Book Review: "Avalon" by Mindee Arnett

Not all space adventures are created equal. That's something I forget sometimes whenever I pick up a new sci-fi novel and settle down for an epic space adventure. I'm admittedly a little bit picky when it comes to this genre and there are a few things that will ruin a book for me, like when the answer to everything is "aliens" or there's no science to back up the miraculous devices that have made life in the distant future so strange and magnificent.

Avalon by Mindee Arnett managed to dodge both of those troublesome hangups and tell me a great story in addition, full of emotion, adventure, and creative settings far from our pale blue dot. Living on a space station and in the employ of an intergalactic crime lord, Jeth Seagrave heads a group of elite teenage thieves. But none of them are expecting their latest assignment: to recover a missing ship from the Belgrave Quadrant, the Bermuda Triangle of space. Jeth and his sister Lizzie, also part of the crew, have a history with the Belgrave: it's where their parents were exploring on their ship, the Avalon, before the Interstellar Transport Authority arrested them, and they were executed by the Confederacy. Jeth and Lizzie were too young to remember much, but this assignment might mean they can finally look for some answers.

For Jeth, this mission also means getting himself and Lizzie out from under crime lord Hammer Dafoe's thumb. If he succeeds in retrieving the lost ship from the Belgrave, Hammer will give him back his parents' ship and let him leave on his own adventures. But Jeth doesn't trust Hammer to follow through on his end of the bargain, and so when the abandoned ship in the Belgrave turns out to be more than Jeth was told to expect, all bets are off. Caught between warring political giants Hammer and the ITA, Jeth's primary concern becomes getting Lizzie, Avalon, and the rest of his crew away from the assignment alive. His own future is far less certain.

Arnett's vision of the future, with metatech that allows for interstellar travel and people who spend their whole lives on space stations, was to me both engaging and entirely conceivable. I especially liked how she described the recycled air of the space stations, and how the gravity drive didn't feel quite as real as being planetside. There's also some good subtext concerning resource exploitation when it comes to metatech, what it really is, and how humans (specifically the ITA) use it.

Jeth's family history plays into the story line perfectly, informing a lot of the decisions he makes in a very genuine way. I admired how smoothly his perspectives and goals changed as the book unfolded, revealing new information to him that changed his priorities in ways that didn't take too much explanation, given what we already know about him as a person. Sierra was another dynamic character whose development I really appreciated as a reader. While Jeth is an open book to us from the beginning, his hopes and concerns presented honestly to us from the beginning, Sierra is a mystery. What we know about her, her past, and her intentions, we find out as Jeth does. Trying to guess which parts of her character were genuine and which ones were misdirection or facades added another good dimension of suspense to the book, in addition to the more direct ones between Jeth, Hammer, and the ITA.

The end of the book is set up perfectly for a sequel, with two (to my mind) key issues left unresolved: Dax's intentions and the ITA's experiments with new metadrive technology. These are hefty issues with huge implications, some of them very personal for Jeth, Lizzie and Sierra, but the main conflicts in the first book are closed quite neatly by the end of this installment of the bigger story. I feel like I know there's another book coming, but this is the perfect for the characters and I both to take a breath before tackling the next part of the adventure. I'm interested in how the larger issues pan out, but I'm not slavering for the next book like I sometimes am (see my review of Shadowand Bone by Leigh Bardugo).

If you like sci-fi in the vein of Ender's Game that focuses on humanity in the context of a wider universe, with little to no romance and characters that draw you into their futuristic world, their situations, pick up a copy of Avalon by Mindee Arnett. You can get your copy from a friendly bookseller at your favorite independent neighborhood bookstore.