Title: The Lives of Tao

Author: Wesley Chu

From the back: When out-of-shape IT technician Roen woke up and started hearing voices in his head, he naturally assumed he was losing it. He wasn’t. He now has a passenger in his brain – an ancient alien life-form called Tao, whose race crash-landed on Earth before the first fish crawled out of the oceans. Now split into two opposing factions – the peace-loving, but under-represented Prophus, and the savage, powerful Genjix – the aliens have been in a state of civil war for centuries. Both sides are searching for a way off-planet, and the Genjix will sacrifice the entire human race, if that’s what it takes. Meanwhile, Roen is having to train to be the ultimate secret agent. Like that’s going to end up well.

The gist: I read once that running through exercises in your mind was nearly as good as doing actual exercises.

I read it on the internet, so it must be true.

And that being the case, I’m pretty sure I’m prepped to enter the goddamn Olympics now. This book has so much action in that it gets you sweating from the off and wont let you rest until you hit the last page. It’s action packed as you follow Roen—our wonderfully inept, slightly reluctant hero—go through his training to become a master warrior. And damn I feel for him, because that training sounds like some real hard work. Roen is the everyday hero, the accidental star, and I love it. I’m a sucker for stories about the non-heroes.

And The Lives of Tao is also genuinely hilarious. I love the dynamic between Roen and Tao, and there’s a fight scene really early on which had me in stitches—there’s so many lines that got me laughing out loud you could almost forget there was an alien war going on with the future of humanity at stake.

Chu’s book is a wonderfully energetic, violent, hilarious ride, it was so much fun just hanging on as Roen gets a crash course in secret agent life. The best thing? That there’s two more books in the series to get stuck in to, and I’m totally down with that.

After I have a rest.

And maybe some chocolate cake.

Favourite line: Roen studied the building; it didn’t look like any chocolate place he’d ever seen, though he kept his hopes up.

Read if: You want a hilarious, action packed adventure with a hero who would rather share your pizza than save the world.

Read with: Plans to do more exercise and become an international spy. Plus DOUGHNUTS.

Get it: The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu