SOS Adventures Books in Order

SOS Adventures is a trilogy of environmental thrillers for younger readers that plays like a high energy action film but keeps one eye on real world issues. The books follow Michael Monroe, a fourteen year old orphan with a talent for trouble who becomes famous after helping save classmates from a sinking bus.

His heroics bring him to the attention of Dr Jimmy Kincaid, a former pop star turned billionaire who has poured his money into SOS, a private organisation that tackles dangerous rescue and conservation missions around the globe. Michael is invited to join a select group of teenage operatives known as the Artists and is thrown into a world of training exercises, cutting edge tech and life or death decisions.

In Ice Quake, Michael burns down his boarding school by accident and is on his way out when the bus crash changes everything. Once recruited by SOS his first mission takes him to the Canadian Arctic to search for a lost climate research satellite called Eden. A blizzard, armed men, wolves and a very large polar bear leave him and fellow teen agent Katya stranded in the frozen wilderness with only their wits and limited gear.

Fire Storm shifts the action to a small island in the Pacific where a series of tremors suggests that a long dormant volcano is about to wake up. SOS is there to bring fresh water to isolated communities and to locate missing scientist Anna Roper, Jimmy Kincaid's sister. Michael, Katya and the rest of the team must navigate bandits, shifting alliances and a volcano that does not care about anybody's plans.

The final book, Tusk, takes the Artists to a private reserve in a fictional African country. Officially they are there for rest and relaxation while learning survival skills from gruff ex commando Calvin Hunter and helping protect a group of teenagers that includes a future British king. In reality they are soon dealing with ivory poachers, wild animals and a threat that is far more organised than they first realise.

Across the trilogy Bateman keeps the pace brisk and the dialogue snappy, but he also weaves in questions about climate change, exploitation of local people and who gets to decide what is worth saving. Michael and Katya bicker, flirt and gradually learn to trust each other, and the adult SOS staff are drawn with enough quirks to feel real rather than just mission dispensers.

The SOS Adventures books are well suited to confident readers who like danger, gadgets and globe trotting plots, and they offer a natural next step for fans of Titanic 2020 who want more high stakes stories with a similar mix of humour and tension.