Customer Reviews

Putting Up Roots

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

When fourteen year old Josh Kerrigan is sent to live with his aunt and uncle on their farm, his first surprise is that his aunt has died and his uncle has remarried to a woman named Stacy who is more interested in getting rid of him and his autistic cousin Dawn then in any sort of farming. She has arranged, much to Uncle Ryan's distaste with a large conglomerate to take over their small farm and provide them with a new farm on a largely unexplored planet called Solferino. There is just one catch - someone must go there immediately to stake their claim. She sends Josh and Dawn - though it appears that she has little intent of following.

Once there, it seems that everything is amiss. First, when the group arrives, there is no one there to greet them. Later, an unexpected maintenance technician shows up. Their boss, Sol Brewster, keeps moving them around like he is trying to hide something. Then suddenly the computer system and communication system fail - at virtually the same time - thus preventing them from investigating what is going on or seeking help from outside.

Things get more alarming when they begin to see strange ships on the horizon. Now Kerrigan and his fellow teens must uncover the secret of Solferino. They will come within inches of death trying to figure it out.

Putting up Roots may not be the most consistently exciting book that you ever read; in fact, there is a point in the middle where it gets a little slow - the proverbial calm before the storm. But, like in most good mysteries, once we - and the characters - begin to understand the facts, the book becomes a page-turner that is nearly impossible to put down. The book deals with a variety of ethical issues surrounding child labor, space exploration and inhabitation rights. A good read that seems targeted at either teen or adult (similar, in that nature, to Ender's Game), Putting Up Roots won't leave you disappointed.

Putting Up Roots
Charles Sheffield
Science Fiction
A boy and his autistic cousin are sent to a far away planet to participate in a research program. It starts out normal enough but there is a sick twist when they find out what their leader is up to. The end is full of action and excitement when it comes time for them to stop his plans.
I've never really read any books like this before with such an extreme change directly in the middle of the novel. It starts out very slow and continues in that fashion until about halfway through where there so much action and so many events going on you can hardly set the book down. It really surprised me and I ended up fairly pleased with the book but the slow intro and begining is my reason for 4 stars.
My personal reaction to the book is pretty good. Sheffield has many unique characters in the book that make for many interesting conflicts when they come together. I also enjoyed the happy ending though it has a bit of a twist. The characters start to get along better and they begin to accept the planet as their own home. This novel also covers the topic of intelligent life on alien planets. The suprise about their leader is very exciting and gets better as the book goes on. "He had found what he wanted, and we were no more use to him." pg. 206. This is what I loved most about his book, the surprises come out of nowhere with absolutely no hint making it a very fun and leaving the reader with no idea whats going to happen next.
I do not think this book is for everyone. It would be best for patient readers, because of its slow start I had trouble keeping the book open for more than 30 minutes or so.

Fantatic story. Mistery, murder combine to make a good Sc-Fi suspences. Imposible to put down. The main charaters are children. And I fine them all well done. The Autistic Dawn, has a magger part in the story, that gives it something different then any other story I'v read. Id say the book is desevers a six.

A surprising turn of events leaves teen-aged Josh Kerrigan twenty-seven light years from Earth on the frontier planet Solferino - with a crew of young trainees and a cruel brigadeer. But Josh's frustrated attempts to figure out Solomon Brewster's true motives are complicated by the fact that he must look after his autistic cousin Dawn and get along with the rest of the group - which includes bullies and drug-addicts.

"Putting Up Roots" is well-written, if entirely unexceptional. The characters are simple and convincingly human - even if the science lacks the "wow-factor" and Brewster's criminal machinations are extremely easy to figure out. The book's real merit is that it reads quickly and easily. A likely candidate for rainy-day reading, "Putting Up Roots" can also be categorized as a young adult novel - making it a nice, quick introduction to the genre.