SPIDER RIDERS: The Shards of the Oracle

With this husband-and-wife team's background writing for children's television, the cinematic feel of this launch title in a new series should come as little surprise, and will no doubt delight its intended audience. As the story opens, teenager/arachnophobe Hunter Steele falls down a gravel pit and through a hole, eventually landing in the kingdom of Arachnia, near the center of the earth. He is captured by a human race called the Turandot, who cannot decide whether to hold him for espionage or consider him the one from the Earthen prophecy. The Turandot, who ride giant spiders with whom they develop telepathic connections, are at war with the Insectors, comprised of praying mantises, centipedes and the like. Thinking it may be "the only way out of this crazy world," Hunter asks his captors to train him to become a Spider Rider, and he ends up becoming a key player in the hunt for a number of shards broken from the crown of the Turandot's Oracle, a statue that comes to life. The Oracle, it seems, has been crippled by the invading Mantid, and "when it happened, a strange sleep overtook the city." Loud, frenetic action sequences, rife with elaborate weapons and technologies, dominate the book. These tend to drown out some of the potentially deeper themes (Hunter's battle with his fear of spiders, for instance) but, like video games or movies, the tale works well as sheer escapism. Ages 8-up. (Apr.)