Customer Reviews

Trackers: Book 1

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Patrick Carman has created another masterpiece. This story, much like Skeleton Creek, is told in two parts: first the books and then videos to supplement the story. Who or what are the trackers? They are a group of friends who have cutting-edge technology and really want 'to do good'. They desire to use their skills and technology to discover truths and bring them to the light.

The Trackers are: Adam, he's the brains behind the crew, the one who creates all the gadgets that start to get them into trouble; Lewis, the cautious one, who has computer skills, but also is the one to always worry; Emily - great skill with remote controls and nerves of steel. And finally Finn - he is the athlete, skateboarder, and always pushes the limits, but he is also the one who helps to take the edge off.

The team has spent their time building tools to use for surveillance and investigation. But something has gone horribly wrong. And now Adam is telling his story to the authorities. The website with the videos is excellent and the videos are incredibly well done. I have read the book twice - the first time with just reading the transcripts of the videos at the back of the book, and the second time watching the videos. It does work without the online videos but they do add to the story.

Adam was captured by someone posing as the Glyph Master who drew him to a website with puzzles from a secret language he helped create. He was drawn in, and by the time he realized he was in trouble it was too late.

This book is great and looks like it will be the beginning of an excellent series.

In a nutshell, if you're a tech-oriented late elementary school or middle-school student with a good Internet connection right on hand and a high tolerance for the unbeliveable, you may find this to be interesting and entertaining.

The book tells a tech-oriented adventure. The narration makes reference to videos and things that help explain the plot, so accompanying the book is a web site, where the reader can go to watch the videos. The videos are fairly well done and do contribute to the story. The problem is, unless the reader has an Internet connection really close by they're going to have to wait until later to see the videos. This means either reading a chapter, running for the computer to watch a video, reading another chapter, running for the computer again, etc., or reading several chapters, then later watching several videos. Either way, it's disruptive.

So this isn't a book you're going to want to read, say, on a car trip, either.

The book's appendices contain transcripts of the videos, but it's not the same. Some of the videos illustrate things graphically that the written transcripts cannot.

As for the story itself, I wasn't really able to get into it. The plot is in the "super-smart whiz kids get themselves into something sinister" genre, and the main character (Adam) is just too unbelievable. As a young teenager his computer skills are already off the charts, so to speak, and he's building all sorts of clever gadgets, writing security code used by major corporations, and earning scads of virtual currency online. Oh, yes, and in one seventeen-hour all-nighter he repairs 24 computers that Microsoft, with all its resources, couldn't fix. Right.

Plus I don't like his attitude.

The story is told as verbal narrative: the main character is being interrogated and relates events that happened some time in the past. But it didn't have the feel of a verbal narration; the language and descriptions used in the narration are not the types that someone would use when speaking.

If this were done as a pure electronic book (combining text and videos) it would be a lot better.

I chose this book with my nearly 13 year old son to read. Finding books that interest him are difficult because he reads well above his grade level but I don't want the subject matter to be too mature for his actual age.

We both ended up loving this book, full of characters of exceptionally smart teens, lots of twists, thrills....we both read it in one sitting because you just have to know what happens next. It's one of those books where you say "just one more page" and quickly find that you're at the end of the book without even realizing it. He has requested that I put this series on his Wish List and has done a bit of research to find out what else this author has written. In my opinion, that makes this book a success!

My 12 year old has passed it on to his little brother who is 11 who is also enjoying it. Technically I guess it falls under the "sci-fi" genre, but to us, it's just smart.

The Trackers book 1 is a mystery that has the main charactars Adam the brains of the operation, Finn the one who likes to take risks and skatebords a lot, Emily is the one who is a wiz with remote controls, and finaly Lewis he is the one who is super cautious and does not like to take risks. These are the trackers.

Adam makes all the inventions to help the trackers figure out mysterys they get in. Emily is the one who likes to test them out first. Finn keeps every body cheered up when they're feeling down. Lewis is the safe one and tries to keep everyone safe. The way lewis does that is he thinks of every possible way things can go wrong.

While they are doing that Adam gets sidetracked by the glyphmaster which takes them on a crazy adventure. Then a crazy thing happens but I am not going to tell you. You have to read it for your self.

I would recommend this book to every one, but especially the ones who like adventures and mysteries.

