February 27, 2023
Space exploration, teleportation, and cloning experiments end in disaster in this heart-pounding thriller by Kirby (A Taste for Monsters). Seventeen-year-old white-cued Jessica Mathers is preparing to teleport to the Theseus, a research facility in orbit around distant planet Carver 1061c, where she will be reunited with her parents, whom she has not seen in six years. In 2199, teleportation involves her body being scanned to an advanced 3-D printer at her destination, upon which its counterpart is destroyed at the point of departure. But instead of emerging on the Theseus, Jessica arrives in a crashed lander on Carver’s surface, seemingly alone. Alternating before and after chapters chronicle the events leading to Jessica’s appearance on Carver and her struggle to survive in the planet’s postapocalyptic landscape. Dual timelines imbued with believable hard science, harrowing action, and strong characterizations permeate Kirby’s breakneck adventure. Questions of personhood are skillfully elevated, explored against an inventive future backdrop in which cloning is the norm and the potential consequences of deceptively simple-sounding procedures come at high costs. Ages 12–up.
July 1, 2023
Gr 9 Up-Jessica Mathers is leaving her life and friends behind, whether she likes it or not, to join her parents on a research mission 14 light years away. But when Jessica wakes up from teleportation-a process where you are scanned and then printed at your destination-she is not on the space station where she was meant to reunite with her parents. Instead, she is in an empty lander crashed on alien soil. Outside is a trail of blood, four freshly dug graves, and someone she could never have expected. Jessica will have to untangle the truths of a terrible disaster and fight to survive a planet with its own dangerous secrets. Chilling and tense, this is a story of deadly unknowns and heart-pounding survival that challenges questions of what makes us who we are. Told in chapters that alternate events before and after the mysterious disaster, the book's pacing and revelations keep readers guessing to the very end. Jessica is a smart and compelling character, deeply sympathetic as she grapples with how little say she has in her own life. Even the small characters feel richly conceived, with interesting back stories lurking just beyond the page. Some readers will be justifiably frustrated with fuzzy or unresolved plot points, but Kirby creates a world that feels both foreign and immediate, pushing readers to examine how much they really understand about the universe. VERDICT An excellent purchase for fans of tense survival, fast-paced horror, and classic science fiction.-Amy Diegelman
Copyright 2023 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from February 15, 2023
In a far future with quantum communication and teleportation, something goes terribly wrong. After 6 years apart, it's time for 17-year-old Jessica to be reunited with her parents--but at the cost of her life on Earth, as instead of coming home, her parents are making her join them on their interstellar scientific mission on a distant, post-extinction-event world. The teleportation technology destroys the original body and prints a new one at the other end, but when Jessica wakes up expecting to be in orbit, it's obvious things have gone horribly, violently, lethally awry. Readers explore the mystery as Jessica tries to solve it--and survive--in alternating "before" and "after" chapters. The dual timelines cover both what happened on the ship (deliciously ominous, considering readers know what's coming) and her struggles on the strange planet as well as the physical and emotional implications of the disaster. The expertly juggled storyline nurtures a tension that blossoms into a palpable sense of dread as the downright spooky nature of the disaster is explored. Themes of identity hit hard, as they come with high stakes. The conclusion results in an open-ended yet satisfying stand-alone novel, though the future setting is well developed enough that readers will hope for more. Though some characters have names that signal ethnic diversity in the supporting cast, most lack physical descriptors and default to White. An intense, read-in-one-sitting kind of ride. (Science fiction. 12-18)
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