The Colonial Scouts are an elite group of explorers who seek out habitable planets for the Colonial Expansion Board. They travel through space via programmable wormholes.
Impani, a brilliant girl with a dark past, dreams of escaping the streets by becoming a Scout. Because she is homeless, she feels she must study twice as hard to get into the program. The day before her final exam, however, a transporter malfunction sends her jumping uncontrollably from planet to planet. Although the error could be corrected from inside the wormhole, the Board withholds the information, deciding she is too young to understand that level of tech.
Will she prove them wrong? Or will she die on an alien world?
Professional Reviews
A gripping story for adults and teens
Smolen's invention of the Colonial Scouts as an organization is splendid. In this book, she introduces the group of explorers whose job it is to investigate newly discovered planets and decide if they are acceptable for human colonization. Alien Worlds focuses on the cadets, sixteen year olds who are completing their training and hoping to become full fledged members of the organization. On their last training session, an error in the impellic rings (which transport the Scouts instantaneously to other worlds) takes them on a perilous journey. Impani and Trace, the two teenagers who are the protagonists in this novel, are thoroughly believable, multi-leveled and vulnerable enough to be identified with. Smolen's impellic rings, stat guns and survival gear are all described clearly, and she provides enough background to make them all believable. This is a fast-paced, fascinating read for adults as well as teenagers.
and then caught up in the wonderful feelings that Smolen gives her characters
Smolen has done it again. Alien Worlds is a fast paced suspense filled novel with characters we care about and settings that leave us filled with revulsion, horror and wonder. Impani is as always a central character in this series, and her boyfriend Trace is there too. Will they make it back to the station safely or be killed on one the ghastly worlds they're being transported to. Try Alien Worlds if you are in the mood to be horrified, and then caught up in the wonderful feelings that Smolen gives her characters.
In the second book in the Ember Reign series, Megan and her friends decide to investigate a haunted mansion to discover it was once a secret government laboratory dealing with extraterrestrial biological entities.
