After 80 reviews, 56 recaps, and countless articles, comments, and debates, the Intergalactic Academy is closing up shop.

This wasn’t an easy decision to make–the Academy is close to both of our hearts. But both Sean and I are too danged busy right now to keep up with regular blogging, and with career changes, books, queries, and edits looming, we figure it’s best to quit while we’re ahead.

It’s a sad day, but a proud one, too. When we started this site in 2011, we set out to prove that young adult science fiction is a thriving genre, contrary to industry pronouncements of gloom and doom. What we found surprised even us. Week after week, our mailbox was flooded with wonderful books, novels which explored cloning, space travel, UFOs, GMOs, cryopods, and, best of all, aliens. For every title we reviewed, there were two we didn’t. Take it from me, someone who has seen the breadth of the genre: YA sci-fi is alive and kicking in 2013.

The site will remain online for reference and nostalgia purposes, though if you want to get in touch with either me or Sean, you’d best look elsewhere. Sean can be found, as always, on his website, www.seanwills.com. I’ll be selectively reviewing books on goodreads and for the speculative fiction site Strange Horizons, as well as blogging for YA Highway and my own site, www.phoebenorth.com. And of course, my first book comes out on July 23, 2013 with Simon and Schuster. Be on the look out for Starglass, as well as various Starglass-related guest posts around the web in the coming months.

Thank you for everything–live long, and prosper, too.

A heart-stopping story of love, death, technology, and art set amid the tropics of a futuristic Brazil.

The lush city of Palmares Tres shimmers with tech and tradition, with screaming gossip casters and practiced politicians. In the midst of this vibrant metropolis, June Costa creates art that’s sure to make her legendary. But her dreams of fame become something more when she meets Enki, the bold new Summer King. The whole city falls in love with him (including June’s best friend, Gil). But June sees more to Enki than amber eyes and a lethal samba. She sees a fellow artist.

Together, June and Enki will stage explosive, dramatic projects that Palmares Tres will never forget. They will add fuel to a growing rebellion against the government’s strict limits on new tech. And June will fall deeply, unfortunately in love with Enki. Because like all Summer Kings before him, Enki is destined to die.

-cover and synopsis courtesy goodreads.com 

Atmospheric Analysis: This is a lovely cover, visually striking and nicely capturing the magic of Palmares Tres. It’s quite a bit darker in person than the image is online, though. I’m happy (very!) that June Costa, our heroine, is not whitewashed–but she’s still fairly difficult to see.

Planetary Class: Hmm. Is literary political sci-fi a sci-fi subgenre? If not, let’s make it one.

Mohs Rating: The Summer Prince rates as a 5.5 on the Mohs–Palmares Tres is a world of futurology based mostly on plausible speculative science (nanotechnology, body modification, and cyberpunk-type life extension).

Viability Rating: Johnson’s world is seamless and carefully crafted. Each speculative extrapolation has a textual source to justify it, and justify it well.

Xenolinguistical Assessment: Like many modern YA works, The Summer Prince is told in first-person present tense, but it’s distinguished by its conceptual sophistication (divided into seasons, not chapters), its alternating voices (June’s narrative is intercut by passages in Enki’s voice) and its lyrical beauty. The prose is quite lovely.

Expanded Report: The Summer Prince is a lovely book–in some ways, precisely what many adult readers of YA have been seeking. The story of June Costa, an artist in the far post-apocalyptic city of Palmares Tres, and Enki, the summer king who steals her heart, it’s diverse, sophisticated, and written in lovely, lurid prose. The world of this far-future Brazil is perfectly conceptualized; led by a council of Aunties and a queen who is selected by the temporary king once per decade, Johnson’s world shows its roots in a thousand different, subtle ways. The power balance is so because of a plague which long ago decimated the male population. The society has an interesting split between the young and the old due to artificially enhanced lifespans. And death is on everyone’s mind–not just because euthanasia here is necessarily permitted but also because the elected king is sacrificed at the end of his reign for the good of his city.

Against this backdrop, we learn of Enki–hunky, enigmatic king–and the people who love him. June, a budding artist, isn’t alone in her admiration. Not only do many other young wakas love him, but none more than Gil, June’s best friend. And so we have a love triangle, but a subversion of your typical YA love triangle situation. This is the story of a girl and two boys–but the two boys love one another.

Issues of sexuality are rendered with a deft hand; it’s accepted and unremarked upon in this world, and not only are both Enki and Gil bisexual, but June’s mother, as well. Likewise, racial and cultural diversity in this speculative framework are exceedingly well-handled. We meet an older Japanese diplomat, who paints a vivid picture of a Japan where the people have, through bodily modification, transcended their flesh.

In this way, and in terms of pure description, that the setting–and the novel–soars. Palmares Tres feels real, sparkling and gritty all at once. It’s the type of setting that you dream about days after you put the book down. Nice work by Johnson, here.

I was less convinced by some other aspects of the narrative–namely the characters. June was a more believable adolescent than some protagonists written by authors who have primarily worked in adult speculative fiction, though her emotional register felt, at times, a touch off. But other characters were a bit more sketchily drawn, particularly Gil, June’s best friend and Enki’s lover. I never quite found myself invested in him, and so Enki’s dedication to the boy (and June’s) was a bit puzzling.  And though June was better-drawn, the novel’s ultimate conclusion seemed to come about through external factors rather than any fate of June’s own making. It was a bit of a deus ex machina–leading to an ending that was just a touch too pat.

But I suspect that the biggest hesitation readers will have over The Summer Prince is in its very narrative density. The plot is diffuse and scattered, and the speculative elements–worldbuilding and backstory–come with no hand-holding at all. It’s a hard book, complex and twisty. Johnson reminds me most of adult speculative fiction writers like Marge Piercy and Kelley Eskridge. At times, I struggled to put the pieces of the universe together, and I wonder if young readers will, likewise.

But for readers who enjoy such sophisticated composition–used to highlight a gorgeous setting and intriguing premise–there is a lot to love in The Summer Prince. It comes out in March, and it’s available for preorder from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and your local indie bookstore.

The distant and unloved colony world of Russalka has no land, only the raging sea. No clear skies, only the endless storm clouds. Beneath the waves, the people live in pressurised environments and take what they need from the boundless ocean. It is a hard life, but it is theirs and they fought a war against Earth to protect it. But wars leave wounds that never quite heal, and secrets that never quite lie silent.

Katya Kuriakova doesn’t care much about ancient history like that, though. She is making her first submarine voyage as crew; the first nice, simple journey of what she expects to be a nice, simple career.

There is nothing nice and simple about the deep black waters of Russalka, however; soon she will encounter pirates and war criminals, see death and tragedy at first hand, and realise that her world’s future lies on the narrowest of knife edges. For in the crushing depths lies a sleeping monster, an abomination of unknown origin, and when it wakes, it will seek out and kill every single person on the planet.

