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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Solid "Roots", April 21, 2003
Juvenile scifi, a much-neglected area, has been given a boost in the last year or two by TOR's Starscape books. One of the new releases is Charles Sheffield's "Putting Up Roots," an unexceptional but likable scifi story with a good cast, though a slightly predictable storyline. Joshua's mother, a self-absorbed actress, sends him to live with his relatives at Burnt Willow Farm. Having had a good time there eight years before, Joshua is pleased -- until he gets there. He learns that his aunt has died in that time, and his uncle has remarried a sharp-tongued shrew called Stacy, who doesn't hesitate to make him feel unwelcome. She isn't much kinder to her stepdaughter Dawn, an autistic girl who says practically nothing. But Dawn hears and understands a lot more than she seems. Stacy, in an effort to get her husband to sell the farm, sends the two kids to the untamed planet of Solferino, which has only some lower animals and a lot of plants. To make matters worse, the transport has a bunch of other rejected kids -- four sisters with gemstone names (one of whom is a druggie), and three boys who have Wagnerian names (ex-street thugs). And when the kids arrive on Solferino, Joshua begins to suspect that their bullying supervisor is hiding a dark secret about Solferino's value -- and about the presence of innocent, intelligent creatures on it. The pacing is the main problem with "Putting Up Roots" -- it starts off rapidly, lags for a long time, then picks up in the last chapters of the book. And the ruperts aren't as big a part of the story as you'd expect. Despite this, it's a fairly good SF adventure story, with its realistic corporate battles and suitably bizarre aliens and planets. Joshua is a pretty likable hero, especially since he tends to take a very balanced view of what's good or bad. A lot of characters in that sort of situation start whining about what they don't want to do, but Sheffield doesn't. Dawn is a fairly good supporting character, but has a tendency to fade out when she isn't being focused on. Topaz is much more vivid and present in the story. And supporting characters like Sig and Saph are similarly good -- even if you don't totally like them, Sheffield will let you see why they are what they are. His writing is pretty descriptive, but not immensely. (I occasionally felt frustrated when told that an object was brown and "rounded," but nothing more) And he does an excellent job with the dynamics of the teens in the group -- not everybody is friendly, and not everyone trusts. If you like a little tension in your heroes rather than a big band of buddies, you'll like this. "Putting Up Roots" isn't perfect, but a flair for characterization saves it from being totally average. Good solid read.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A good book, and would be great for use in the classroom, March 9, 2008
This is a really interesting book about a group of kids who *think* they are training to be colonists on a new planet with their families -- only to discover when they get there that their families aren't coming, and they've more or less been handed off to something that's half slave labor, half reform school for the unwanted. The kids struggle to get along with each other, to protect their siblings and friends in the group, and in the end, to defeat the evil plans of the people running the program.
This book is not only an interesting, fun read, it is also thought-provoking in a lot of ways that would be great for use in a 5th-7th grade classroom. The book touches on issues related to bullying, disabilities, protecting the environment, what "alien" means, communicating and relationships with people who are very different from you, etc.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Continuing to Expand on the Coming of Age Adventures of the Jupiter Novels, July 14, 2007
Another leap forward in time and a further expansion of Earth's reach into space are the setting for the third tale in the Jupiter Novel series of coming of age adventure science fiction stories in the spirit of Heinlein and his generation. On the far side of the Messina Dust Cloud (27 light years from Earth), a star system has been discovered and explored. On the planet Solferino, Foodlines - a gigantic conglomerate that has taken over most of the farms on Earth - has exclusive rights to extraction and development; on nearby Cauldron, Unimine - the mining conglomerate of Earth - has exclusive rights. To develop Solferino for farming as well as to explore it for new and useful compounds, Foodlines needs new recruits.
On earth, Josh Kerrigan is the son of an aspiring and always a step short of success actress that decides she needs to be free of him to finally break through; so she dumps him on her brother, his wife, and their autistic daughter Dawn on a small farm in Oregon. Josh travels across the country to a place with fond memories from a vacation visit years earlier; but, when he arrives, he discovers a changed landscape. The farm is struggling to survive as it is surrounded by megafarms operated by Foodlines. Foodlines is in the midst of buying the farm and sending the family to Solferino for a fresh start and an opportunity to farm an alien landscape.
Josh and Dawn are shipped ahead with other teenagers to be trained on the strange planet dominated by weird plant life and harmless fauna. Once there, they are put into the care of Sol Brewster, the sole person on the planet as the rest of the inhabitants have been shipped off-planet for medical tests regarding some magical health affects the planet has - or so Brewster claims. Soon after they arrive, Winnie Carlson arrives to assume the role of maintenance chief.
But, not all is as it seems on Solferino. As the kids begin to build friendships and cliques, they are run ragged by Brewster on tasks that don't seem to add up to what he claims them to be. Through their own guile and street smarts, the kids start to piece together what is going on and their role in a larger game of corporate warfare.
Add to this, the possibility of an intelligent lifeform on the planet, and we have another tale of coming of age and self discovery in the Jupiter Novel universe. Unfortunately, *Putting Up Roots* doesn't quite delivery like *Higher Education* and *The Billion Dollar Boy* do in the first two books in the series. Though it has moments of interesting exploration of the planet, the overall plot is a little thin and predictable. That said, I do look forward to reading the last three books in this series.
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A Guide to my Book Rating System:
1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.
2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.
3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.
4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.
5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.
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