MBA Trilogy: Abdurrahman

     In my last blog, I finished reviewing the Moon Base Alpha (MBA) trilogy with Waste of Space, which was followed by Spaced Out, with the initial installment being Space Case. In this blog, I hope to compare and contrast the MBA books with each other. I’ll try to minimize any spoilers, but I can’t guarantee it, as it becomes harder and harder to express my opinions of the books. If you neither read the MBA books nor my previous blogs about the individual MBA books, I highly recommend that you go ahead and read them. But this shouldn’t be too hard since it’s practically impossible to put down the book after digging into it!

     To summarize, the MBA series is about a boy (a bit younger than we are) named Dash living with his family, who were among the first 27 settlers on the moon, specifically on a base called Moon Base Alpha. The Moonies (the term used to call those settlers) consisted of families whose parents were world-class scientists that were brought here to conduct lunar research, except the parents of the rich tourist family. Back on Earth, everyone thought MBA had nonstop, incredible thrills and excitement. However, the Moonies discovered that this was the fattest lie, as they miss everything about Earth that you might take for granted. The food was horrible, the low-g toilets were “medieval torture devices,” according to Dash, there was nothing comfortable about the empty, cramped residences, and there was very little to occupy your time with at MBA as a kid. Other than conducting the research, the parents and scientists are also as unoccupied as the children.

     In Space Case, Dr. Holtz was murdered, but no one suspects foul play, which irritated Dash. As one of the only secret investigators, Dash undergoes a tedious journey that threatens his life to uncover the murderer. In Spaced Out, the moon-base commander, Nina Stack, literally disappears from the base, and the Moonies become utterly bewildered since no one has any ties with her. Many of the people participate in the investigation by searching for Nina outside, but Dash and his six-year-old sister, Violet, are the ones who close the case of the disappearance. In Waste of Space, the mean and violent trillionaire, Lars, was poisoned, and Dash must push the limits of his detective skills like never before to solve the mystery while the lives of every single Moonie becomes at stake.

     In my opinion, all three books of the MBA trilogy had equally enigmatic mysteries. In each of the mysteries, the story gives you a chance to reflect on the events to make your own conclusions about the mystery. In Space Case, it was said that Dr. Holtz was one of the nicest and smartest people at the base, so his death was a shock to everyone, to the point that many people believed his death was an accident, not a murder. Therefore, Dash, who believed in the murder and wanted to bring the killer to justice, had a tough time revealing any suspects in the beginning. After reading this book, I thought I would be prepared for the next mystery in Spaced Out, but I was mistaken. Nina Stack is not the kind of person who likes to spend much time with others, and when she does, she talks like a robot who is very strict about rules, so no one knows much about her. Therefore, when Nina disappears in Spaced Out, I can’t think of any good explanations, like the rest of the Moonies. They search the entire base, with no sign of her, making her disappearance more mysterious. Where could she have gone to if all that’s outside the moon base is the lunar surface? In Waste of Space, the mystery of the poisoning was a very difficult case for Dash and the Moonies. Since Lars was an especially mean and selfish man to the other Moonies, which describes the rest of his family, all the Moonies despise him and his family and try their best to avoid any interactions with them. So, when Lars was poisoned, most people weren’t surprised, as they thought that someone might have been so exhausted from his actions that he decided to take him down. Since almost the entirety of the Moonies could have been suspects of this poisoning, solving the mystery becomes even tougher for the Moonies. Another perplexing aspect of the poisoning was that it wasn’t enough to kill Lars, but to play with his mind for a few hours. So why would someone minimally poison Lars, giving him a chance to take revenge?

     In addition to the mystery that stimulates the reader’s thinking, Stuart Gibbs, the author, utilizes life-threatening situations to glue the reader’s hands to the book, but through different ways in the three books. In my opinion, Spaced Out doesn’t do as good of a job as the first and third books. The only time when Dash was in grave danger was when he was under what seemed to be a meteor shower. Dash was very lucky to reach the safety of an underground operations pod in time. There were some brief moments when some of the rocket-speed pieces dashed by him by a few millimeters, but, after thinking about it and the information given about the context of the situation, Dash should have died, but for the sake of the book, he had to live. This contrasts the near-death experiences Dash went through in Space Case. When he went outside on the lunar surface with another Moonie to find a piece of evidence during everyone’s sleep time, they are attacked by a gigantic robot arm, which was operated by someone inside the base. Instead of relying on their luck, like the event of the meteor shower, Dash and the Moonie use strategy to avoid being killed by the arm. In Waste of Space, dropping oxygen levels really excited me as I was reading. The scientists were trying to fix the oxygen systems, and it felt like a race against time before all the oxygen was lost, killing everyone in MBA. It felt like they were losing time since many people were developing hypoxic symptoms. After temporarily evacuating MBA, Dash was about to tell his sister who he thought poisoned Lars, but his oxygen and communication hoses were disconnected by a mysterious Moonie, who tried to kill him with a moon rock. I believe being attacked by a robot arm was more intimidating because it was much more powerful than a human, and also that there was no way to detain the arm except stopping the operator inside MBA, which was unfortunately during a time when the rest of the Moonies were asleep. However, in my opinion, the poisoning did not make the story better by a great deal, because Lars survived. This was unlike the disappearance of Nina, where no one knew anything about her whereabouts. There was a chance that she could have been somewhere on the lunar surface, and being out there for so long could deplete the oxygen, so the Moonies tried their best to win the race against time to save Nina.

     The MBA trilogy is unlike any book collection I have read in a long time. After re-reading these books, I felt a longing to discover equally amazing books, since I don’t read often in my leisure time. I would give them the following rankings: Space Case - 9.75/10, Spaced Out: 9.5/10, Waste of Space - 9.25/10. I’ll make sure to look into book recommendations from my classmates to experience the same feelings as the ones I had while reading Moon Base Alpha books. Next time you need to choose a book to read in your own time or to write a blog, consider my book recommendations!