like world building? this book is perfect for you

Hella – David Gerrold 

Science fiction, terraforming, space travel, politics, agriculture, fiction.

Kyle is neurodivergent and is a part of the colonizers on the new planet Hella. He was given a task to help make videos that will educate the next group of migrant colonizers to understand what it is that the colony does and how it works. Alongside working, Kyle’s life is changing before his eyes and there are secrets that he must keep and he must stay on everyone’s good side if he doesn’t want to become an outcast. Sometimes reality isn’t always what it seems. 

This book hardly had much plot for there was a lot of world building and explaining. I love the quality of the world building but the quantity could have been brought down slightly. But understanding that this is science fiction and the main focus is colonizing a different planet does raise a lot of questions such as politics and environment focuses as well as how to raise a colony from a planet without destroying the planet. That I was enjoying and I felt that the main character could have offered his opinion rather than basing it off of what everyone else was thinking. 

The writing is excellent however the plot could have been more fleshed out a bit more. The world building took a lot out and was so much for me to understand. It took a good chunk of the book to get to somewhere and I felt the ending was not satisfactory. I do hope that there is a sequel in the works since there was evidence of a lot of hard work going into this novel. I did like this book, don’t get me wrong, the characters and the interactions were excellent as well as how these colonizers interacted with the planet. If one is a science fiction nerd that loves a good book that has a lot of world building, this one is perfect. 

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this was fun

The Mysterious Disappearance of Aiden S. (as told to his brother) – David Levithan 

Mystery, children’s literature, fiction. 

Rating 8/10

Aiden disappears and is nowhere to be found. His family speculates a possible kidnapping or that he simply ran away. Liam wants to know where he could have gone. A week later he appears and everyone is in wonder of where he went to. Aiden can’t tell them but they must believe him that he wasn’t kidnapped nor did he run away. 

I found this novel to be rather interesting. I got it mostly because the title seemed rather odd and mysterious. I thoroughly enjoyed this because there was some intense mystery but not too much for a young reader. This is a good introduction to mysteries though. It is excellently written and the plot is so interestingly fun. I enjoyed this and definitely recommend for any young reader to grab off the shelves if they want some fun mystery.