June 1, 2019

Gr 4-6-Kyler Centaurus does not get along with his family. His four brothers torment him constantly because he enjoys using his brain and they enjoy sports, and his parents always seem to take their side. Still, he didn't intend to steal the family spaceship and head off into the solar system. But once he's there, he decides he might as well do what he wants before his parents shut him down-see a new sun revealed by his scientist hero. But running into pirates and meeting a Wanderer girl were not anywhere in his plans. Meanwhile, Figerella Jameslot, the Wanderer girl, accepts a job from those same pirates because she's desperate to survive, and because she enjoys blowing things up. After she and Kyler meet, they head off to Earth together in the Centaurus family ship. But things continue to go wrong, and soon the two find themselves trying to save Earth from complete destruction with only a damaged ship, a paranoid robot, and their own ingenuity to help. The two characters take turns telling their side of the story, which gives readers a chance to compare the very different perspectives and explore their motives. The creative details and action-packed plot make for an exciting read. VERDICT A good choice for libraries where amusing science fiction is needed.-Heidi Grange, Summit Elementary School, Smithfield, UT

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2019
It's easy to steal a spaceship by mistake. It's a little harder to steal a sun. Thirteen-year-old Kyler Centaurus doesn't exactly mean to steal his family's cruiser spaceship. But he's steamed enough at his rambunctious, bullying brothers and his parents' one-sided adjudication of sibling fights that he does program the ship as getaway transport. Although he changes his mind, he accidentally hits the "execute" button while sleeping alone onboard. Elsewhere in the universe, mutant Figerella Jammeslot, also 13, hires herself out to space pirates. She's never blown up a sun before, but she's gifted at demolition, poor, and an orphan--she needs the money. Ky's and Fig's paths converge in a rollicking space adventure centered on the theft and use for terrorism of a portable, artificial sun (readers should pack their disbelief-suspenders) and colored by Harry Potter references, slapstick, and copious jokes in the fart/armpit genres. Although the text offers overt political commentary on despotic rule, corporate power, and media control, its exploration of (real-world-analogous) ethnic, racial, religious, and refugee oppression is diluted by being only metaphorical--and it's bleached out by the fact that somehow everyone appears to be white except one morally corrupt brown person. Fans of gross-out humor and hand-wavy science will have a blast if they can stomach a mostly white 26th century; others should look to Kevin Emerson's Last Day on Mars (2017) instead. (Science fiction. 8-11)

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