Saturday, March 19, 2022

Bolts - A Robot Dog: New Arrival

 

Bolts - A Robot Dog ... Alexander Key

Bolts, a Robot Dog, is not so much an aberration from the Consolidated Mechanical Men Company as he is an improvisation. They even shave his electronic brain down a bit to fit his unusual skull. Ordered by Commander Bridgewater Brown and his grandson Bingo for a special urgent mission, he is stolen by a cadre of enemy agents who mistake him for the new Super-Thought Machine before he can even be delivered. They are quite surprised to open his crate and find a somewhat addled mechanical dog determined to make his way home to his real owners and willing to fight to do so.

          So begins an adventure that leads from the depths of a cave in Mexico to the dark side of an asteroid. Along the way Bolts learns his specially altered brain can communicate with animals, that he can walk under water and see in the dark, and that perhaps there’s a reason not to use his Number Three Bark too often.

          Bolts is considered the third in Key’s ‘Little Robot’ trilogy, although it shares no characters and few elements from the first two books except for the Consolidated Mechanical Men Company and ‘Mongolian’ agents. The copy I got is ex-library (Eastwood Junior High School), illustrated by Key himself again, and has all the charming character you would expect in a gently used library book from 1966. So, after fifty years (or so), I finally finish the series. What’s next? The Forgotten Door? The Golden Enemy? A copy of Escape to Witch Mountain? Who can say if or when the mood will take me?


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