Adrift

May 28, 2018
A race against the clock spices this science fiction thriller with a palatable blend of intrigue and adventure. The Red Panda, a tour ship serving the Sigma XV space station, is on a jaunt with 10 passengers when a mysterious armed ship blows the station to smithereens and destroys the wormhole jump gate that rescuers would use to reach it. The passengers, led by insecure tour guide Hannah Elliott and spunky 10-year-old Corey Livingstone, realize they have to pull together to figure out who the attackers are and how to elude and outwit them. Boffard sets his tale in a 22nd century recently scarred by a devastating interplanetary war, using the uncertainties left by the eventual truce to introduce surprising plot twists that will leave readers doubting their assumptions about the characters and their motives. Although his passengers are amateurs up against a superior adversary, he gives them an appealing scrappiness that makes their survival seem less unlikely than it should. This action-packed adventure is made for summer vacation reading.

June 1, 2018
It's Hannah's first day as a tour guide near the Horsehead Nebula, on Sigma Station, a job her parents disapproved of after she finished school with a history degree they also disapproved of. In retrospect, she may have taken it just to get to the ends of explored space. Hannah and the nearly empty tour group end up getting a bit more than they bargained for when a mysterious ship appears out of seemingly nowhere and decimates the space station. The small group is only saved by the ingenuity of their pilot, who just so happens to be a bona fide flying ace and decorated veteran, as well as a vodka-swilling, chain-smoking enigma. The passengers have no means of communication, limited supplies, no idea when help will arrive or if the enemy is still out there?whomever that enemy is. Things get even more interesting when they find a destroyed warp gate and a survivor from an opposing force. Intrigue, action, and a fight for survival: readers will get all of that in Boffard's (Tracer, 2015) latest.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)