One minute Valkerie Jenson is looking for microbes in the heat of an on-the-edge-of-erupting volcano, the next she is on the first manned mission to Mars, aka Ares 10. Well, it doesn't happen quite that fast. First Valkerie has to pass some grueling testing and then catch-up (in a year and a half) the five years of training she has missed. After all of that she does make in onto the team of 4 astronauts that will go to Mars. It sounded so certain, until a malfunction during launch messes up the machinery and then an explosion after making Mars trajectory threatens not only the Ares 10, but the very lives of the astronauts. Was the explosion an accident or was it sabotage?
Oxygen is a well written book, tightly plotted with interesting characters. It is Christian fiction. I am a Christian who doesn't read much Christian fiction because so much of it is fluffy or has it's head in the clouds sort of stuff. But this novel isn't like that. It is compelling with an "it could happen" sort of feel. Being Christian it does have quite a bit of God-talk, but only so much as suits the storyline. The God-talk is also very realistic and deals with doubts all Christians have about the existence of God, especially the "Where is He when everything seems to be going wrong" kind of doubts.
Twelve-year-old Artemis Fowl is not a good little boy. In fact, he is a criminal mastermind. His mission, this time, is to regain the wealth lost when his father's scheme to sell a shipload of cola to countries newly free after the collapse of the Russian empire was sunk, literally. To this end, Atemis has kidnapped an elf and is holding her ransom for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Little does he know that Holly Short is no ordinary elf. She just happens to be a Captain with the elite LEPrecon, and her superiors will do anything to retreive her, and they don't negotiate with humans, and by the way, how did Artemis know how to capture that elf in the first place?
Ofelia is an old woman. In the way of old people who have made up their minds, Ofelia refuses to leave when the colony planet on which she has lived for more than 40 years is ordered evacuated. At the last minute she runs away and hides in the forest knowing the Company will not spend much energy or time searching for her. And she is right. After the other colonists leave, including her son and his wife, she finds she enjoys her solitude more than any other time of her life. She putters in her garden, maintains the other buildings in the settlement, cares for the cattle and sheep left behind, updates the offical log according to her own memory of events, takes up beading and other artworks, learns to be herself . . . but just when she thinks she will truly be left alone, other colonists arrive. The new arrivals are unaware anyone has been left in the old colony.
It doesn't really matter, though, because the new arrivals set down a few thousand kilometers to the north. Ophelia is able to keep track of their goings on through radio equipment left at her settlement. She listens as their shuttle touches down, as they set up shelters, as they clear ground for a landing pad for other arrivees, as an hitherto unkown indiginous population kills everyone of the new arrivals--after which Ofelia is fearful of her own life. What if the natives come looking for her?
Sira, the most powerful member of the Clan, and her human lifemate, telepathic Jason Morgan, have just settled down into the life of traders when their world is shaken up: Jason's best best friends is framed for murder; a rouge faction of the Clan is sending fosterlings out willy-nilly; Sira is kidnapped by an arch-enemy; and the Drapsk...just what are those aliens up to anyway?
Gail Smith is a scientist on a mission—to destroy the alien Quill from the terraformed worlds, worlds which were prepared for humanity and which the Quill now own. Quill are deadly to humans and the terraformed worlds have been quarantined for years. Not only that, any humans who were absent from Sol system when the quarantine went into effect were forbidden to return to Earth lest they bring the Quill to humanity’s home. Those exiles are trapped on overcrowded space stations like Thromberg.
It is to Thromberg that Gail and her team turn for answers on how to defeat the Quill, for it is on Thromberg that the lone survivor of an encounter with the Quill is rumored to live—a survivor who just may hold the knowledge that will defeat the enemy Quill.
In her search for the survivor, Gail expected to find opposition, suspicion, and treachery. The last thing she expected to find was love.
I have been a devoted reader of Czerneda’s books for a few years now. She has never let me down. She weaves tight plots with complex characters. She develops alien worlds as if she has been an actual visitor to such places.
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Buy the book
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Buy the book