Adam, Lewis, Emily, and Finn. The four of them together are the Trackers. Adam started it all by inventing high tech cameras and then orchestrating field tests for them. It started out as something of a game, but when a young lady named Zara issues a challenge to them, it all becomes very real.

The book is laid out in the format of an interrogation between Adam and an unknown investigator. It is clear that Adam is the suspect of some event, but it isn't made clear what happened. The entirety of the book felt almost like a prologue to the real event. The interrogation style made for an interesting and engaging story telling style to begin with, but after a while the interrogator just gets on your nerves. He keeps asking the same question in different forms "Did you know the danger you were getting yourself and your friends into?" It is a perfectly reasonable thing for an interrogator to ask, but it was still annoying.

I didn't realize that the links and passwords the book kept giving were meant to be visited. If I had been around a computer I would have checked, but seeing as I was reading a book, I didn't think I needed a computer. So instead of seeing any of the videos, I read the transcripts for each one. After finishing the book I finally visited the website, and boy had I been missing out. I was impressed by both the site itself as well as the videos. I think that the interview style of the book combined with the videos and Trackers website make an amazingly cool reading experience.

The biggest complaint I had about the story was Adam. He was a pretty cool and a really smart character, so why was he so totally owned by Zara? I can understand genius being constrained to one field, such as computers for Adam, but that doesn't mean that he needed to let himself be totally controlled by his enemies. It kind of ruined the awesomeness of the book for me. I also felt that the story wasn't as smooth as it could have been. I occasionally got confused and disoriented.

But for kids and teens, especially boys, I totally recommend this book.

If you want a taste of the videos, here is the website: trackersinterface.com, and first password: strognofe993.

I am a huge fan of Patrick Carman's Land of Elyon series. Those books were fun, engaging and entertaining. I simply could not get into this book. I plan to read the next book in the series to see if they pick up for me, but this one was not in the same league as his other writings for me.

In the digital age, tracking someone is easy for a computer whiz like Adam, especially when tracking is in his blood. In Adam's own words, "Everyone leaves a trail. Some of them shouldn't be followed."

Adam and his three friends track a mysterious computer hacker, only to be pulled into a dangerous situation they aren't sure they'll escape.

I've never read a book like this before, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Not only do you get one amazing mystery to follow, but there are codes and a website which allows you to watch videos of the team's tracking experiences and you can break the codes online, as well. You get both the reading and the viewing experience, which adds a whole new level to reading in the digital age.

Unfortunately, I'm a "late night" reader and was in bed while I read this, so I wasn't able to access the videos at the time. Thankfully, there's a transcript in the back of the book, so if you don't want to go online you don't have to and will still be able to follow the story. Even though I'd already read the book, I did go online and watch the videos the next day. I had a blast seeing the characters come to life, and wished I had watched the videos instead of reading the transcript first!

I completely enjoyed this book and hope to track along with Adam and his team in book two, SHANTORIAN, when it's released!

Reviewed by: Joan Stradling

Fifteen-year-old Adam Henderson is a tech-geek wiz kid. When he meets 3 other like-minded teens with gifts of their own, they decide to become self-appointed Trackers - high tech detectives. But when Adam gets a message that he and all of his inventions have been hacked and stolen, the team may be in over their heads.

This latest release from Carman is a unique new "vbook," incorporating clues and electronic files that can be found online so the reader can follow along in two separate ways. This twist brings a whole new dimension, and allows the reader to actually experience the story instead of just being a spectator. For those without easy access to the internet, transcripts are also found as appendices in the back of the book.

The narrative is told as an investigation unfolds, where Adam is telling his side of the story. While suspense builds throughout, unfortunately this is only the first chapter of a larger story and seems much too short. The reader is left with a huge cliffhanger that will continue in the next story. The characters are likeable enough. But the chapters were much too choppy for my taste. Because of all the jumping around, I found it hard to get into the story and involved. But for those looking for a mystery that have a lot of patience to wait out mysteries that span across installments of books, this may be worth your while.

This is an interesting experiment in multimedia fiction. Readers, or should I say fiction consumers need access to the Internet while reading to be able to accompanying videos. It is an interesting idea that bridges print and video. It is definitely aimed at the middle school escapist crowd.

this Is a great book I highly reccomend it. He also has another great series called skeleton creek if you like trackers read skeleton creek.