Gary Davis’s Misfits is a forget-me-not adventure stuffed with alien intrigue, government secrets, and misfit teens who fall headfirst into an adventure larger than life on summer break. Perfectly capturing that small-town conspiracy atmosphere, this book has an abandoned Cold War shelter and an ancient alien artifact as its props in this no-less thrilling but comedic roller coaster. But beneath the surface, Davis has revealed a fascinating world of teenagers in a place steeped in weird legends, missing pieces, and inquisitive minds.
Misfits is set in the small, unassuming town of Millwood, where rumors about mysterious alien activity in the nearby mountains have persisted for generations. These, though, are stories that attain new meaning when a group of teens at home get caught in the web of secrets, technology, and government intervention. The Davis approach brings these teens to the fore, placing them in the category of characters one wants to see come out on top. They aren’t typical heroes but rather a bunch of awkward, brilliant, and curious misfits with real personalities.
The summer break gets underway with what appears to be a harmless prank: one of them, a tech-savvy teen named Leory, hacks into his father’s computer at a local research lab. Curiosity leads him to order extra parts, which are clandestinely shipped to the high school. This innocuous act snowballs out of proportion when the teens decide to assemble the parts and construct another alien artifact in the abandoned Cold War shelter beneath their school. What starts out as a very amusing, innocuous project escalates when it dawns on the teens that they have created something with the potential to change history.
At the very core of this is the fact that these teens are anywhere but flawless, making their wrong moves trying to figure things out as they go along, pretty much acting on instinct. This being said, much of their sense of humor does provide a far more accessible environment despite the chaotic circumstances thrown in their direction. Davis evokes humor right alongside those aspects of genuine tension. The situations these teens get themselves into are so utterly absurd that a reader cannot help but smile.
As the teens rush to keep the government’s secret research from getting out of hand, they start to expose the larger forces at play. It uses the town’s abandoned industrial area for government research on an alien artifact that might hold the key to unlock technologies unknown. Yet, the more the teens uncover, the more they realize that they are playing not just with a cool sci-fi mystery, but they are part of something much bigger.
This unexpected discovery of the alien artifact sends them on an escalation of events leading up to the military reacquisition of control. Now, the teens have tough choices to make when they never wanted to be the focus of all this attention. Should they expose all their findings and risk the safety of their town, or should they keep quiet and safeguard the secrets of what they have found?
Gary Davis Misfits is not just a tale of sci-fi; it is, rather, a story of what happens when ordinary teens find themselves caught up in intrigue, mystery, and danger. With just the right mix of suspense and humor, it is engaging reading to show how the misfits can sometimes be the ones to uncover the greatest mysteries.