Hardcover, 369 pages
Published February 2nd 2016 by Disney-Hyperion
Rating: ★★★
Rating: ★★★
Starflight is a quick, fun caper in the vein of a teenage Firefly, complete with characters on the run from the law, rough space pirates, corporate corruption, and of course, teen romance.
Solara is eighteen, an orphan and was recently convicted of minor crimes, leading to tattoos across her knuckles. She's desperate to leave the rigid, hard place she lives for the Outer Rim, terraformed planets far past the end of civilization, frontier worlds where they might need a mechanic and won't care about her past.
Doran is also eighteen. He's everything that Solara isn't: he's rich, he's spoiled, he's a dick, and he's her old classmate she beat for an award. I personally think Doran could have been an even better character if he was actually a girl and the inevitable romance was queer. Now that we've got our two perspective characters, one male, one female, with a heaping dose of snark and dislike between the two we've got our obvious romance plot set and we're off to the races.
I mock because I'm tired of straight white teen romance as it's the most common thing in YA. However, I actually quite liked the romance in Starflight. Doran's journey from spoiled jerkwad to loyal friend and crewmember is enjoyable; Solara and Doran's alternating perspective works well for the plot as you can read both of their feelings change before their relationship does. The romance is one of the best aspects of this story.
The other characters on the ship all have their own secrets and motivations, some of which are revealed in the book, some of which are clearly left for the sequel (it features two other crew members as perspective characters). They work together well and that works for the book. I had a real soft spot for the tiny ship mascot, a tiny sugar bear named Acorn. I'm not totally dead inside. Add in various gangs of space pirates and the government chasing them and you've got a story that never truly gives you time to rest, rocketing from action scene to action scene.
My two major quibbles for this book are language and worldbuilding, and they're tied together. This book is set in our universe in an unspecified future time. Long enough for humans to be spread across the galaxy and things like monarchies to crop up on settled planets. But the language Landers uses is very firmly 21st century. Doran plays American football but why is such a niche sport in our time still popular hundreds of years in the future? Why haven't phrases changed in that time? There just didn't seem to be enough describing the universe they lived in as a working concept. I had a whole bunch of questions throughout the book, wondering why the author had chosen to skip over such simple world building. Comparatively, something like Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom made the world an added character, cities were filled with personality and secrets. Each location in Starflight was only there to advance the narrative, giving no indication that the world exists beyond the story.
But overall, I quite enjoyed Starflight. It was a quick sci-fi romp that was very readable. both Doran and Solara shining as characters, the bond between them serving as a major (and successful) tent pole for the book. Pretty standard in a lot of ways, but gratifying.
Solara is eighteen, an orphan and was recently convicted of minor crimes, leading to tattoos across her knuckles. She's desperate to leave the rigid, hard place she lives for the Outer Rim, terraformed planets far past the end of civilization, frontier worlds where they might need a mechanic and won't care about her past.
Doran is also eighteen. He's everything that Solara isn't: he's rich, he's spoiled, he's a dick, and he's her old classmate she beat for an award. I personally think Doran could have been an even better character if he was actually a girl and the inevitable romance was queer. Now that we've got our two perspective characters, one male, one female, with a heaping dose of snark and dislike between the two we've got our obvious romance plot set and we're off to the races.
I mock because I'm tired of straight white teen romance as it's the most common thing in YA. However, I actually quite liked the romance in Starflight. Doran's journey from spoiled jerkwad to loyal friend and crewmember is enjoyable; Solara and Doran's alternating perspective works well for the plot as you can read both of their feelings change before their relationship does. The romance is one of the best aspects of this story.
The other characters on the ship all have their own secrets and motivations, some of which are revealed in the book, some of which are clearly left for the sequel (it features two other crew members as perspective characters). They work together well and that works for the book. I had a real soft spot for the tiny ship mascot, a tiny sugar bear named Acorn. I'm not totally dead inside. Add in various gangs of space pirates and the government chasing them and you've got a story that never truly gives you time to rest, rocketing from action scene to action scene.
My two major quibbles for this book are language and worldbuilding, and they're tied together. This book is set in our universe in an unspecified future time. Long enough for humans to be spread across the galaxy and things like monarchies to crop up on settled planets. But the language Landers uses is very firmly 21st century. Doran plays American football but why is such a niche sport in our time still popular hundreds of years in the future? Why haven't phrases changed in that time? There just didn't seem to be enough describing the universe they lived in as a working concept. I had a whole bunch of questions throughout the book, wondering why the author had chosen to skip over such simple world building. Comparatively, something like Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom made the world an added character, cities were filled with personality and secrets. Each location in Starflight was only there to advance the narrative, giving no indication that the world exists beyond the story.
But overall, I quite enjoyed Starflight. It was a quick sci-fi romp that was very readable. both Doran and Solara shining as characters, the bond between them serving as a major (and successful) tent pole for the book. Pretty standard in a lot of ways, but gratifying.
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