While I have loved riding with the Academy for years now, this was not my favorite adventure to date. This is a prequel which is about Priscilla ‘Hutch’ Hutchins and her first adventure after getting her pilots license and a job. It also is about the development of the Academy as an institution and the Wheel as the space port it needed to become in the future. These were the events that made her who she would later become, but it was not an easy read. The writing is fantastic as always and the characters are well developed and feel like friends more than just words on a page. The galaxy is vivid and I can see the relics left behind in my minds eye with no problem. It just did not have the same feel to it that I am used to having.
Priscilla’s training flight is not as uneventful as most usually are and she and Jake find themselves in the middle of a rescue. The rescue has to occur because of a radical who has placed a bomb on another ship which has blown up. There is a movement that feels the death of every life form on a planet in order to terraform is not acceptable and this is their way of protesting.
The theme throughout is about these individuals who are willing to do anything, including kill in order to save life on a far away planet while sacrificing human life. Priscilla makes a few flights but nothing very note worthy happens. I;m glad I read it because it is part of the story, but I just cannot totally recommend it except to those who have read the previous books.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
When finally they got through, the first thing Priscilla saw was Josh, floating a foot or two above the deck, his wrist tied to a frame. They tried to revive him, although Priscilla thought it was probably a cruel thing to do. If they succeeded, he would only feel that he had to go through it again.
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