical Martian, I guess? Who knows what a typical Martian is like!  Anyway,  Aoléon takes Gilbert on the ride of his life in the spaceship and while it makes him nervous, he is also very excited by this experience.  After evading NORAD and NASA and every other government entity, they head to Mars where Gilbert gets a taste of what it is like on Mars.  I was surprised that during this escape that the spaceship didn’t seem to bring about as much attention as I would have thought considering it was close to the ground in several countries and seen by many.  This story is very engaging, descriptive and made me laugh along with keeping me on the edge of my seat during various parts of the book.  I was very sad to see part 1 end.

There are also illustrations in this book that are amazing.  Very lifelike and reminds me of some animated movies like Book of Life or Toy Story…there is probably a better example but that is what I could come up with off the top of my head!  There is one illustration I wish I could show you because it cracked me up….I was reading along and it talks about how Aoléon does something as they are trying to leave and cows start floating in this bubble. Then the military shows up trying to shoot down the spaceship and all of a sudden a cow is in the line of sight of the plane….I flip the page on my Kindle and there is the image.  It was just like I imagined and 100 times better.

We give this 4 1/2 paws and look forward to part two.

About the Author

Mr. LeVasseur enjoys crafting good stories based on lovable characters designed to translate well to multiple media formats such as books, games, movies, and toys. He lives in New York when he is not commuting between Southern California and Olympus Mons, Mars. His hobbies include writing, 3D animation, musical composition, and intergalactic space travel. He also enjoys various sports such as skiing, running, and exospheric skydiving.