Nosy Crow
‘Our parents want us to be safe, if we can be,’ she said. ‘But what they really want…is for us to be more. To create our own lives, to make our own decisions about the world. To change the world. They want us to be the kind of people who do what’s right and not be scared. They want us to do what’s right even if we are scared.’
For some reason the cover of this didn’t appeal and I did that heinous thing of ignoring it – and then desperate for reading matter before I was furloughed – I bought a pile of books and this was one of those I took away with me. I am so glad I did.
A group of young teenagers (and an eleven-year-old) are being sent to the outer reaches of space with their parents to set up a colony. So far out that they have regular times when they sleep through space ‘jumps’ – with their memories carefully secured in the spacecraft’s computer banks. The sleeps seem to take little time, but on waking they are substantially further forward in distance.
Then after one such ‘jump’ they wake to find that the adults are still in stasis and the computer can’t wake them. The five of them are on their own – trying to make sure that the life support etc. works. A fire is burning out of control.
There are many conundrums – how has the spacecraft been damaged? What happened when they jumped? Had they come into contact with Scrapers – in effect space pirates? Will they return? What started the fire? How did the little robots get damaged?
I loved this – it reminded me a little of an episode of Star Trek. It had that ‘feel’, perhaps crossed with Red Dwarf – and it was rather wonderful. A book about leadership, about what is important – safety perhaps, but maybe there is more to this – an understanding of each other’s capabilities, bravery, trust and of course it’s about self-belief.
It’s brilliant. It should by rights have had five characters on the cover…
Sue & Pakka's... 