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My Rating:

Some time ago I favourable reviewed Henry and the Flea, Brian Falkner's first novel and I now have the pleasure of an equally favourable review of his latest novel, The Real Thing.

Falkner comes up with some great ideas and in this clever story we meet up again with the people from Henry and the Flea. However this story belongs to Fizzer and his mate Tupai as they embark on an adventur of international consequence.

Fizzer has a gift - he can pick the taste of Coca Cola and say whether itis from can, cup or specific bottle size. What is mor he can pick a fake and that is at the heart of this adventure. Falkner has, once again, written a story which is exciting, challenging, funny and sure to captivate its readers.

Mindful of the reluctance boys often have for reading, Falkner's stories often hold a special attraction for boys. However, because it is such a contemporary approach to a universal product, The Real Thing, I believe, will appeal wqually to boys and girls. It will be a great book for holiday reading but also good as a story to read to children.

Another excellent children's book from a highly credible, original New Zealand writer.

Looking for an extraordinary action book for nine to 12 year olds? Tightly written, with superb teenage characters, and a nail-biting plot, The Real Thing is the perfect book to hand your youngsters when you want to wean them off the television.

As in the best action movies, within this story are several stories going on at once: there's the drama of a race against time; there's the intellectual challenge of outwitting the villains; and there are the personal quests.

Peopled with an ensemble cast that would make Stephen Spielberg jealous, the story boasts good guys struggling with personal issues, bad guys and girls with worryingly realistic malice a key character resembling the James Bond actor, Pierce Brosnan, a motley gaggle of Kiwi kids just getting on with things, and best of all, in the lead, a truly memorable odd couple.

The action dashes, in true James Bond fashion, around the globe, with locations in New Zealand, the United States, in the air and on the high seas, so it is very easy for even reluctant readers to visualisein movie terms. There is plenty of action, plenty of intrigue, and plenty of heroism here, but with a twist.

And Fizzer Boyd is the twist. Fizzer Boyd is the only person in the world who can taste the difference when things go wrong with Coca Cola. In fact, Fizzer Boyd is the first to know, because he has Extraordinary Sensory Perception.


With his friend, Tupai, who looks like a bouncer but has a gentle heart, Fizzer sets off to talk to the Coca-Cola Company about the problem he suspects with their recipe.

That's how the two New Zealand friends quickly become involved in a huge high-stakes adventure that takes them to the other side of the world and pits them against some ruthless people in a race to save not only the world's favourite soft drink, but also the lives of the only three people who know the top-secret Coca-Cola formula. Fizzer is the Coca-Cola Company's only hope. And Fizzer won't go if Tupai doesn't.

Fizzer and Tupai, with their friends, live in various kinds of families and situations that will be familiar to many New Zealand children. One lives in a dodgy part of town; another lives with his dad in a caravan beside a tidal inlet; Tupai lives with two parents who trust him, in an okay suburb.

Like all young people, they have things going on in their lives that most kids will recognise and deal with in varying ways, wand with varying degrees of success. In The Real Thing, Fizzer, Tupai, and their friends handle these everyday factors with solidarity and initiative - admirable ways for anyone to deal with life.

I like the quiet way Falkner depicts the relationships between his teenagers, their acceptance of, and sensivity to each other. It's real. It's plainly drawn and appealing, in the most positive sense. And with the characters' humanity and depth settled in reader's minds from the outset, Fizzer and Tupai's adventure becomes real, and all the more thrilling for readers who have already come to identify with and admire the boys.

What particularly appealed to me in this book are Falkner's quirky, believable characters, and his cleverly controlled writing style that boys - and girls - will love. It is the epitome of 'cool'. Fast-paced, tightly written and compulsive, it also manages to seem unhurried.

It is almost laconic in places, but exudes delightfully down-played wit, and an innate enjoyment of words. Plainly, Falkner like writing The Real Thing, and his enjoyment is catching.

If you want to encourage your young readers, buy them this book.

Like Brian Falkner's first novel, Henry and the Flea, his second has a gimmicky subject as its focus. Only three people in the world know the secret recipe for Coca Cola. They are kidnapped, so no new drink can be manufactured. Into this high-pressure corporate landscape comes a Kiwi lad with eatraordinary taste buds - Fizzer Boyd. Along with his mate Tupai White, he's primed to help out the mother company and solve the kidnapping problem.

Despite the appropriate age of the protagonists, the striking thing about The Real Thing is that it's not junior or YA fiction. It's essentially an adult novel in its consciousness. I found it distasteful because it was so obviously commercial: slick and shallow characterisation, adult authorial perceptions and glib observations - all clinging to a mediocre idea.

But of course I'm exercising an adult's critical judgement: I think this novel is cynicallly written, and curiously lacking in integrity. It doesn't employ younger reader-friendly language, and such a reader would not understand a lot of its cultural innuendos (it's observed that one of the characters has a "trophy wife"). But older kids, especially boys, could well be grabbed by it. The central idea is quirky and current enough to amuse them. And we all want boys to read.

This book was about a boy named Fizzer
Boyd. Fizzer has the ability to determine the
different elements of coke - such as the type
(e.g. Coca Cola), he also can tell the bottle it
came out of e.g. 250ml bottle. Every year at
the school’s fun day Fizzer has a stand to see
if anyone can prove him wrong, this has never
happened. Then his luck changes at his
last ever school fun day when a boy comes
up and gives Fizzer a glass of coke, Fizzer
takes a drink, he pauses, he does not know
anything about this coke so he made a mad
guess. Unfortunately for him, or fortunately
for us, he is wrong and that is where his and
his best friend Tupai Whites adventure starts.
I enjoyed this book as it was action packed
the whole way through, the one criticism I do
have is that certain parts of the story were
irrelevant to the main plot. Other than that
I would recommend this book to anyone -
especially to those who enjoy adventurous
stories. The character I liked the most was
Fizzer because he was up for anything
coming! I’d give this book four out of five and
recommend it for kids of 12 and over.