Outlaw [Paperback]

I do not find Stephen Davies's children's novel of 2011 OUTLAW easy to evaluate. But the more I read it, the less I like.

So let me do a bit of analysis and evaluation of five elements of OUTLAW: plot ... violence ... .. moral or message(s) ... frame and structure ... characters: Kirsty, Friends of the Poor.

I. THE PLOT

Two teen-age siblings are kidnapped and driven into the desert. They are the two children of the British Ambassador to Burkina Faso (the French called it Upper Volta when it was their colony). The boy, Jake Knight, is 15 and has just been suspended from his posh English boarding school. Why? For using parkur techniques to leap over a wall into a prison on a dare. But once in, he could not escape. So he is sent away to Ouagadougou, the near-Saharan capital of Burkina Faso (let's call it BF for short) to join his motorcycle-riding diplomat father, beekeeper mother and 13-year old Kirsty, better known as Kas. The day after Jake's humiliating arrival the Knight family attend a banquet celebrating ten years of a foreign consortium's profitable management of BF's gold reserves. From this lavish meal (gold knives, forks, even desserts, etc.) Kas is kidnapped. Trying to rescue her, Jake is overpowered and taken along as an extra negotiating asset.

Jake uses his smart phone to alert his father. Later the kidnappers make him use that instrument to photograph and send to FaceBook Kas reading aloud a French language demand for release of political prisoners in Britain. The kidnappers are in false identity, in the pay of BF's corrupt Commissioner of Police. On their way to being shot, Jake and Kas are rescued by a gang calling itself Friends of the Poor. They attack the kidnappers with slingshots Eventually their 18-year old leader Yakuuba Sor aka The Chameleon smuggles Jake and Kas past the Police Commissioner's guards back into the ambassadorial compound. The Chameleon and his young idealists had been effectively framed for the kidnapping by evil elements within the BF Establishment. As a result Great Britain is taking clandestine steps to annihilate the Friends.

Using parkur techniques, Yakuuba Sor escapes the ambassador's compound with the help of angry bees who attack the police forces chasing the young African. Towards novel's end, Yakuuba and Jake have met up in the abandoned Red Cross desert camp used by the Friends of the Poor as a base. Her Majesty's government has been suckered by the Commissioner and cronies into believing the frame-up and is well along towards dropping a smart bomb on the compound. Will the brave lads survive? Read OUTLAW to find out.

If OUTLAW constrained itself into being merely a very fast paced, action packed, hi-tech adventure tale for 12-year old readers and placed in exotic African urban and desert settings, I would give OUTLAW high marks, say 4.5 stars: * * * * 1/2.

II. VIOLENCE.

OUTLAW is an unspeakably violent, bloody read for 12-year olds. A loony British Intelligence officer unnecessarily shoots an African doctor, two of his injured patients and almost succeeds in shooting his target, Yakuuba Sor. The MI6 man is "licensed to kill" and his killings are retroactively approved by London. And this is only one of several incidents of needlessly graphic violence, including fatal stings of BF police by the Ambassador's wife's bees. For needless, tasteless violence: One star *.

III. NOVEL'S MORAL OR MESSAGE(S)

OUTLAW is unabashedly didactic. Some teaching is factually informational, e.g. about the landscape of BF and about hi-tech smart bombs and a tiny British Intelligence beetle with an implanted micro-homing device. Other teaching is, by contrast, heavy-handed preaching and denuncation of the ills of the greedy West which has driven out Africans who had mined gold for centuries. The British Embassy has stupidly allowed itself to become a pawn of evil forces in BF who persuade MI6 to do in the honorable young Robin Hood wannabes, the Friends of the Poor. The MI6 man, who is sent overnight from London to help the ambassador find his children, is a trigger-happy, psychotic pony-tailed hippy. For overdrawn preachiness: Two Stars **.

IV. NOVEL'S FRAMEWORK, STRUCTURE

The novel is structured as a struggle between good and evil, with some of the good people inadvertently, stupidly, playing into the hands of enemies of Friends of the Poor and of justice for the people of BF. Villains include the Police Commissioner, his thugs, the loony MI6 gunman, the foreign companies plundering BF's gold, a charlatan Sheikh, grain-merchants and others.

Good-hearted but slow on the uptake are Ambassador Knight, his bee-keeper wife and 15-year old Jake. All are cardboard, one-dimensional "types." Two Stars **.

What redeems the didactic/preachy pages of OUTLAW are 13-year old, but, alas, one-dimensional Kirsty/Kas. At least she among the Europeans shows pity for a leprous beggar woman seen outside the luxurious Hotel Libya where the banquet takes place. Young Kas also resents the widely admired con job being done on BF by the non- African gold corporations.

Standing out among the flawed, immature but justice-seeking characters are the Friends of the Poor. They plus the chase/adventure narrative redeem OUTLAW as much as the other baggage can possibly grant it redemption.

We meet the Friends of the Poor in Chapter Two. The Chameleon, their 18-year old leader, is a master of disguise. He uses this mastery to seek out and observe charlatans who play on African superstitions to fleece herdsmen of their sheep and goats. The Friends entice a charlatan Sheikh to accept their hospitality. Their business is to teach evil men a lesson. But their leader Yakuuba Sor admonishes: "Wicked men are very rare. ... Unimaginative men are far more common. Talk to them ... help them to see that they have a choice" (Ch. 8). Later The Chameleon teaches a lesson to the greedy grain-merchants of Djibo, who jack up prices unjustly when people are hungriest (Ch.10).

