Wizard for Hire by Obert Skye

Ozzy's parents are both PhD scientists.  When Ozzy is seven they move abruptly from New York City to a secluded cabin in Oregon.  Then a few months later, men dressed in green come and take Ozzy's parents away.  Ozzy survives on his own for seven more years with the help of a AI raven left behind by his parents.  Finally a desire to find out what happened to his parents drives Ozzy back to civilization and to Rin, a self-proclaimed wizard.  Ozzy keeps expecting Rin to pull out a magic wand and solve all of Ozzy's problems.  That doesn't happen, but step by step Ozzy and Rin uncover clues to what happened to Ozzy's family.

I was not a fan of Skye's Leven Thumps series.  I found that too often Skye is not consistent in his plots and characterizations.  This book had the same problems.  Since Ozzy has been living on his own since he was seven, there are a lot of things about the world he doesn't or shouldn't understand.  The problem is that he conveniently understands or doesn't understand things to meet the demands of the plot.  That said, once I reconciled myself to this writing flaw I did enjoy the book with only occasional cringes. It is a fairly original story and Rin, especially, is an interesting character. I thought it had maybe one too many car chase scenes, but kids, especially boys, probably won't mind that.  It is obviously the first in a series, but I haven't decided yet whether or not I will read the next one. (2016, 410 p.)