“Starflight” by Melissa Landers is a YA novel about two recently graduated teens from earth who are headed to the outer rim of the Solar League for different reasons. Solara Brooks for a job; after all, when you’ve got felony tattoos on your fingers its a little hard to find one on earth no matter how great a school you graduated from. Doran Spaulding because of the job he already has, performing reconnaissance missions for his father’s energy company on distant planets. What they don’t know is that when Doran agrees to hire Solara on as his indentured servant in exchange for paying her passage to the outer rim the decision will thrust both of them into a life-altering journey from which they’ll never return.
I have to admit when I began “Starflight” I didn’t think I was going to like it. Solara was not a character I was initially able to connect with and it took me quite a while to warm up to her. I can see how teens would connect with her much easier than I did, though. Also the first several chapters felt rushed, like they were just trying to get that part over with and get to the good stuff, but at the same time there admittedly wasn’t a whole lot interesting going on so they managed to feel like they were dragging too. I feel like these opening chapters could have benefited from foreshadowing or introducing some of the conflicts we learn about later on to help alleviate this.
After Solara and Doran change ships and end up on the Banshee things very quickly began to get interesting. The cast became more colorful, Solara and Doran started to become more interesting, and the conflicts started to become things I could actually get invested in. What I love about the later chapters of “Starflight” is that they call on of one of my favorite sci-fi stories of all time, “Firefly”, without becoming a carbon copy of it. While there isn’t as much wild west flavor the same spirit and energy abounds.
As is typical of a YA book with a girl protagonist these days there of course had to be a romance, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well done it was. “Starflight” admirably avoided the “we despise each other yet we can’t help but undress each other with our eyes” cliche that so much YA falls victim to. As a result the romance developed in a believable way that made it quite satisfying to experience.
*Minor Spoiler Alert*
Often in YA where the characters initially hate each other there are a lot of very awkward and, to me, quite unrealistic moments where the point of view character awkwardly obsesses over how hot and awful their eventual lover is until somehow they arbitrarily end up falling for each other. Solara does think quite a bit about how awful Doran is, but never obsesses over his hotness until she actually starts developing real feelings for him which is a huge breath of fresh air and sends a much better message to teens that many YA love stories I’ve read recently.
*End Minor Spoiler Alert*
While there isn’t as much action in “Starflight” as I’d hoped, there are still plenty of tense moments and close calls and I think fans of “Firefly” who can power through those first few chapters will enjoy this read a lot. Despite a somewhat lackluster opening, I give this book four stars for “I really liked it” and am quite looking forward to the sequel. (Yes, I use the words that pop up when you hover your mouse over the stars on Goodreads to help decide how many to give it, haha).
