Mega Robo Bros: NEXT LEVEL!

It's here, oh lord, it's finally here

Okay well this is clearly weird and unprecedented and will never happen again, but here is my Third Newsletter In A Single Week, to tell you the couldn’t-wait news that my new book, MEGA ROBO BROS: NEXT LEVEL is out today! You can buy it RIGHT NOW, from Amazon, from Waterstones, from Bookshop.org, or by simply walking into a bookshop anywhere in this strange nation and requesting a copy! Please do so! I wanted to mark the occasion by sharing a few reasons I’m so excited about this book:

IT’S THE FIRST NEW MRB BOOK IN YEARS!

Four years, specifically. I went and checked! MEGA ROBO REVENGE came out in 2019, and since then we’ve gone back and spent years reformatting and republishing the series into these new format books. And that was totally worth doing and 100% the right call from a publishing perspective, absolutely. But it also means I’ve been flat-out bursting to share what happens next for these characters and this story. For FOUR YEARS.

IT’S A GREAT PLACE TO START!

We try really hard to make sure each book is accessible to new readers, but this one REALLY is. The opening section catches you up with everything you need to know about what the characters have been through up to this point, and after that we’re pretty much off to the races with NEW ADVENTURES and COOL THINGS. Speaking of which:

IT’S JUST A REALLY FUN BOOK!

This one was a joy to put together, because it includes some of my favourite Alex and Freddy stuff in the whole series. I think one of the things I work hardest at with MRB is trying to balance all the action and big over-the-top superhero craziness with quieter character stuff; treating Alex and Freddy’s emotions and growth with sensitivity and respect. And I think this book has some of my favourite moments from the whole series, on both fronts. We’ve got crazy robot fights, we’ve got practical tips for kids on dealing with anxiety and how to change a duvet cover, and we’ve got LITERALLY EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN.

ALSO

I couldn’t quite think how to phrase this as a snappy headline, but I’m just really proud of how this one turned out… structurally? This was the book which required the most shaping and editing and curation to turn the original material into a book - since book 1 anyway - and I think it’s come together really well. We’ve ended up with structure that is ‘a series of fun short stories, out of which a larger narrative coheres, and it all ends with a wedding’, and it was only at the end that I realised that that is basically my platonic ideal for the perfect form for a novel. Possibly because it describes The Inimitable Jeeves, aka maybe my favourite single book in the English language? UNTIL THIS ONE, SORRY PG WODEHOUSE.

IT CONTAINS THIS STORY

Okay, HARD SELL OVER.

THINGS YOU CAN DO

I’m aware that this is book 5 in a series, and that series tend to tail off over time, and I’m very keen that we try and buck that trend because, well, I think this is where the series really takes off. If there’s one thing I feel confident saying about Mega Robo Bros it’s that it gets better as it goes along. I love this book and am very proud of it, but the next three? The next three are wall-to-wall absolute certified bangers, and I really hope as many readers as possible get to discover the series. And I’d really appreciate anything YOU, dear reader, could do to help with that. Tweet about it! Instagram about it! Write a review on Amazon! Make a… TikTok? I dunno, whatever people do these days! Anyway: THANK YOU IN ADVANCE.

ANY QUESTIONS?

I thought it would be fun to do a Mega Robo Bros Q&A here in the newsletter! If you are a parent or teacher of a young reader, why not ask them if they have any questions - about the new book, about the series as a whole, about Alex or Freddy or Stupid Philosophy Penguin or anything! Just leave a comment after this post on substack, or on notes, and I will try and answer as many as I can in a future edition!