Operation Roman Nose ‘Failure Is Not An Option!’
by Ross Chadderton
BEST WORKPLACE SETTING BOOKY
The judge's reasoning
Chadderton has built an absolutely bonkers, richly imagined cosmology out of the smallest possible premise — losing one's voice — and never once apologises for it. GARGLE (Gasp And Rasp: Glottis Lubricating Experts), their fleet of airships powered by pedalling agents and centuries of Parliamentary hot air, the toad stuffed feet-first into a hole in the gondola wall, and the etymological asides ('this is where the word gargle originated') build a whole secret machinery behind ordinary bodily inconveniences. It's Pratchett-and-Roald-Dahl-adjacent but with its own texture — particularly the running gag that every absurd invention gets a mock-etymology or mock-news-report attached, like Timothy Tichbourne-Jones's BBC commentary turning a walrus-moustache nightmare into breaking news, or the cattle culture with Her Moo-ness, Miss Prudence Brisket's flatulence-etiquette lecture, and the beat-box beef ensemble 'Life On De Udder Side.' The book commits fully to its own internal logic (centrifugal force keeping tea in a cup mid-spiral crash; RADAR as Recognition and Detection Avoidance Response) and layers world after world — Julian's, GARGLE's, the cattle's — that all interconnect through the falling object in the haystack. For the 8-12 reader who wants relentless invention and doesn't mind digression, this is a world built with real generosity and comic control, best captured in Gyrton's discovery of 'The Brotherhood of Schoolboys with Messy Bedrooms' — a joke so committed it becomes almost tender.
Judged by Brooke Hayes — Reader-at-Large · Cross-Genre · Emerging Voices
"Every book is the only book for somebody."
Supporting passages
"GASP AND RASP: GLOTTIS LUBRICATING EXPERTS (or GARGLE for short but it’s pointless trying to look them up in the telephone directory because you won’t find them there). And just for your information, this is where the word gargle originated."
The mock-etymology gag anchors the entire secret-world premise with confident, silly specificity.
"Known as, RECOGNITION AND DETECTION AVOIDANCE RESPONSE or RADAR for short, he’d found that, by closing his eyes and tweaking his nose three times the complete layout of his bedroom, including all the pitfalls suddenly popped into his head."
A wonderfully odd, specific superpower invented from the mundane fact of a messy bedroom — genuinely inventive comic worldbuilding.
"First came a loud blast followed by a deafening shriek which sounded as though someone had just stepped on a duck, except it was at least a 10,000 times louder and seemed to whine on forever."
Broad, escalating slapstick delivered with the exact comic timing this kind of MG/YA farce needs.
Per-axis rubric scores
Every Booky-winning book is scored across all ten craft axes. The award is given on the top axis (or top two for premium tiers).
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