Dave's Transformers Book Rant: The Battle Begins Race for the Mini-Con Robots As part of Hasbro finally extending the Transformers brand into other areas again, Reader's Digest Children Books has started to put out Young Readers books in the Armada setting. Well, AN Armada setting. Recommended for readers 8-12 years old. CAPSULES The Battle Begins: A surprisingly good and coherent setup that comes rather close to the very earliest story summaries we got. Recommended. $2.93 at Wal-Mart. Race for the Mini-Con Robots: Some of the good stuff falls by the wayside, unfortunately, but still fairly good. Mildly recommended. $2.93 at Wal-Mart. RANTS "The Battle Begins" Written by Michael Teitelbaum, art by "Dreamwave Studios," which means it was someone low enough on the totem pole that their contract didn't guarantee credit. }-> I think the same artist did "Race" as well. Before I go into the story, I should cover the gimmicks and flash. The cover has raised relief bits to it, like many of your "finer" paperbacks. The cover shows Megatron and Prime clashing, and looks pretty good. Inside the front cover is a small sheet with two faction symbol stickers, each 1.5" (4cm) tall. In the upper right corners of the odd-numbered pages are pictures that form a flipbook animation of faction symbols flipping into each other, kinda like the G1 scene transition device. There are six full-page grayscale pictures scattered throughout the book. The "Dreamwave House Style" is apparent in the robots, but the humans look quite different, more "old school comics" style. They are still recognizable as each other, however. Interestingly, while she's not described as such in the book, Alexis looks to be possibly Japanese or part-Japanese. Okay, on to the story. Back early 2002 when Armada's storyline was just starting to trickle out, we got a rough story summary that, well, was not much like what we ended up seeing in the cartoon or comic in many ways. Well, the book here is also different from that story, but in its own ways. Here's the big twist in the book: the Mini-Cons, created by Primus (called the Creator in the book), were not self-aware. They were just tools, and there was less ethical concern over their treatment. Anyway, eventually both sides decided to call a truce and sent all the Mini-Cons off together, ending the war for a time. And this is where it gets really clever: both sides placed warp gates on the ship to summon a small number of representatives in the event the ship was discovered by another race, to make sure no one ELSE abused the Mini-Cons' power. Why is that really clever? Because it is a perfect explanation for the small cadre size in the Earth conflict. It's not a case of "We have this huge army, but will only send three or four to track down the signal." It's a case of a handful on each side being yanked away from a battle by an old failsafe they'd completely forgotten about. Too bad the next book messes it up. Anyway, we then cut to 2010 and the humans. Teitelbaum does a very good job of setting up the observatory community and the reasons why the kids are there. The dialogue got clunky at times, but I had a much easier time accepting why these kids were together and doing what they did to end up inside the Mini-Con ship. Similarly, I liked how the book splits the difference between "beeping only" and "speaking normally". Each kid bonds with their Mini-Con, and only that kid can understand his or her Mini-Con. In fact, when the Mini-Cons left Cybertron, they couldn't speak in ANY way. Their consciousness arose as an emergent property once they were all put together. Kinda like an ant colony. Oh, and Perceptor can generate a powerful forcefield, making him a little more useful. Or it. It's pretty clear that the Mini-Cons, only recently self-aware, really don't have a gender concept. Alexis insists that Sureshock is female (which has caused some amusing discussion on the boards), and it's certainly possible that the Mini-Cons will pick up gender-like personality characteristics over time, but right now it seems to be pretty arbitrary on Alexis's part. As for the other characters, one major change Teitelbaum makes is that they don't mechanically transform, they morph. Megatron's original form is described as a mobile flamethrower on wheels, while Optimus is a spacecraft with his faceplate growing into a giant heat shield. This is expanded on in the next book. Megatron is shown as being more canny than cowardly when he retreats at the end, as he realizes that the entire Moon is wide open for his exploitation, and he can come back to Earth once he's settled in there. Overall? A very strong start, especially for a 50-some page (64 total pages, but there's art pages and stuff) large font kidnovel. I liked it. "Race for the Mini-Con Robots" Same creators. The cover has the Street Action trio standing with arms crossed as half-strength images of Prime and Megatron face off in the background. The stickers this time are of the Street Action Mini-Cons, using their tech spec art. The flipbook animation has the symbols shrink and grow rather than spinning. The book starts with a few pages summarizing the previous book and establishing that the story is set in 2010. Fred and Billy are introduced in this book, and a good reason is given for their bad attitudes...while most of the kids at the school have grown up in the tight-knit Cosmo City community, Fred and Billy's parents got jobs at the observatory fairly recently. Displaced from their old friends and surroundings, they tried to fit in but were too brash about it and ended up acrimonious outsiders. Their characterization is another way in which the book splits the difference between comic and cartoon, as neither Fred nor Billy is completely dominant in the relationship, although Billy is a bit more active (he's Butthead, Fred is Beavis). They're no longer bad caricatures, which is how they should have been from the start in the cartoon. Unfortunately, while Prime just brings Hot Shot and Red Alert in from Cybertron, Megatron has "hundreds of Decepticons" working on turning the Moon-bound half of the Mini-Con ship into a base. Suddenly, the balance of forces is too out of kilter to possibly ignore, and that makes Megatron's decision to take only three of his troops to Earth pretty dumb. There's a lot more morphing this time, and it's not even consistent. When Cyclonus repeats the scene from the cartoon where he grabs some Mini-Con panels before warping out, he morphs his arms out of his landing skids, which previously had been described as being his morphed legs. It's also weird when Hot Shot turns his rear wheels into hands. Don't get me wrong. There's still some good, well-written stuff in this book. But it's kinda a let-down after the first one. Dave Van Domelen, notes that Rad's real name is Brad in this version, not Conrad.