Eva Pasco

5.0 out of 5 stars

No Place Like Home – Wherever that Is

Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2022

Verified Purchase

For Rick Granger, an orphaned seventeen-year-old who co-captains Port Anywhere, an intergalactic, traveling restaurant—home is Earth, his native planet. It’s a place he’s sorely missed for two years and he dreams of returning there. He’s never felt comfortable with his peace-loving parents’ decision to hop from one galaxy to another at random. Then, they died, necessitating Rick step up to the plate alongside Nerfer, his alien, Spam-like co-captain, until he has to navigate solo.

Author J.S. Frankel’s wild imagination and not-so-subtle social commentaries kick into high gear along this harrowing Sci-Fi adventure beset with evil alien forces. Also front and center, Rick’s deeply romantic feelings for an alien named Merlynni. Of no less importance, Rick must cast aside disappointments and grudges in order to take command of his life as well as the space vessel.

As for Earth, “When television had been around in the twenty-first century and before, there’d had been shows depicting different races working together and living together on various kinds of spaceships, and that seemed fine as far as it went. Reality, though, painted a different picture”: greed, political correctness, racism, xenophobia, depletion of natural resources, etc.

I highly recommend stowing away on Port Anywhere where the aliens you meet are not that different from earthlings, in more ways than one—and the author is clearly in command of the Sci-Fi genre.