When we first met Ellie Quin she was a head-strong nineteen year old on Harper’s Reach, a world nearing the completion of its terraforming cycle. Ellie was tired of working on her father’s farm and she had big plans of making it off-world. Her first step to a brave new life was to find her way to the domed city of New Haven, a sparkling place where all of her dreams would come true. The only problem with Ellie’s dream?

Reality.

It takes money to make it in a big city and big cities attract more than just starry-eyed dreamers hoping to make it big. With the help of her new-found friend, Jez, she plots and schemes to defy the odds and come out on top. Unknown to Ellie she will need to conquer more than just the harsh economic realities of a growing metropolis, she will also need to dodge a ruthless killer sent by the Administration, the organization that governs humanity’s populated worlds. For Ellie is more than just a young woman with a dream, she is a young woman with a destiny…a destiny to bring it all crumbling down.

The second chapter in Alex Scarrow’s Ellie Quin series picks up right where The Legend of Ellie Quin left off, with a now twenty-year-old Ellie learning to navigate the crazy, technologically imaginative city of New Haven as she discovers who she is and what she can do when put to the ultimate test: life.

Ellie Quin is a delightful young lady and spending time with her is a heck of a lot of fun.

My rating: 8/10 stars

Continue reading The World According to Ellie Quin (Ellie Quin Book 2) ~Alex Scarrow →

“On my sixteenth birthday, I went to the Moon.”

This isn’t the way it is supposed to be. Turning sixteen should be a special, memorable time for any teenager. It should be unforgettable. And for Jamey Barlowe, it was. In the early hours of the morning of his sixteenth year Jamey and his two older sisters are unceremoniously awoken by their father and rushed out of their home under cover of darkness. In the midst of the chaos and confusion the children are able to discover that the President of the United States is dead, an incident that is being reported as an assassination and the Vice President, Lina Shapar, is calling for the detainment of a group of American citizens that she believes may have a part to play in the President’s death, a group that includes Jamey Barlowe’s father.

Jamey Barlowe was born on the moon. As a result he suffers from a condition that has left him crippled for the majority of his life. If Jamey ever dreamed of returning to the place of his birth it was not like this. But for Jamey and the five other young people leaving with him, this isn’t a time for dreaming, it is a time for cold hard reality. Their destination is Apollo, a mining colony on the Moon, and although they are being sent their for their own protection they will soon discover that safety is all a matter of perspective and the Moon holds harsh challenges for each and every one of them.

Allen Steele’s young adult novel is being hailed as a successor to the great Robert A. Heinlein and if Steele did not pen this as a loving homage to Mr. Heinlein’s juvenile fiction then the only plausible explanation is that Steele is Heinlein reincarnated. From start to finish Apollo’s Outcasts reverberates with the heartbeat of Heinlein’s best and creates a contemporary sense of wonder that will have you daydreaming all over again about a future that includes human habitation on the Moon.

Continue reading Apollo’s Outcasts ~Allen Steele →