Things quickly go very, very wrong, and the two boys find themselves on the run and in grave danger. Parker breaks Chase out, but, to Chase's frustration, he only does it so the two of them can do some shopping and sight-seeing. He doesn't even know basic things that just about anyone should know, or why he said “Guide the star” when Parker first found him.Ĭhase desperately wants to find out more about himself, but Mina, Parker's android bodyguard, seems determined to keep him locked up.

Chase can't remember his own identity (they got his name from a chip in his head), how he got there, or why he was wounded. That boy turns out to be Chase, the book's primary protagonist. Parker finds and rescues an unconscious, wounded boy outside his home. Mina and Parker's relationship was entirely the wrong reason to read this, since they didn't actually have much of one.

Unfortunately, it didn't work as well for me as I'd hoped. That sounded pretty cool, and the cover practically screamed “fast-paced action,” so I decided to give it a shot. Reviews told me that her name was Mina, and that she was an android who'd basically raised Parker, the boy on the lower left. Perfect for readers ready to graduate from Colville’s My Teacher series and Star Trek and Star Wars fans who want a middle-grade adventure of their own, this novel will have readers jetting across space itself for probable sequels.While I was cataloging this for my library, I became intrigued by the girl on the lower right corner of the cover. Strongly crafted alien worlds, discordant alien races, and often unsound space vehicles only add to the overall sense of strange and dangerous fun. Chase and Parker are amusing, likable, authentically realized teenage boys, as likely to put their foot in their mouth as to save the day with unexpected courage. A rollicking space adventure in the spirit of classic juvenile science fiction from Heinlein and Hoover, this fast-paced novel will keep readers on the edge of their seats from page one. Desperate to save themselves and uncover the truth of Chase’s past, they instead discover a vast conspiracy that could make them enemies of the Federation itself. Suddenly they are being chased by intergalactic Federation Fleet soldiers, dragged into dangerous, illegal deals with underground crime lords, and rescued by an alien who may be the terrorist responsible for Trucon’s demise. Things get even more complicated when the compound’s only other resident, the friendly but petulant fourteen-year-old Parker Mason, tricks him into an unauthorized trip to a nearby moon, and the boys inadvertently survive Trucon’s total destruction as a result.

When thirteen-year-old Chase Garrety suddenly appears within the well-fortified walls of an isolated compound on the planet Trucon, he has a blaster wound to the back of his head and no memory of his name, his life before, or how he got there.

The Lost Planet by Rachel Searles