Pets and Masters in Space: Part 1: The First Voyage by Elfa TodariMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
When I began reading this space adventure book for children I was quite quickly drawn in by the intriguing ideas portrayed within the first few pages: extremely tall aliens with telepathic powers, a humanoid employee/pet, Antaska, accompanied by her own pet cat, called Potat, and all on a journey through space to an unknown planet. The story goes on to describe the various events and new activities, experienced by Antaska on board the spaceship, with great imagination and skill from the author.
I hesitate to describe her experiences, many rather domestic but novel in nature, as I want to avoid spoilers.
However, she has several rather violent physical encounters with a pair of physically “perfect” humans that verge on romantic infatuation and jealousy. This leads to an interesting climax that could have occurred in many a rom-com but has the different arbitration to affairs from the aliens that the reader hopes for at this point!
I have no doubt that this story will appeal to readers aged from 10 to 15 but does require some editing throughout for typos and spelling errors, eg. “relived” for relieved. While, as an English reader, I could accept many of the US English spellings like “center” and so on, I found the (increasingly common) use of “less” for “fewer” rather jarring – as in “less people” when it should be fewer people. Apart from this I would have liked more technical sci-fi and adventure in the story, too mundane in its space-ship domesticity for me.
The main criticism I have is for its ending, which is abrupt and inexplicable. There seems to be no warning in an introduction or explanation later that this is “Part One” presumably of a series. Once again, as in other similar book-series I felt cheated at the end. Perhaps younger readers than this one will not mind – but I doubt it.
I received a free copy of this book in return for my honest and non-reciprocal review.
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