The Trip to the Moon

The Trip to the Moon is the fourth, and final, book in the brilliant middle grade time-travelling Butterfly Club series by M A Bennett.  In this wholly satisfying finale, Luna, Aidan and Konstatin are once again compelled to travel forward in time from 1894.  This time they answer a cry for help from the future.

In their 1894 present-day, the “time thieves” friends in the Butterfly Club zoom forward to 1969.  There they are tasked to prevent the Apollo 11 moon mission from ending in disaster.  In this version of history, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins never returned home from their journey to the moon following an unexplained explosion on the spacecraft.  There they meet their mentor and scientist Professor Lorenz and the inventor of the heart pacemaker Otis Boykin.

The NASA command team are unable to identify the cause of the explosion, but Luna and her friends suspect sabotage.  They have spotted their arch-nemesis and time traveller for hire, Arthur John Priest, in and around the launch site.   He has dogged their every move on their previous adventures.  This time the children are also joined by Monsieur Georges Méliès, pioneering film-maker and also a member of the Butterfly Club.  He seeks to acquire a camera with which he can make his trail-blazing film – Trip to the Moon (1902).

Just as the team think they have worked out how the bomb got on board Apollo, the unthinkable happens.  Can they once again reverse time and save the astronauts and, as they believe, a future outrage carried out by Priest?

This series has been a triumph of plotting and characterisation.  More to the point it has been thoroughly entertaining and very exciting.  The final instalment is a fitting end to the series.