Althea M. (althea) reviewed on 9/15/2008 + 774 more book reviews

A very short book.
This book reminded me in many ways of many kids/YA books Ive read about young people making first contact with an alien species. (Andre Nortons, for example). A young teenager on a colony world, fleeing a bully, stumbles into a cave and finds an alien city. Issues with the bully get resolved, the adults get called in, and positive aspects should come out of this for all.
The radical elements here are that the colony world in question is really a criminal world, bootlegging illegal drugs (an issue that is brought up but never really discussed), and that there are a couple of sexually explicit scenes (which have caused other reviewers to go so far as to call the book soft-core porn.) Its not. The scenes arent even that explicit, and arent inappropriate, age-wise, for young teens, either. Its just that theres a definite disconnect between the content, and the style of the language in which the book is written. Theres a very juvenile feel to the writing especially when alien words are stuff like bink bink boo bootah. So more mature content, when it arrives, feels very jarring.
Interesting, but not Nina Kirikis Hoffmans best (or most original) work.

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