-cover and synopsis courtesy goodreads.com 

Atmospheric Analysis: This cover reminds me quite a bit of the cover for Marie Lu’s Legend. I liked the design there and I like it even more here–totally appropriate for a military SF tale.

Planetary Class: Military SF. In many ways, it reminds me of the social SF of the 70s which I so loved–but heavier on the battles and lighter on the romance.

Mohs Rating: I’d weigh this as a 4 on the Mohs scale. The science is fairly hard indeed–but this is still set on an extrasolar colony.

Viability Rating: Howard seems to be a careful worldbuilder. I didn’t find anything in here I could complain about.

Xenolinguistical Assessment: Katya’s World is written in third person prose, which is often a hard sell for me in modern YA. But it’s effective–lending the story a necessary distance. This is primarily a military tale, of characters who keep their cards close to their chests. Third (even close third, as this is) may be distancing, but characters like Katya crave distance.

Expanded Report: Katya’s World isn’t my usual cup of tea–it’s undoubtedly military SF (of a naval variety), and though it’s also undoubtedly YA, it’s light on the yummy romance that I love and instead focuses on action sequences and battles. While this sea-based science fiction is the type that I’m eager to recommend to my husband (because he’s really into Cold War submarine films), it still holds a certain nostalgic appeal. Howard’s work is particularly redolent of 1970s space opera–but in all the best ways.

It’s the story of Katya Kuriakova, newly an adult an embarking on her very first submarine mission, but it does not start with her. Instead, Howard opens with an extended prologue about the history of Russalka, an ocean planet. It’s an undeniable infodump, but it’s also a lively one, which gets us quickly up to speed: the water planet would have never been colonized if not for its mineral wealth. But then Terrans forgot about it, only to return far later and kick up a civil war. In less skilled hands, this would have been dry or unnecessary (prime fodder for skimming), but Howard makes it work with his smooth, confident prose and effortless worldbuilding.

And the world really does work, quite well. This is Russian inspired, but never feels like an appropriation. Howard’s world is fleshed out and effectively seamless. This allows us to follow Katya on her first crew experiences, told through nicely controlled, third-person prose.

Now, I’m a hard sell on third-person in YA. I suspect that modern YA first needs to appeal to a reader’s desire to identify, and first-person prose is an easy short-cut for identification. But I never doubted Howard’s choice to do otherwise. Katya is a bit of a chilly heroine, whose past is informed by trauma but who has chosen to very deliberately move on from that trauma. For her to be fully-realized, we need the narrative distance that only third-person provides. The use of third-person in Katya’s World is a strong reminder that there are very valid reasons to make certain (even unpopular) narrative choices. Though I’m not sure that most readers will be aware of Howard’s choices–because they’re smoothly executed enough to not be very noticeable–I appreciated the skill evident in them.

It’s different from my usual reads in other ways, too. This is a YA tale wholly lacking in romance. But it does not lack in human relationships. Katya’s relationships with the older men around her–her Uncle Lukyan and the pirate Kane–are touching and complex. Because Katya is a girl primarily defined by her desire for adult respect and recognition, these relationships, in lieu of romantic exchanges, made a whole lot of sense.

Still, the plot didn’t particularly appeal to me to the end–we’re treated to one action sequence after another, as the crew of the Baby find pirates and an artificial sea beast called the Leviathan. This action is fairly relentless, and might be a touch dry for those readers (like me) who aren’t action fans. But it’s worth reading through them. Ultimately, the Leviathan is a complex SF villain and technology both, and the difficulties it poses push Katya to her emotional limit. The climax reveals quite a bit about a strong-heroine who has withheld so much from readers–and it’s really quite a touching story in the end.

Katya’s World is available now from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and your local indie bookstore.

Your favorite Animophs-delivery vector is back! Today’s offering is courtesy of Elise Smith, whose name sounds like something from a witness protection program. She’s another one-shot ghostwriter, something that hasn’t boded well for a book’s quality in the past. How will it bode this time? Let’s find out.

The tragically non-hilarious cover shows Rachel turning into a cheetah. Whee.

Although I guess her expression in the upper-right is kind of funny.

The book opens with a page that blatantly sets up its main character conflict: Jake is out of town and Tobias has discovered Visser Three’s latest feeding spot, which means they have an opportunity to take him out. But oh noes, Rachel has to step in and take command even though she’s not sure if she should. CONFLICT.

They jump straight into the mission, which is a bit unusual. As the cover indicates, they all decide to go in Hit-Cheetah morph, because I guess cheetahs are the perfect animals to use when assassinating an alien despot. Rachel’s description of the cheetah morph involves some pretty humorous sound effects, which I will now reproduce entirely out of context for maximum lols:

ZWOOOP!

BOOIIINNGGG!

POOOF!

POP! POP!

POPPOPPOPPOPPOP!

WHOOOSSSHHH!

I’m disappointed in myself for not thinking of this sooner.

They attack Visser Three while he’s feeding, but what do you know, he just happened to have brought along an alien thing that looks vaguely like an Andalite and is even faster than a cheetah. That’s…uh, convenient. It kind of reminds me of one of those really didactic cartoons where the kid who never shares just happens to come up against a monster that can only be killed by the power of sharing.

The creature also thought-speaks incredibly fast, although Visser Three can apparently understand it. He refers to it as ‘Inspector’, which means we’re going to get a tie-in to the events of Visser. (If you recall, that ended with Visser Three getting slapped with a death sentence that would remain suspended only if he managed to conquer Earth in a reasonable timeframe).

The Inspector (whose host body is something called a Garatron) is openly antagonistic towards Visser Three, so Rachel decides to sour the relationship further by continuously attacking or harassing known high-ranking Controllers in a bid to make Visser three look incompetent. Er, even more incompetent, I mean. Marco says they should wait until Jake gets back from visiting his relatives. Rachel disagrees.

CONFLICT.

The first raid on a Yeerk-owned property goes swimmingly, in that the Animorphs cause a lot of property damage and make it seem like Visser Three has no control over what happens in right under his nose. But oh no, Tobias saw an old guy trip amidst all the panic and is afraid he might have hurt himself! Rachel tells him to stop being such a weeny and pushes on with the attacks.

CONFLICT.

Sorry, I’m trying not to be too flippant here, but this whole plotline feels really low-stakes. Why couldn’t the entire book have been about them trying to assassinate Visser Three? That would be a lot more interesting.

Anyway, they attack the bookstore and Marco accidentally scares a kid or whatever but that’s the price you pay. In a real war, kids get scared sometimes. Then they raid a clothes store or whatever and later on they find out that the old guy who fell over actually died.

CONFLICT

So this would be pretty interesting if it happened because Rachel accidentally mauled someone to death, but no, it happens because some guy with a bad heart was in the vicinity of the world’s lowest-value target when the Animorphs decided to inconvenience it. If you’re going to have the characters accidentally bump off civilians, make it count.

They still decide to go on One Last Raid, but get attacked by Mr. Inspector. Here’s how he’s described:

The inspector circled and spun like a whirling dervisharound Cassie. Jim Carrey in The Mask. The Tasmanian Devil in a whirlwind around Yosemite Sam.

Terrifying. Just terrifying.

Although…

Visser Three shows up, because Visser Three always shows up, and turns into what the Wikipdia article for this book describes as ‘Putrid Alien Flesh’. No really, it says that:

I feel like I don’t mention often enough how insanely detailed the Wikipedia articles for these books can be.

They manage to escape, but Cassie gets left behind. Which, again, might be kind of harrowing if she hadn’t been left behind while engaging in the most pointless mission imaginable. Rachel has an ‘Am I really a good leader?!’ moment, and they decide to break into the Yeerk Pool by, uh, hijacking a small plane and crashing it into a known Pool location. I probably don’t need to list the ways that could go wrong, do I?

They get into the Yeerk Pool, something that would usually be a huge undertaking but is handled in a few pages because this plot has no sense of gravity whatsoever, and Visser Three challenges The Inspector to fight them himself. He does swimmingly against them (remember, super-speed) until Marco bites him in snake morph and injects a fatal dose of venom into him. Goodbye, Inspector, we hardly knew ye.

And that’s the end of the book. Rachel has an insignificant character moment, some random guy dies, and the Animorphs defeat an enemy who had zero bearing on the plot and who will most likely never be mentioned again. This certainly wasn’t the worst book in the series, but man, is it forgettable. I can feel it slipping out of my brain already.

Tune in next time for my re-read of Animorphs #38: The Arrival, in which a new Andalite character turns into something called a Grackle. Expect many, many jokes along the lines of ‘Snap, Grackle and Pop’. You’re welcome in advance.

2068
1.5 million kilometers above the surface of the Earth

Drusilla Xao has only seen a tree in movies and vid-games. She has never breathed air that wasn’t recycled, re-filtered, and re-used a hundred times over again. She has never set foot on the Earth.

And now she never will.

When a terrorist attack by a radical separatist group on Luna destroys the space elevator that had called so many – including her parents – to live permanently in space, Dru is cut off from any hope of ever reaching Earth and her beloved girlfriend, Sarah. The Chinese-American Alliance declares immediate war on the rebels and conscripts everyone they can get their hands on…including Dru.

Cast adrift, forced to become a soldier, trapped in a nightmare of vacuum and loneliness, Dru’s training will help her survive, but only Sarah will be able to bring her home.

Atmospheric Analysis: The design isn’t bad (floating in space!), but the execution makes it look like something from a teenager’s DeviantArt account.

(Ironically, searching for ‘Debris Dreams’ on the Barnes & Noble yields two results: this book and the Planetes box set. The latter features what is essentially the same cover, just done much better. Who would have B&N’s search engine would feature an irony algorithm?)

Planetary Class: Military SF. Not a genre I’m crazy about, but it can be interesting in the right hands.

Mohs Rating: The technology in Debris Dreams sticks rigidly to real-world principles. The space elevator whose destruction kick-starts the plot is probably the most outlandish thing in the book, and even that could become a reality some day. That makes this a 5 on the Mohs Scale.

Viability Rating: Like Apollo’s Outcasts, Debris Dreams plays within the bounds of science rather than trying to get around them. Because of this, the setting feels like a place that could exist some day. There are even a few equations included to describe certain principles of spaceflight for those who are into that sort of thing.

Xenolinguistical Assessment: First-person, IM chat transcipts, competent writing – you’ve seen all this before.

Or you would have, if not for a few interesting(/annoying) twists. The book takes place against the backdrop of a heavily amalmagated world; the USA and China have formed into a single European Union-ish government, an unspecified number of African nations have joined together into what is implied to be a fairly cohesive group, and individual countries are rarely mentioned with the exception of Kenya, which is here the space elevator was built. Like many other authors before him, Colby describes a future in which the concept of nationality no longer makes as much sense as it does now.

Naturally, there’s a linguistic element to this – the main characters speak of a mixture of English, Mandarin, Cantonese and Swahili. In principle, this is a neat idea, and I’m all for SF that isn’t all-America all the time. In practice, though, the settings lends itself to a whole lot of Chinese phrases peppered throughout the text and not a lot in the way of cultural nuance. The Chinese dialogue functions more or less the way it did in Firefly – probably interesting if you understand it (assuming it’s correct), of little to no value if you don’t. The problem is that, as far as I can tell, a lot of the Chinese seems to be adjectives to describe people or things; you can guess whether they’re negative or positive based on context. It’s rarely used to describe concepts or ideas that can’t be expressed in English, which is where including multiple languages in a text becomes important.

Another problem I had was with the inclusion of some jarring references to 1980′s/90′s American culture. I’m not sure the notion of a ‘care bear stare’ is going to exist fifty years from now, nor am I convinced that the book’s main character would describe the false-gravity effect of a space station as ‘I can’t believe it’s not gravity’.

Expanded Report: Debris Dreams starts and ends in familiar places, and the journey between them isn’t anything you haven’t seen a dozen times already. Drusilla, the main character, is drafted into the army after the destruction of the space elevator connecting the Earth’s surface with the orbital colonies. She undergoes harsh training, has to face the horrors of war and eventually comes to realise that her side Isn’t All That Different from their lunar enemies. Along the way she angsts over the death of her parents and her potentially-permanent separation from her girlfriend, who is stuck on Earth.

If you’re going to do the ‘teenager drafted into a future-war’ thing, you really need to throw the audience a curve ball or two. Debris Dreams tries to get around the familiarity problem by accelerating past its most tired plot points at breakneck speed: within forty pages, Drew has joined the army and is being called ‘maggot’ by a Space Drill Instructor. Inevitably, she begins to distinguish herself and rises through the ranks despite frequently questioning her orders.

Dru’s IM conversations with her girlfriend are welcome respites from the fairly tedious military-SF plot. Sarah provides an alternative viewpoint on the action, and there are some interesting moments when she reveals that what everyone is seeing on TV doesn’t quite gel with what’s happening in real life. Even here, though, the book feels as if it’s following a familiar path; in this day and age, it would be more surprising to learn that a government isn’t manipulating war reporting to make itself look good.

We also don’t get much of a sense of Sarah as a character, which leads to my next complaint. Say what you will about Orson Scott Card, he managed to create a military SF story where the characters are more important than the action scenes. Debris Dreams goes for something similar, but the characters aren’t interesting enough to create that all-important sense of dread at the thought of some of them dying.

The characters don’t get a whole lot more interesting when they shack up with each other, either. To its credit, the book is a lot more open about sex than a lot of YA, although it can also feel a bit skeevy about it at times. There’s one scene in particular that casts all the frank sex talk in a slightly weird light. The characters are fitted with ‘skinsuits’, essentially ultra-lightweight space suits, which are described in discomforting detail. Do we really need to know that the suit suctions itself around the main charater’s breasts? Or that the ‘waste disposable system’ apparently involves some fairly invasive tubes? (That last part in particular is written in a way that makes it feel unexpectedly prurient.) It just feels off, somehow.

So, good points. The technology is plausible and interesting (realistic laser guns!) and the setting is potentially fascinating, although I actually would have preferred to see more of Earth rather than have the whole thing be set in space. The writing also isn’t bad. Still, those with no interest in the standard military-SF plotline need not apply.

Debris Dreams is available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and your local indie bookstore.

17-year-old Banyan is a tree builder. Using scrap metal and salvaged junk, he creates forests for rich patrons who seek a reprieve from the desolate landscape. Although Banyan’s never seen a real tree—they were destroyed more than a century ago—his father used to tell him stories about the Old World. But that was before his father was taken . . .

Everything changes when Banyan meets a woman with a strange tattoo—a clue to the whereabouts of the last living trees on earth, and he sets off across a wasteland from which few return. Those who make it past the pirates and poachers can’t escape the locusts—the locusts that now feed on human flesh.

But Banyan isn’t the only one looking for the trees, and he’s running out of time. Unsure of whom to trust, he’s forced to make an uneasy alliance with Alpha, an alluring, dangerous pirate with an agenda of her own. As they race towards a promised land that might only be a myth, Banyan makes shocking discoveries about his family, his past, and how far people will go to bring back the trees.

-Cover art and description courtesy of goodreads.

Atmospheric Analysis: Yes, this cover looks identical to a whole bunch of vector art over on deviantart. However, I love deviantart’s vector art section. This is an eye-catching, appropriate, and cool cover. I’m a fan.

Planetary Class: Rootless is firmly a post-apocalyptic title, dealing with ecological collapse and its long-felt aftermath.

Mohs Rating: Rootless is an earnest exploration of the impact of genetically modifying foodcrops, rating this as a 5 for speculative science, however . . .

Viability Rating: . . . the premise is taken to some absurd extremes. The central argument in Rootless is a fairly polarizing one, and I suspect its effectiveness will vary according to how readers feel about GMOs.

Xenolinguistical Assessment: Rootless is voicey, effective first-person YA. The linguistic conceit (Banyan’s easy voice) is perhaps a little more heavily felt at the novel’s outset, but it’s a strong voice that resonates throughout the story.

Expanded Report: It took me a bit of time to decide how I felt about Rootless, Chris Howard’s debut YA post-apocalyptic novel. On the one hand, it’s an expertly crafted story, cohesive and fully formed in the way that many YA novels aren’t. On the other, the novel is at times formulaic–and this includes the novel’s central anti-GMO argument.

Like Jessica Khoury’s recent debut Origin, Rootless is essentially science-fiction-as-a-cautionary tale. This anti-science theme is more narrow than that found in Origin, specifically one which argues that scientific tinkering with foodcrops could potentially lead to Horrible Things (if it hasn’t already), but the through line is pretty much the same: nature good, mankind and his nature-bending ways, bad bad bad.

And it’s not as if there isn’t something to Howard’s argument. Genetic engineering of foodstuffs, the resultant lack of biodiversity, the race between herbivores and companies which aim to protect our crops from them–all of these are admittedly problematic. And Howard handles them with a fair deal of deftness in the novel’s core premise: in the future, superlocusts develop in response to genetically modified, pest-resistant corn. These locusts quickly blanket the world, even consuming animal flesh after all plant life but this corn are gone. The nature and impact of this apocalypse are well-explored. It’s a creepy, atmospheric world, and an interesting premise. Regardless of your feelings toward GMOs, Howard’s setting is fascinating and complex.

And nicely explored through Banyan, our teenaged, everyman hero. His tale is essentially a picaresque as he seeks to find the world’s last trees–and his long-lost father–and, on the way, accrues a motley band of associates. My favorite was easily Alpha, mohawked love interest and spitfire of a girl. I was a little less enamored of Howard’s slightly stereotypical Rastafarian characters, but the diversity (and presence of religion at all) was still refreshing.

Howard hits the beats of Banyan’s story perfectly–perhaps a little too perfectly. This is storytelling right out of the Blake Snyder school, and everything happens exactly when and how it should. This leads to a nice sense of cohesion, but also one of predictability. Howard is clearly a capable storyteller, and it would have been nice had he subverted the narrative structure now and then.

And in a way, this was my problem with the story’s ultimate conclusion. The horrors escalate, and are appropriately horrific, but at the same time somewhat predictably so–and they surpassed the bounds of credulity for me. Rootless quickly becomes a (slightly absurd) mad scientist story, with all the nuance you might expect. By the end of the story, Howard is making countless appeals to nature, including one passage where he extols the virtues of malus sieversii, a wild apple which is the ancestor of our domestic apples:

The apple tree was a rare kind even before the Darkness. It grew in mountains in far off places. Malus sieversii. A type of wild apple that had grown for a long time unaltered, before people knew how to mess with such things.

This is a slightly problematic argument; though malus sieversii (and other wild apples) are sometimes edible, any apples we eat are created via grafting due to the lack of genetic predictability of apples from generation to generation. You can plant apple seeds, but there’s no guarantee that the tree that grows will produce edible fruit. Therefore, almost all apples that we eat are the way they are due to human intervention.

I suspect Howard would argue that this is a bad thing–his post on the science of Rootless suggests a sort of weariness about all human intervention in the natural order of things. But I found it to be an argument without nuance–nuance that teen readers are certain capable of handling. This argument will find supporters, of course, but also detractors. I asked a plant biologist colleague about the argument here and she replied in exasperation:

This is an insanely complicated issue, and it’s something that’s going to be exceedingly important to the future of humanity, particularly with changing climates and increasing populations: food is going to become a bigger and bigger problem. And it’s infuriating the way that the current ag-bio industrial complex is set up because no one seems to think that it’s important enough to put enough money towards basic research. Plant labs are under-funded as it is, so a lot of researchers wind up going to Dow or Bayer or Monsanto with their hats in their hands so they can keep doing this research. And this fear-mongering isn’t helping to get anything done. No one talks about golden rice (which is a GMO), because all everyone wants to talk about is Bt corn.

Unfortunately, Howard just doesn’t treat the issue with complexity. And while the story is in so many ways strong–interesting, with a rich setting and vivid voice–the way it hinges on the issue will make it a hard nut (apple?) to swallow for some readers, including this one.

Rootless is out now and is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and your local indie bookstore.

(IMPORTANT NOTICE: You may have realised that we’ve slightly altered our schedule here on the Intergalactic Academy. Basically, we’re doing two posts a week instead of three because both Phoebe and I are hella busy right now. This means the Animorphs posts will come twice a month instead of four times a month – 50% less Animorphs for you guys, but 50% more not-writing-huge-blog-posts for me. Don’t worry, I’m still going be finishing the series, it will just take a bit longer!

Now back to your regularly-scheduled programming.)

People warned me about this book. They said it was bad. I scoffed at them – how bad could it be? We’ve been through the Helmacrons, after all. We’ve weathered the storm of Crayak and that Drode guy. Surely nothing in The Mutation could phase me now?

Oh, how foolish I was. I stand before you a broken man, my will shattered by plot contrivances so dimwitted they wouldn’t pass muster on a bad Saturday morning cartoon. You warned me, and I would not listen.

Even this Orca can’t cheer me up.

The Trainwreck starts off promisingly enough. Jake gets a late-night phone call Cassie, during which she makes a veiled reference to trouble brewing in the war against the Yeerks. It’s Animorphing Time!

Jake arrives at Cassie’s barn to find a dying Hork-Bajir, as well as Toby, the Seer from the Hork-Bajir colony in the mountains. Toby explains that the dying Hork-Bajir was part of a failed experiment by Visser Three to create Aqua-Bajir that he could use to rediscover the Pemalite ship. Right off the bat, this makes no sense. Why would amphibious Hork-Bajir help him find the ship? It’s so far underwater that the kids had to acquire a giant squid to get to it the first time. If Visser Three can’t find it using Yeerk technology, a bunch of semi-aquatic mammals sure as hell aren’t going to help.

Toby says that Visser Three has created a ship called the Sea Blade to look for the Pemalite ship, I guess because he felt like turning the Blade Ship into a series. Maybe the 2012 model comes with plush leather interiors and keyless entry! The Fish-Bajir dies, and Jake decides that the have to stop Visser Three from getting his hands on Pemalite technology.

Ax guesses that the Sea Blade must be a new ship capable of staying underwater for extended periods of time, which makes no sense given that the Yeerks managed to find the Pemalite ship just fine using their ordinary ships the first time around. Anyway, they decide to acquire a killer whale with the improbable name of Swoosh (apparently Nike is sponsoring it – no really, that’s what the book says) and use the new morph to sink the Sea Blade.

Jake and Marco watch the Yeerk Pool for three days and eventually see the cloaked Sea Blade leave and make its way to the ocean. Jake follows it and morphs into Swoosh the Orca, at which point he experiences a cetacean power trip:

And then I felt the stirrings of the orca’s mind. Instincts were activated. Senses alerted brain centers. Threats? No. There were no threats. Threats could not exist. They were an impossibility. What could challenge my power?

I bet a modified spaceship could probably do some damage to an orca. Just saying.

The others catch up with him and they attack the ship, aided by a handful of real orcas who just happened to be swimming by. There’s a fairly gruesome (and effective) part where the Sea Blade demonstrates its anti-whale armament:

Dracon beam!

A horrible shrieking! An inhuman scream of pain, silenced too abruptly. I fired clicks. Weird, impossible picture. Not six orca. Not eight. Nine. Nine.

What?

<Oh, God!> I cried.

One of the orcas had been split lengthwise. There were two echo pictures where there should have been one.

[...]

<Who was hit?> I cried.

<Demorph!> Tobias yelled.

<It’s not me!> Cassie answered. <Ax! Marco!>

<I am unharmed,> Ax answered.

<I’m mentally destroyed. Tell me that didn’t happen.> Marco.

For all my complaints about Visser Three being wussified over the course of the series, I do like that the Yeerks become increasingly paranoid about random animals hanging around their bases of operation.

But that’s the last compliment you’ll be seeing in this post, because things are about to get  colossally stupid.

The gang surfaces, remorphs and manages to damage the Sea Blade. They follow it to make sure it sank, but instead witness it being pulled into a cave by a group of humanoid creatures. Another alien species? Nope, even more stupid than that. They manage to get into the cave when a door-like thing opens for them. Inside there’s a bunch of dead people who have been preserved, statue-like, on top of an old ship.

So that’s kind of creepy, I guess. But just wait.

They head deeper into the cave and find an entire Japanese WWII-era aircraft carrier, which is just a little bit impossible given the size of the cave opening. The crew has been preserved inside, just like the men from the older ship.

“I am so out of here,” Marco said. “Jake, we have to go. Now.”

As always, Marco is the voice of reason.

They leave the ship and find a seagull which is not a seagull:

The creature I thought was a seagull was not a normal seagull.

Its eyes were enormous. They covered the entire sides of its head and touched over its beak. And unlike a normal seagull’s eyes, this bird’s eyes were bright blue.

<Eyes adapted to a perpetually dim environment?> Tobias guessed.

As if in response the bird squawked, spread its wings, and took off.

Now this is pretty stupid, but just wait. Just wait.

They go further and find:

It was a city. Sort of. A series of interlocked buildings. Like one of those ancient Indian cliff dwellings made of adobe. Only this city was made from various parts of ships and boats. Massive prows jutted out, tankers, battleships, passenger ships, sailboats. Lifeboats were hoisted up the sides of ships to become terraces. Ships’ propellers turned slowly, drawing air into monstrous steel fortresses.

Not yet.

From the center of the city rose a fantastic tower. It was a visual trip through the history of technology. At its base it was constructed of massive iron cannon, welded and bolted upright deck upon deck, rising perhaps thirty feet. All of it was covered in hammered gold and silver, a billion-dollar skin. After that the building materials began to change. Heavy iron plate. Smoke stacks. Massive guns.

Steel pipe. Another twenty or thirty feet. And then lighter construction: aluminum sheathing, wire, computer consoles, the tubes of burned out missiles.

Amazingly, we’re still not at Ground Zero.

They spot some blue-skinned, gilled humanoid creatures, evidently the ones who captured the Sea Blade. (Nope, still not it.) Jake figures that Visser Three will become the latest attraction in the Undrwater Museum of the Dead and decides it’s time to leave, which of course doesn’t work. They get captured and brought before the queen of the water-people, who is sitting on a real, honest-to-God throne.

Yes, pretty dumb. And still not the worst. We have yet further to descend before we reach the bottom.

The Queen lady apparently speaks every language on Earth and calls the kids ‘Surface-Dwellers’ and oh my god it’s actually going  there, isn’t it. She describes her species as the ‘Nartec’, because I guess being omnilingual doesn’t make her any better at naming a species than most second-rate fantasy authors.

She invites them to a ‘feast’ (no seriously), and gives them the Nartec origin story. And here it is, the jackpot of stupid at the heart of this book. The Nartec were ordinary people living on an ordinary island until it ‘sank’ with them on it. They ‘adapted’ to life underwater and are now amphibious. How do they have light so far underwater? Glowing rocks! What makes the rocks glow? Radiation! Is that the explanation we get for how ordinary humans transformed into fish-people? You bet it is!

Radiation. Made them change. Into fish people. No, seriously.

NO, SERIOUSLY.

In other words it’s this, but not played for laughs.

And what are the fish people going to do with the Sea Blade, you ask? Why, take over the world, of course!

“Our plans are these,” Queen Soco continued. “We will send a carefully selected and trained crew of Searchers to the Surface in this powerful new vessel. We will take whatever oceangoing vessels we encounter. We will mount raids on the Cultures of the Sun! We will conquer villages, towns, cities – even larger land masses! We will show all Surface-Dwellers how powerful and advanced are the Nartec!”

“The long centuries of our exile are over!”

Words cannot describe how cataclysmically goofy this is. It’s not even goofy like the Pemalites, either. They were clearly supposed to be tongue in cheek, what with the ‘I’m so sorry you are not enjoying yourself’ klaxons and all. This is just bad.

But let’s press on so I can go back to  pretending The Mutation was never written.

The kids realise that the Nartec are becoming inbred because they don’t have enough captives to have sex with because less ships have been sinking.

So it’s Water World, basically.

How about we just…accelerate a little, all right? I’m not sure I can handle much more of this.

The kids get captures to be stuffed, but is okay because a Nartec-morphed Tobias rescues them all because Tobias is a badass. They invade the Sea Blade and find a bunch of mummified Hork-Bajir, but no mummified Visser Three. Ax tries to get the Sea Blade moving, but the Nartec are trying to break in. Visser Three makes contact via thought-speak and tells them to either get him out of the cave with them, or they’ll all die. They reluctant agree and manage to escape, but not before being chased by a WWII-era German submarine which is somehow still functioning. They escape. The end.

Good lord, where do I even start?

I can accept all kinds of cheesy stuff in these books. Hell, it’s part of the fun. But the cheesy stuff thus far has always been fun, and it’s always made sense given the series’ internal logic. Take Pemalites, for example: goofy as hell, but they’re space aliens so who cares. Andalites? Also slightly ridiculous, also space aliens. Are you seeing a pattern here?

It’s fine if the stupid stuff comes from space, but it’s suddenly a lot harder to swallow when you have this ludicrous underwater civilization existing on Earth. If this is ever referenced again, it’s going to stick out like a sore thumb. I’m assuming/hoping it will just never be brought up again, because there’s absolutely no way to make it fit gracefully with the rest of the series’ lore.

The worst part is that The Mutaton isn’t all that bad in terms of its writing. Erica Bobone only ever wrote this book, but her prose would have been perfectly serviceable in any mid-tier entry in the series. It’s just unfortunate that she got saddled with the dud to end all duds. (Well, unless she came up with the plot. In that case I’m reeeeally glad this was her only book.)

My only consolation is that this has to be the lowest point in the recap project. There is no possible way the series could get worse than this, right? I mean, it’s not like the Helmacrons are coming back.

Shit.

Come back next time for my re-read of Animorphs #37: The Downward Spiral. I mean, The Weakness. Which also works, now that I think about it.

Madeleine Cost is working to become the youngest person ever to win the Archibald Prize for portraiture. Her elusive cousin Tyler is the perfect subject: androgynous, beautiful, and famous. All she needs to do is pin him down for the sittings.

None of her plans factored in the Spires: featureless, impossible, spearing into the hearts of cities across the world – and spraying clouds of sparkling dust into the wind.

Is it an alien invasion? Germ warfare? They are questions everyone on Earth would like answered, but Madeleine has a more immediate problem. At Ground Zero of the Sydney Spire, beneath the collapsed ruin of St James Station, she must make it to the surface before she can hope to find out if the world is ending.

-Cover art and description courtesy of Goodreads.

Atmospheric Analysis: Something that sounds fine in print can look really goofy in a picture, as evidenced by any of the Animorphs covers that prominently feature an Andalite. In And All The Stars, most of the main characters undergo a strange transformation that leaves them streaks of blue, ‘star-studded’ skin all over their body – just like in the cover. Alas, the photoshopping isn’t quite up to the task of translating that idea into cover art, which is a particular shame given the number of other striking images the book offers.

Having said that, it also could have looked a hell of a lot worse. So that’s something.

Planetary Class: Between this and Midnight City, I’m tempted to declare a resurgence in YA alien invasion fiction.

Mohs Rating: The aliens in And All The Stars are of the ‘beings of pure energy’ variety, making the book an easy 2. However…

Viability Rating: …their properties and abilities are handled consistently enough that the eventual full reveal feels more like a natural extension of what the book has already revealed than a convenient excuse for some last-minute plot twists.

Xenolinguistical Assessment: Have I mentioned that I love third person? I feel like it might have come up a few times already.

And All The Stars actually would have been a good candidate for first person, seeing as how the perspective is focused squarely on one character for the entire book, but I get the impression that Höst might just be more comfortable with third. I’m certainly not going to argue with her; the writing here is self-assured and of a consistently high quality, barring one or two oddly-described moments in the first three chapters.

Expanded Report: I reviewed Stray, one of Höst’s earlier books, about nine months ago. I remember wondering at the time whether Höst would pursue a book deal with a publisher, since she clearly had the skill to do so if she felt like it. Now, having read And All The Stars, I suspect she has a loftier goal in mind: to become one of the first self-published YA authors who can justify self-publishing not by the number of books she’s sold, but by the quality of her writing. Or maybe she just doesn’t feel like being bound to the terms of a contract. In the end, who cares? And All The Stars is one of the most unusual YA books I’ve read all year – and one of the best.

The book opens with the main character, Madeleine Cost, trapped under the rubble of a collapsed train station in Sydney. She escapes into a world utterly transformed: massive ‘Spires’ have appeared in major urban areas across the world, transforming those around them into either Blue or Green-skinned creatures with strange abilities. Madeleine is among those who survive the change. She befriends a group of similarly-transformed Blues, as they begin to call themselves, and sets out to understand why Earth has been invaded and whether any of the survivors can do anything to reclaim it.

I’d really like to say more about the alien invaders at the heart of And All The Stars, but finding out what they are is half the fun. They reminded me most of a more serious version of the aliens in The Hitchhiker’s Guie to the Galaxy – not evil, exactly, just profoundly indifferent to how their actions affect humanity.

Luckily, there’s plenty more to talk about. The cast of characters that makes an appearance in And All The Stars is huge – too huge, maybe, given that some of them appear once or twice and then are never heard from again. But the core group, consisting of Madeleine, Noi, and a group of boys from a private secondary school, are all fleshed out brilliantly over the course of the book. Their relationships are also incredibly diverse, as much as I hate using that word sometimes. Is Madeleine physically attracted to Noi, her closest friend among the group of survivors? She might be, or she may just see the other girl as an ideal subject for her paintings. Are Nash and Pan a couple? Not really, but also kind of, even though only one of them is gay. Whether intentionally or not, Höst depicts a group of young people who were almost entirely unconcerned with classifying themselves according to the usual rules even before an alien invasion turned society on its head.

Whether because of that or because they’re so well-written, I found myself genuinely worrying about what might happen to certain characters as the story progressed and the stakes grew ever higher. The invaders eventually put their ultimate plan into motion, and it doesn’t end well for any transformed humans caught in the middle. There’s a long (probably too long) section in the middle of the book where the characters are holed up in an apartment while they make plans to eventually leave the city. Inevitably, some of them aren’t going to make it out unscathed. But unlike in any number of zombie or disaster stories I could name, nobody has a target painted on their back; there’s no designated asshole who is destined from their first appearance to be thrown to the aliens when it’s time for someone to die.

Now for the inevitable criticism. (What, you thought it wasn’t coming?) My biggest complaint is that the book’s tone can be fluctuate pretty severely even in the middle of a scene. There were one or two moments when everyone seemed just a bit too jovial given the grimness of their situation and the amount of dead bodies they’ve all had to deal with since the initial appearance of the Spires. There are also one or two emotional moments that don’t entirely work, like the scene where a character reacts to the death of a friend by angrily quoting from a Shakespeare play. At some length. It’s a little bit difficult to take seriously.

I also can’t help but feel that the book is missing something, although I couldn’t tell you what that might be. (This is some grade-A reviewing, I know.) A slightly stronger emotional punch, maybe? Just a bit more direction in the plot? The fact that I can’t put my finger on what it is means that the book must not suffer too much for its absence, but the absence is definitely there.

These are fairly minor complaints, though. Any reader is, I think, justified in being slightly fed up with a lot of what comes out of the major publishers these days. I know I am, and not just because I review a fairly decent percentage of it for this site. And All The Stars is genuinely unlike anything I’ve review here on the Academy, ever, and for that alone I’d be willing to recommend it without reservation. The fact that it tells a good story, is great science fiction and has some of the best characters I’ve seen for a while means that it isn’t just a curio for adventurous readers. If you like YA science fiction, you should read this. It’s that simple.

And All the Stars is available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.

After a brief hiatus (for reasons of books and life), we’re back with our Intergalactic Academy Space Cases rewatch! Today’s episide is 1.07, “Desperately Seeking Suzee.” 

The episode opens with the boys gossiping in the engine room like a couple of hens. They’re trashing Catalina, who, if you haven’t guessed by now, is a bit nutty [and wonderful]–discussing her imaginary friend Suzee. Radu, as usual, defends her. His wig looks quite jaunty today.

We cut to Catalina, arguing with Suzee. She’s discovered a comet and they both want to name it after themselves, because they’re vain. One of them, for good reason. I’ll give you one guess as to which!

In a nice bit of acting by Jewel Staite, Catalina freaks–screaming at Suzee to leave her alone. She manages to hit all the right notes in an adolescent argument despite the fact that she’s arguing with herself. And then, when Suzee does leave her alone, she manages to look adorably terrified.

Cut to theme song (we’re spaaaa-aaa-aaa-aaace cases. dun dun!)

Back in the engine room, the boys are grappling with the ship’s alien design, and Radu is adorably grappling with humor. Unsuccessfully, I might add, but it beats his usual routine of alternating sulkiness with creeptacular anger.

Their engine adjustments are unsuccessful.

The next scene is largely a bit of infodump that reiterates the opening, where THELMA asks Catalina what’s going on and Cat explains that Suzee’s disappeared. But their conversation features one of the more disturbing exchanges of the series:

THELMA: Tell me, do human beings always yell at each other like you and Suzee?
Catalina: No, only friends do that.

Catalina goes on to talk about engagement with friends and how friends yell because they care, but it’s still a little disturbing. Catalina and Suzee have a really fighty relationship, and it’s not exactly the best model of friendship for teenage girls. Nevertheless, I guess it’s a fairly accurate one. Friend fights can be vicious–I suppose I just wish that the show had revealed more positive exchanges between Catalina and Suzee before Catalina was put on a bus to Pluto, if you know what I’m talking about (and I think you do).

There’s more talk about Goddard’s work in the engine rooms. He’s shaved six months off their travel time, and Harlan is a whiny turd about it.

Harlan: Thanks, I guess.

Davenport very sweetly confides in Goddard about her concerns over Catalina–now that Suzee’s gone, what does that mean for Cat? It’s a nice note of tenderness, particularly since Davenport usually seems more than a little annoyed with Cat and her “imaginary” friend.

The ship comes in close to the comet to get a better look. Educational opportunity! Davenport quizzes the students on the parts of a comet, and there’s a scene which is pure science fact. They rattle off the parts of a comet, and to this day I remember that the nucleus is the head and the tail is the tail and the . . .

ah, uh, blub . . . fire?! is not part of a comet at all.

The kids answer a bunch of questions about comets. Radu gets one wrong, and Catalina gets two wrong, which is probably completely traumatic for her because she’s used to being awesome. Harlan doesn’t help matters–he taunts her and calls her names. She admits that she’s nothing without Suzee and storms off.

You know, when Suzee is later introduced as a regular character (because reasons), many of her character traits are the same as what’s established in the first season–she’s a pompous genius. Supposedly this was all because the writers didn’t have time to develop her into anything better, but it looks to me like they had plenty of time.

Maybe Suzee was just meant to be kind of a jerkbucket?

Harlan goes after Suzee, and he continues to insult her. She gets all competitive with him and starts moving around the engine crystals for no apparent reason. Not only does their bickering screw up the power system, but it also aims the ship straight at the comet.

Disaster and shakycam strike! Strobe lights! And slow-mo! And screaming! I mean, literally, Cat screams at the engine and somehow fixes it.

Goddard comes up to bust the kids, but shockingly, tells Catalina she’s amazing–she’s discovered a mechanism by which the Christa can manipulate time. But now the hull temperature is rising!

Catalina begs Suzee for help. But no dice. Instead, she has to use her own feisty little mind. She realizes that there are ions in the comet’s tail that can help . . . diffuse . . . the thermal . . . warp. Or something.

There’s a nice visual joke among all this where everyone is thrashing about and Radu is just standing there like a stone cold fox.

Suzee comes back and she and Catalina immediately start bickering about the solution. Catalina insists that Goddard should listen to her. He does. Then Suzee suggests that Rosie release the heat into the engine to “jump start it” and it turns out that their teamwork saves the day. Zabagabe!

There’s an epilogue in this episode with two points worth mentioning. First, there’s a really sweet exchange between THELMA and Cat where the robot asks if they’re friends and Catalina says they are. Secondly, Catalina says something about Suzee being “the best kind of friend” because they’re “friends because they want to be.”

This rustles my jimmies a bit. Suzee was conspicuously absent through most of the episode–even when her friend needed her–and the moment she showed up she was trying to one-up her and prove her wrong. The Aesop feels broken; the friendship feels a bit broken, too. Even though Catalina displays some real tenderness toward the other female characters (and I would say strong relationships between the women–Davenport, Rosie, Catalina, and even THELMA–is one of the series’ strengths), that’s often absent in her relationship with Suzee. In this episode, Catalina shows that, while she may not be an engineering genius, she’s got brains and moxie all her own. But subsequent episodes with Suzee make it clear that this relationship isn’t really reciprocal.

That’s my first of many problems with Suzee. I can only promise you that there will be more to come.

Catalina Awesomesauce Rating: 9/10. It’s hard to watch her founder, but Catalina proves that even her impulsiveness is a strength in this episode.
Harlan jerkass rating: 10/10. He’s sent to comfort Catalina and he mocks her instead.
Radu cornball rating: 6/10. He gets in a cheesy, Bova-esque joke. I’m reminded of Data’s attempts to understand human humor. His failures, I mean.
Currently shipping: THELMA/Catalina. But just for hugs.

Tune in in two weeks for a recap of my all-time favorite episode, “It’s My Birthday Too (yeah!)” and until then, ZaBaGaBe!

Nothing can match the power of a single voice…

Ruby Martin expects to spend her days repairing robots and avoiding the dangerous peacekeeping forces that roam the corridors of the generation ship The Creative Fire. Her best friend has been raped and killed, the ship is falling apart around her, and no one she knows has any real information about what’s happening to them. The social structure on board Creative Fire is rigidly divided, with Ruby and her friends on the bottom, but she dreams of freedom and equality.

Everything changes when a ship-wide accident reveals secrets she and her friends had only imagined. Now, she has to fight for her freedom and the freedom of everyone she loves. Her enemies are numerous, well armed, and much more knowledgeable than Ruby. Her weapons are a fabulous voice, a quick mind, a deep stubbornness, and a passion for freedom. And complicating it all—an unreliable A.I. and an enigmatic man she met – and kissed – exactly once—and one of them may hold the key to her success. If Ruby can’t transform from a rebellious teen to the leader of a revolution, she and all her friends will lose all say in their future, and nothing will ever change.

-synopsis and cover art courtesy of goodreads.

Atmospheric Analysis: This is a beautifully painted cover by artist John Picacio–gritty and atmospheric, it perfectly captures the novel’s main theme of rebellion. However, it doesn’t particularly feel like a young adult cover; Ruby herself looks a bit old here, don’t you think?

Planetary Class: The Creative Fire joins several other YA novels (off the top of my head: Inside Out, Glow, Across the Universe, and my own novel, the forthcoming Starglass) as social sci-fi set on a generation ship.

Mohs Rating: The focus in The Creative Fire is almost entirely on Ruby and her society. Technology is present–Ruby herself repairs robots for a living–but largely entirely unexplained. This makes it almost impossible to rate on a Mohs scale.

Planetary Viability: My biggest concern with The Creative Fire is that the generation ship society never quite felt real. In some ways, I suspect this was intentional; still, at times I wished for the stronger sense of setting and a sense for how this world worked. I never got one.

Xenolinguistical Assessment: Brenda Cooper’s prose is spare and plain. There are moments when these stylistics are quite effective, though overall I felt the narrative choices kept the reader at an arm’s length from what might otherwise have been a gripping situation.

Expanded Report: This is the fourth young adult release by Pyr that I’ve read in the past month. It’s funny how quickly one forms an impression of a publisher just by reading a handful of their current titles. Through this exercise, I’ve noticed certain patterns: third person narration, an adult-SF sensibility, and a certain textual density that’s lacking in other YA.

All of these traits are on display here in The Creative Fire, first in a new series by author Brenda Cooper. It’s yet another Pyr YA title with mature stylings and a classic SF feel. As per usual for Pyr, the prose is both confident and competent. And yet again–as was the case with Quantum Coin–the quantity of plot events and ideas squished into such a small space posed serious difficulties for me in my enjoyment of the book. And once again, as with Be My Enemy, the emotional distance kept me from really getting swept up in the story.

There is much to like here, particularly in the novel’s broader concepts. Ruby Martin repairs robots on the generation ship The Creative Fire. One day the path beneath her breaks and she’s trapped with a man from a higher social caste, one who she would have never met otherwise. During this interlude, she sings to him–soon, she’s tapped as the new voice of the people, pulled from her humble beginnings into broader society.

The first problem here is that the plotting is diffuse and more than a little strange; after spending time with Ruby and her lower-class cohort through the novel’s first third, we’re suddenly plunged into the world of the higher castes and the novel takes a strange turn. She’s groomed for leadership and stardom, made to practice her vocal craft by Fox, a musical producer and Ruby’s first lover. These chapters feel almost like they were taken from a contemporary novel–a YA Black Swan, perhaps–where the female characters call one another catty names and compete to win Fox’s heart.

It was a strange turn, oddly jarring when contrasted with the shipboard society that we’re shown elsewhere in the novel. However, upon reflection I realized that I never really got a strong sense of this society overall; maybe the recording studios and bachelor pads of the novel’s middle weren’t so much a contradiction, but rather only appeared so due to my own failure to understand the society’s fundamentals. The citizens are stratified by job, and forced to don monochromatic outfits. Their quarters vary according to rank, and while vague historical explanations were given for this, the ship never quite coalesced for me into a real, tangible place. Perhaps this was intentional. After all, Ruby’s spheres of reference are limited, and as she moves beyond the society of the grays she learns more and more. But still, the setting never quite came together for me as I hoped. By the novel’s conclusion, I was still hazy about the ship’s purpose, the reality of their destination, how the social stratification worked, and so on.

This haziness was complicated by the truly epic cast of characters in The Creative Fire. There are dozens of minor, named characters–enough that I had a hard time keeping them straight. Very few seemed well-drawn enough for me to have a true sense of their personality. Ruby herself, at least, is a compelling heroine with some interesting and dicey complexity. Her major motivator appears to be sexual desire (in the novel’s early pages, she laments her own mother’s promiscuity), but many of the men she encounters were sketchily drawn. Because I never truly understood the appeal of many of these men, I found it difficult to empathize with Ruby and to understand what, precisely, she wanted as the novel progressed. General narrative distance and Cooper’s reserved, sparse prose compounded this. While I found Ruby interesting, I never quite sympathized with her.

The Creative Fire does firm up quite a bit toward the end, as Ruby is thrust into the limelight and forced to cope with the repercussions of her role as a figurehead. It’s a more successful exploration of these themes than Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay, but the world, on the whole, was less believable than Panem. The book simply often felt like it was missing something. Still, readers who enjoy unadorned, mature writing might give this one a try; it’s certainly a confidently written book, even if I wasn’t quite sold on the overall experience.

The Creative Fire is out now. It’s available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and your local indie bookstore.