Skyfire by Michael Adams

The Seven Signs series. Scholastic, 2016. ISBN 9781743628010
(Age: 10+) Recommended. Adventure, Series, Awards, Thriller. When seven young people win a DARE Award and are invited to join the group, they find themselves enlisted to seek out the seven symbols that predict what could mean the end of the world. The seven books in this series offers the search for each of the symbols in turn, with various characters involved in a cliff hanger of a tale. Each book is less than 200 pages, told in short chapters, each about different people within the group, and each involving high risk behaviour and thrills.
The series, very plot driven and almost formulaic, is exciting and page turning as the seven young people are all chosen to represent as wide a group as possible, with several girls, a few from non Anglo backgrounds, a couple who are more than they appear and some from a different background. The mix is interesting and sure to create a broad appeal, ensuring the reader wants to know what happens to those characters they bond with but also intrigued about how all seven will survive the thrills and spills as the story unravels. This is a fast paced set of thrillers, engineered to grab the reader's attentions from the start, devised to create a need within the reader to buy or borrow the next books as they come out.
There is a website which invites participation, and enables children to interact with the story and devise their own symbol, with the possibility of winning prizes.
The second in the series is called Carnage and the remaining books will follow over the next few months.
Fran Knight