The Lost Compass

by Joel Ross

Overview

In the high-stakes sequel to the acclaimed The Fog Diver—which was named a Texas Bluebonnet selection and winner of the 2015 Cybils Award for Speculative Fiction and the Michigan Library Association’s 2016 YouPer Award—thirteen-year-old Chess and his crew must stop the deadly and mysterious Fog from enveloping the city of Port Oro and destroying their world.

Chess and his crew—Hazel, Swedish, Loretta, and Bea—may have escaped the slums, but they cannot escape the Fog that threatens to swallow the entire mountaintop city of Port Oro. Only one thing can stop the Fog: an ancient machine known as the Compass. And only one person can find it: Chess. With the help of his crew, Chess faces dangerous encounters and deadly driftsharks to unearth the hidden instrument. It’s a race against time to save this sanctuary in the sky.

With adventure at every turn, peril behind every corner, and a few determined slum kids who must save the day, Joel Ross presents a fantastic world in this fast-paced follow-up to The Fog Diver.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062353092
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	07/25/2017
Series:	Fog Diver , #2
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	491,641
Product dimensions:	5.12(w) x 7.62(h) x 0.74(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Joel Ross is the author of The Fog Diver, which received the Cybils Award and the YouPer Award from the Michigan Library Association and was named to the Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List. He is also the author of The Lost Compass as well as two World War II thrillers for adults (Double Cross Blind and White Flag Down). He lives in Santa Barbara, California, with his wife, Lee Nichols, who is also a full-time writer, and their son, Ben, who is a full-time kid. To find out more information, go to www.fogdiver.com.

Editorial Reviews

With deeper characterization, even more nonstop action, and much higher stakes, the sequel is even better than the original. Readers will find themselves alternately laughing out loud and biting their nails as they anxiously follow the adventures of Chess and his friends. ” — School Library Journal (starred review)

“Endless delight. A cracking good adventure with a diverse cast in a memorable world. ” — Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

★ 03/01/2016
Gr 4–6—The adventure continues for Chess and his airship crew in this action-packed sequel to The Fog Diver (HarperCollins, 2015). Having recently escaped from the greedy and powerful Lord Kodoc, ruler of the mountaintop empire known as the Rooftop, the crew are sure they'll be safe on a faraway mountaintop called Port Oro. No sooner have they arrived in the strange new city, however, than they learn that Kodoc isn't even close to done with them. He still seeks a mysterious object known as the "Compass," a device that lies somewhere on the surface of the Earth, deep in the Fog. Legend says that the Compass can control the Fog—even make the Fog go away. With the Compass, Kodoc will have the power to determine the fate of his entire Empire, and he knows that Chess is the key to finding that power. The race is on for Chess, his crew, and their new friends on Port Oro to recover the Compass before it falls into the wrong hands. Chock-full of positive themes about loyalty and teamwork and packed with hilariously misinterpreted pop culture references, Ross's middle grade adventure series about a juvenile airship crew raised in a junkyard continues to shine. In this case, with deeper characterization, even more nonstop action, and much higher stakes, the sequel is even better than the original. Readers will find themselves alternately laughing out loud and biting their nails as they anxiously follow the adventures of Chess and his friends. VERDICT A fast-paced narrative and hilarious dialogue make this series an essential purchase where smart middle grade fantasy/adventure is in demand.—Liz Overberg, Zionsville Community High School, IN

School Library Journal

2016-02-17
This sequel to The Fog Diver (2015) takes readers back to a post-apocalyptic world in which civilization has been driven into the skies. But humanity it seems hasn't changed…greed, love, cruelty, patriotism, strength, and weakness still drive human actions. Chess and the other scavengers have made it out of the slums and to the safety of Port Oro, but Lord Kodoc is still on their tail. He knows that tetherboy and narrator Chess is a fog diver like no other, able to survive the deadly nanites that cloud the Earth. (Created to eat pollution, nanites became a threat when they perceived humans as pollution.) Chess and the rest of his makeshift family—Hazel, the captain; Swedish, the pilot; Loretta, the muscle; and Bea, the engineer—know if they don't find the mysterious Compass before Kodoc, no one will be safe. As in the series opener, Ross glories in the Dickensian details of his post-apocalyptic world, winking in homage to adult readers with the insult "chuzzlewit." Also as before, the characters' garbled notions of the Earth "before the Fog" offer endless delight; when introduced to the concept of tomato "catchup," they wonder "How do you race tomatoes?" before concluding that "The ancients were totally peanuts." A cracking good adventure with a diverse cast in a memorable world. (Science fiction. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews