Skye Object 3270a
This is a book that I got from LibraryThing some months ago to review, but it sat on my desktop for months before I remembered to move it onto the Kindle, and then it sat there a while longer before I actually read it. I'm sorry I didn't get to it sooner.
This is a nice little YA novel, set in a world where humans have gotten fairly good at using nanotech but not so good that Clarke's Law seems to have taken over, as in the regrettable Glasshouse. Our heroine is a castaway, the apparent sole survivor of a ship's contact with the berserker-like Chinzeme, and as the book opens she's fourteen and ready to make a big jump. Literally. From there, things get interesting and don't stop until the end. In contrast to the Hive kids in John Barnes' Jak Jinnaka novels, Skye and her friends have an adolescent innocence about them, which is a nice change of pace, and when the novel comes to an end, you're left wishing there was more to it, or maybe a sequel in the works. Hats off to Linda Nagata for doing a nice job telling the story of a nice young lady who starts her life in the middle of an adventure and looks to be having more in the near future. I particularly liked that the book is tightly written, without a lot of time being spent describing the orbital colony Skye calls home, the planetary base at the other end of the beanstalk, or any of the other potentially distracting things in the background of our heroine's adventures. We get a little background for her friends, and none of it is wasted because everything that's mentioned comes back later and is put to use. I liked it a lot, and I think your teenaged kids might, too.
Skye Object 3270a
is available in paperback or Kindle from Amazon, or from other fine booksellers.
I spent the beginning of my day being late to a focus group at NVCC that was discussing the changes/improvements in the Financial Aid Office -largely positive, and despite my crankiness over my personal situation, I said so- but they gave me a $25 B&N gift card anyway for being there and speaking my mind. The rest of the day was spent dealing with clogulation problems, answering surveys, and I think I'll end it by blogging so I can get back on some semblance of a normal sleep cycle.
Tomorrow, washing ALL the towels, and on Thursday getting my legs lased. Weehu.
This is a nice little YA novel, set in a world where humans have gotten fairly good at using nanotech but not so good that Clarke's Law seems to have taken over, as in the regrettable Glasshouse. Our heroine is a castaway, the apparent sole survivor of a ship's contact with the berserker-like Chinzeme, and as the book opens she's fourteen and ready to make a big jump. Literally. From there, things get interesting and don't stop until the end. In contrast to the Hive kids in John Barnes' Jak Jinnaka novels, Skye and her friends have an adolescent innocence about them, which is a nice change of pace, and when the novel comes to an end, you're left wishing there was more to it, or maybe a sequel in the works. Hats off to Linda Nagata for doing a nice job telling the story of a nice young lady who starts her life in the middle of an adventure and looks to be having more in the near future. I particularly liked that the book is tightly written, without a lot of time being spent describing the orbital colony Skye calls home, the planetary base at the other end of the beanstalk, or any of the other potentially distracting things in the background of our heroine's adventures. We get a little background for her friends, and none of it is wasted because everything that's mentioned comes back later and is put to use. I liked it a lot, and I think your teenaged kids might, too.
Skye Object 3270a
is available in paperback or Kindle from Amazon, or from other fine booksellers.
I spent the beginning of my day being late to a focus group at NVCC that was discussing the changes/improvements in the Financial Aid Office -largely positive, and despite my crankiness over my personal situation, I said so- but they gave me a $25 B&N gift card anyway for being there and speaking my mind. The rest of the day was spent dealing with clogulation problems, answering surveys, and I think I'll end it by blogging so I can get back on some semblance of a normal sleep cycle.
Tomorrow, washing ALL the towels, and on Thursday getting my legs lased. Weehu.