This early Sheffield book seemed like an attempt at something like the Heinlein juvenile SF novels of the 1950s, but much updated. While not great, it was very readable, and the story was exciting. My only complaint with it was that most of the adults acted like total idiots at least once during the story, sometimes with fatal results. Even the "reliable" adult characters let the reader down. The teen characters were much more believable than any of the adults, by the end of the book. Well, the villain wasn't as much of an idiot, but even he fell into the "Gee, here's a powerful and mysterious device...let's push this button" trap too many times for my taste.
This was a good adventure tale with a young boy wanting to reclaim space flight for the future of the 40 worlds. I like the way sheffield likes to imagine what ifs of space exploration that so unique and how people adapt to it. Yet I always feel that his books are part of a universe or series of books because there is so much left unexplained and hanging. Yet the books are almost always stand alones and I feel that there were threads that were developed that didn't go anywhere. An enjoyable read though with fun characters.
