Reading Jack and the Jungle Lion is like being on a Hollywood movie set watching the making of a silent film. How Jared creates that feeling of being in on the action without quite being of it, defies analysis. Best sit back and enjoy the ride.

Everything is simultaneously real and unreal–the jungle, the headhunters, the melodramatic romance between a film star and a spunky common girl. The girl’s at the stake, the poison arrows are flying. How will they get out? Suspense reigns. Jack Hunter is called upon to live up to his movie-man namesake of Action Jack in real life. Can he do it? Looks doubtful.

Ensuing scenes involve a hilarious food fight and an attack on that poor common girl from the jungle by Jack’s acid-tongued wife, who displays a temperament more vicious than any headhunter’s. Boy gets girl after a long, hard chase. Boy loses girl. Will he get her back? It wouldn’t be Hollywood without a Hollywood ending, and thanks to the kids–oh, did I fail to mention the kids? Yeah, the movie has them, too–anyway, thanks to the kids, we reach the (thank goodness) inevitable conclusion. Finding out how we get from crisis to salvation is more fun than a barrel of white-faced capuchin monkeys. Oh, did I fail to mention there’s one of those, too? Probably a lot of things I failed to mention. Read it and find them for yours.