Book Buyers Best Finalist in Upper Young Adult!
Octogenarian CEO Gwendolyn Mantis of Botany General didn’t create the ice age cold but keeps dwindling resources out of reach for the poor. Two hundred years before, a meteor bombardment threw Earth into a second Ice Age. Mars and Venus are habitable, but her company, BotGen, started a nuclear war on Mars. Venus is the next big hope. Cunning and meticulous, Ms. Mantis is always in control. Her right hand man, Vito Savage, knows mercy will not an option when he announces the space race to Venus.
Dedicated to her work as a subsistence gardener, teenager Yardley Van Dyke promised her dying mother she’d care for the family by growing food, but family dynamics have changed. Her father’s fiance wants to sell the greenhouse in order to move into the swanky Bioshere. After winning a prize for her intergalactic garden, Yardley learns of the installment of her prototype in all the shuttles. She yearns for recognition.
Tough, outspoken protector Marchand LaFont sails his ice boat across the frozen tundra to deliver fuel and food to the needy. Robin-hooding puts him on BotGen’s watch list. Groomed for the space race, Marchand calls the shots when he plans enters the space race and invites his best friend, Skeeter, Yardley’s twin brother, to join him as his crew.
When Skeeter decides not to go, Yardley, goes up against her father to go in his place. Hoping to start a garden on Venus, she signs on as Marchand’s crew. In spite of his brazen exterior, she falls for him. He cares for her too, but can’t let his emotions get in the way of his mission. He must keep evil Vito Savage from annihilating those who gets in his way while staying alive. Will Venus be their new address where they can fulfill their dreams?
I enjoy some sci/fi novels so I was glad when I won a copy of this book. I think it would be very appealing to upper young adults. There’s a nice romance in the book as well as a heroine with goals and a hero who’s strong, brave, and noble. The characters are nice and easy to relate to. I was unhappy that sections didn’t have a break between them, but it didn’t bother me enough to stop reading. I didn’t find a lot of punctuation, grammar, or spelling errors either. All in all, it was a nice read.
Angela Schroeder
Patricia Kiyono
Elaine Cantrell
Jeff Salter
Joselyn
Tonette Joyce
Four Foxes, One Hound 
Funny thing about Sci Fic stories (for me) — though I greatly enjoyed the boom of Sci Fic movies and TV shows in the 50s & 60s, I’ve hardly ever sought book-length fiction to satisfy that appetite.
In fact, when I (as an adult) wrote my first story in that greater realm, I sort of surprised myself.
All that said, it sounds like this highlighted author does a good job of world building.
I think a big challenge in this genre is to make the technical parts sound legit… without drowning the reader in technical minutia.
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I like SciFi; I’m a bog fan, but I am afraid I just don’t like post-apocalyptic settings. I know it’s quite popular and there are probably a number of good stories buried in the situation, but try as they might, Grandson#1 gave up recommending p-a books and The Husband simply watches such movies alone without even bothering to ask me if I want to. (He presses for the war and westerns, but he knows the p-a ones I simply will not go for.)
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What an interesting plot! I’ve been reading more and more books aimed for younger (young adult) readers. I’m not sure I’d pick this setting to read about, but it sounds like the author did a great job of taking real-world problems and putting them in a new setting. Thanks for sharing.
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