Later Yakuuba and the Friends of the Poor free Jake and Kirsty from the Police Commissioner's kidnapping goons who have pretended to be Yakuuba Sor & Co. They deliver the children back to their parents. The Friends fight with slingshots, not modern weapons and they have wide popular backing against the corrupt government. For the Friends of the Poor, warts and all: Four Stars * * * * .

On balance OUTLAW is too pretentious to be good. The basic, unpadded story moves rapidly along from escapade to escapade, from chase to rescue to a Goliath United Kingdom about to launch a smart bomb against David Yakuuba Sor, with the Ambassador's son now firmly on the Chameleon's side. As against that upbeat element, there are violence, one-dimensional characters, implausibly dumb British diplomats and an even more implausible intelligence officer "with license to kill." This is a disappointingly average novel for 12-year old readers -- at best.

-OOO-

Fifteen-year-old Jacob (Jake) Knight is in boarding school at Leeds, England. He thinks of himself as an explorer and adventurer, and this gets him into trouble because he breaks the school's rules while playing geothimble. The headmaster suspends him, and he is sent to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, formerly Upper Volta in West Africa, where his father is the British Ambassador. He finds that his thirteen-year-old sister Kirsty (Kas) has "gone emo" with her black eye-makeup. Since I am not into "slingo" (that's slang lingo), I had to look that one up. It is my opinion that these kinds of references really date a book and keep it from becoming a universal classic. Anyway, while there, Jake and Kas and are kidnapped from a banquet at the Hotel Libya and taken into the desert by someone identified as Yakuuba Sor, the most notorious outlaw in the Sahara who is reputed to be head of a terrorist group.
Francois Beogo, High Commissioner of police for the whole country immediately begins a nationwide search for the two teens, and Mr. Knight even calls in a British M-16 agent named Roy Dexter to help out. Jake and Kas are rescued from their captors by a gang of desert boys on horses led by a mysterious character known as "The Chameleon" and taken blindfolded to a desert hideaway. But have they simply jumped out of the frying pan into the fire? Or is everything really as it seems to be? And will Jake and Kas ever make it home again? Author Stephen Davies, a missionary to the Fulani herders in Burkina Faso, says that all the towns and villages mentioned in the book are real places. He also says that the character of the Chameleon came out of his longing to see more African men and women take an imaginative and nonviolent stand against injustice and corruption.
Outlaw is one of the most fast-paced, action-packed mystery-adventure thrillers for young adults that I have read in a long time, yet there is also an underlying moral basis to the plot. One might not always approve of every decision that Jake makes nor of all the ways in which he goes about carrying them out, but in the end he determines to do what is right. For example, when he lies to his father to help save another person's life, he feels a pang of regret. There are a couple of references to drinking wine and beer. One scene where three people are shot dead may be a little intense for those who are rather sensitive, so it is not for small children. And I was a bit disappointed in the language. The "d" word is used once, and the author seems rather adept at sneaking in the "h" word occasionally, not as an outright exclamatory curse but in other forms (and I'm not even including the "Hellfire" missile). It would be nice to read a young adult novel, with an exciting plot and a good lesson, in which the author didn't feel it necessary to use any cursing at all in order to sound "realistic" or "relevant." Otherwise, I really enjoyed reading this book.

As a mother who screens everything her 12-going-on-13-year-old daughter reads, I always enjoy checking out the latest fads and crazes that younger people get up to, that are showcased in books as part of the plot. Thanks to the book "Outlaw" by Stephen Davies, I had loads of fun checking out Burkina Faso and parkour how-to videos with said daughter - but I had to laugh when I read in Wikipedia that it was developed in France ... Methinks parkour was something the Shaolin monks used to do!

Although I saw some parallels in "Outlaw" to Rick Riordan's "Kane Chronicles" minus the supernatural, I really enjoyed "Outlaw" for its sojourn into the very real problems that countries in the Dark Continent are facing. I don't read much about Africa - I did "The Heart of Darkness" and "When Things Fall Apart" way back when. The contradictions that make Africa such a fascinating place detailed in those two books seem to still hold true. Said daughter's equally positive review follows:

"The book, `Outlaw', by Stephen Davies was an exciting, adventurous read.

"Son of a British Ambassador, fifteen-year-old Jake Knight has always wanted to be an adventurer. That's why he knows how to run up walls and charge his phone with milk. Then, in Africa, he and his thirteen-year-old sister, Kas, are kidnapped by some thugs working with the police to frame a modern-day Robin Hood ... it's gonna take a whole lot more than bravery to fix this mess!

"My favorite character was definitely Yakuuba Sor. I really like how he was always sprouting out funny yet wise proverbs, and how he used non-violence and his wits to help his people. I wish he was a real
person!! I also liked the ending of the book because it was a nice, happy ending, even though it had some really, really sad parts.

"My favorite part was definitely when Jake runs up the wall to the prison for geothimble. After that, me and my mum went onto YouTube to find out how to wall-run (parkour) - and, trust me, it is a *lot* harder than it looks!
"My favorite thing about the book was definitely geothimble. Geothimble is basically like a scavenger hunt - except it is with only one item (like the old game `hunt the thimble') and you can use GPS. After reading the book, I told my friends about it and we all agreed that geothimble sounds pretty cool.

"I would give the book five stars: two stars for the plot, two stars for the characters and one star for the interesting ideas like geothimble, wall running and charging a phone with milk." :-)