Children's ✦ Penny’s Take
The Best Enemy
James Raven · 1993
60/100
👎 Skip It
The Dojo Rats series found a niche pairing martial arts discipline with middle-grade mystery, and The Best Enemy's community-garden-explosion setup gives it a more grounded local-stakes feel than many in the genre. The honorable martial arts framing is a genuine plus, and the content is entirely clean. But the series is out of print, critical documentation is scarce, and the villain setup reads as formulaic even by 1993 standards. Fine if you come across a copy, but not worth seeking out.
✦ Penny’s Take — this is The Review Group’s own editorial assessment. Penny’s analytical review line researched this book from real sources and scored it across the lenses shown below. It’s an honest first-party read — not a page-by-page personal one. The gold ✓ Penny Tested mark is reserved for books Penny reads cover to cover herself.
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Show the math
Verdict receipt0–100
Faith & family safety79
Substance / usefulness54
Craft & writing56
Originality55
Evidence & accuracy64
Hype vs delivers44
Age-fit66
👁 Human-eye gut-check54
Penny’s verdict60
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