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Melissa Landers

Starflight (Starflight, 1) Hardcover – February 2, 2016

by Melissa Landers (Author)

247 ratings

Book 1 of 2: Starflight

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Fast-paced adventure, found family, intrigue, and enemies-to-lovers romance combine in an action-packed young adult novel for fans of Firefly.

Solara Brooks needs a fresh start, someplace where nobody cares about the engine grease beneath her fingernails or the felony tattoos across her knuckles. Still, off-world travel doesn't come cheap, and Solara is left with no choice but to indenture herself in exchange for passage to the outer realm. She just wishes it could have been to anyone besides Doran Spaulding, the rich, pretty-boy quarterback who made her life miserable in school. The tables suddenly turn when Doran is framed for conspiracy on Earth, and Solara cons him into playing the role of her servant on board the Banshee. Given the price on both Doran and Solara's heads, it may just be the safest place in the universe. It's been a long time since Solara has believed in anyone, and Doran is the last person she expected to trust. But when the Banshee's dangerous enemies catch up with them, Solara and Doran must come together to protect the ship that has become their home—and the eccentric crew that feels like family.

Print length

368 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication date

February 2, 2016
Grade level

7 - 12
Reading age

14 years and up
Dimensions

6 x 1.13 x 8.63 inches
ISBN-10

9781484723241
ISBN-13

978-1484723241
Lexile measure

810L
UNSPSC-Code
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Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Gr 7 Up—Her knuckles inked as a convicted felon, Solara is eager to make her way to the Fringe, the outer edge of the solar system, where society is rough and she can start over, hoping to use the mechanic skills she developed in the orphanage. In order to afford transport, however, she finds herself indentured to Doran, the snotty son of a fuel mogul who tormented her throughout high school. Solara quickly turns the tables by electronically stunning him and switching master and owner identification bracelets. After a series of mishaps, the two of them end up on board a run-down smuggling ship, the Banshee, where the lines between passenger and crew soon blur. Meanwhile, it turns out that the galaxy patrol is looking not for Solara but Doran—wanted on felony charges himself. As the two open up to each other, hate wanes and romantic sparks fly. Teens will be bracing themselves during the swashbuckling space pirate action scenes and an over-the-top climax as Doran's childhood history is revealed. VERDICT A great choice for fans of raw sci-fi action, reminiscent of the lawlessness presented in the television series Firefly.—Leah Krippner, Harlem High School, Machesney Park, IL

Review

"Smart, action-packed, and utterly addictive!" -New York Times best-selling author Amie Kaufman

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1484723244
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; 1st edition (February 2, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781484723241
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1484723241
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 14 years and up
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 810L
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 7 - 12
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.21 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.13 x 8.63 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #526,217 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #149 in Teen & Young Adult Pirate Action & Adventure
- #258 in Teen & Young Adult Space Opera
- #1,088 in Teen & Young Adult Science Fiction Action & Adventure

Customer Reviews:
247 ratings

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Melissa Landers

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Melissa Landers (melissa-landers.com) is a former teacher who left the classroom to pursue other worlds. A proud sci-fi geek, she isn't afraid to wear her Princess Leia costume in public...just ask her three embarrassed kids. She lives outside Cincinnati in the small town of Milford, Ohio, where she writes space adventures for the young at heart.

Customer reviews

5 star		63%
4 star		24%
3 star		10%
2 star		1%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Laura Taylor

Hated it.

Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2021

Verified Purchase

Sigh.

This is the worst book I’ve read in a long time. I actually forced myself to finish it (and it was painful), because I have this thing about finishing books I start...

Anyway, here’s a few reasons why I’m not a fan.

1) It’s overwritten. That in itself is ridiculously distracting, and I have a really hard time believing that an editor worth his/her brass actually passed this on for publication. It’s THAT bad.
2) I feel absolutely no connection to the characters whatsoever. Towards the end, one of the characters dies, and it’s clear that the reader is supposed to have some sort of emotional response to it, but I found myself simply not caring. It’s obvious that the author believed they were attempting to create some sort of connection, but it fell completely flat.
3) Yeah...this is so unrealistic it’s silly. If you like cheesy romance with no substance or even clearly fake sci-fi movies from the ‘70’s, maybe this is for you.

TL;DR: Its terrible. Don’t waste your time.

3 people found this helpful

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Amy F. Gilman

If you like space pirates and romance, read this book!!'

Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2016

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It warms my heart to know this book one because I need more books from this world in my life. I know I am not the first to compare this book to Overboard but that is how it starts out. Solara is looking to escape into the outer planets for anonymity and a chance at a new life. She runs into an old high school nemesis Doran. Doran is spoiled, arrogant and makes Solara's life a living hell when she agrees to work for him in exchange for passage. Doran is going to kick Solara off the passage ship and she has to do something. She drugs Doran, he loses his memories and she convinces him to join her on a run down ship named the Banshee headed to the outer realms. From this point in the story it becomes Overboard meets episodes of Farscape or Firefly. There are space pirates, run in with the law and on planet shenanigans. I enjoyed Starflight because it is: very cute, very romantic, and chalked full of action and adventure. I loved the way Solara and Doran become a part of something bigger and along the way discover there is a whole lot more to this world than meets the eye.

4 people found this helpful

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C.A. Gray

A fun read!

Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2022

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This was a fun read! It reminded me a lot of the Lunar Chronicles, and particularly of Cinder.

Solara is an orphaned teenage mechanic living in an intergalactic universe – hence the connection in my mind to Cinder. In this world, misdeeds are tattooed across the knuckles so that all the world can see them; Solara trusted the wrong boy in the past, and now finds herself marked. This dims her already poor prospects. She was a great student, but was expelled from flight school as a result. Then in a desperate situation, she finds herself indentured as a servant to the boy in her class who hated and mocked her the most. But she needs her passage paid for, so she puts up with it, distasteful as it may seem.

Doran, said boy turned master, starts out a miserable rotten human being, so it takes a good deal of suspension of disbelief to buy that he’ll eventually become the love interest. People rarely change that completely, that fast. The inciting incident of their adventures together is when Doran threatens to drop her off-world at a place where she’s very likely to starve to death or be sold into prostitution, which it’s kind of hard to forgive him for later. A semi-deux ex machina moment saves Solara from this fate: she turns out to have the perfect weapon on her for just such an eventuality, one that happens to wipe Doran’s memory. But, Solara realizes, in order for her escape plan to work, she’ll have to take Doran with her.

While he’s thus incapacitated, Solara convinces him that he was the servant and she the master. They barter passage onto a ship of misfits that reminds me intensely of “Firefly” (another reason to love the story). What follows is a madcap romp across the universe with ever-increasing stakes as Solara, Doran, and the crew accumulate enemies. Meanwhile, of course, Solara and Doran fall in love. Plot twists worthy of a soap opera top it all off, but the prose is so lighthearted that I’d probably have gone with nearly anything by the end.

My rating: ****

Language: none

Violence: present but not gratuitous

Sexual content: present but not gratuitous

Political content: none

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Smo

If you loved Firefly/Serenity, read this

Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2018

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I expected a love-hate romance with some science fiction. I got more than that!

Solars is a criminal with her crimes literally on her skin. She gets a job offer on the fringe, a place between colonized and thriving and just colonized. She agrees to act as servant to her school bully who does his best to keep up the bullying.

When an act of desperation forces her to flee with her kidnapped bully, she finds herself among a questionable crew. With an at-once kind and fearsome and very old captain, a kleptomaniac for a first mate, a contentious dreadlocked pair with some serious baggage, they find trouble at every turn.

I would eat my hat if the author tried to claim Firefly didn’t at least inspire the universe.

There are pirate crews, black market dealings, a ship with a very unique way about it, daeva which are basically cybernetic reavers, a ragtag crew who take passengers and do some less than legal trading, an oppressive government, it’s easy to see the similarities.

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Top reviews from other countries

Josie

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 24, 2016

Verified Purchase

Definitely a new favourite.

Quirky Opinions

Love this book. Exciting and super fun.

Reviewed in India on August 13, 2017

Verified Purchase

The book follows Solara and Doran. She’s looking for a new life for herself. She needs to go to the outer realms of the galaxy to get a job and the only way she can do that is by serving a passenger of the spaceliner Zenith for the duration of the trip. But due to her felony tattoos, the only passenger willing to take her along is Doran, her highschool bully. And he does not go easy on her. Then something happens and they both end up on the ship Banshee. There, not only are they surrounded by a crew of people running from the law, they themselves seem to be running from the law.

Very Firefly, isn’t it? If the synopsis doesn’t seem that way, the book definitely will. With the addition of a romance. Though I’ll be honest, in the beginning, I highly doubted the romance would work. Doran and Solara really hated each other. Solara would have happily strangled him if she didn’t need his help. And I wouldn’t have blamed her. Doran was an a-hole.

Solara wasn’t my favourite either. She did some dubious stuff. But she was okay. She deserved some revenge after what Doran put her through. I liked her a lot more as the book went on. And, surprisingly, I also really liked Doran. He somehow managed to redeem himself And the romance that initially seemed far-fetched, became a reality. In a very believable way. Almost can’t believe it Melissa Landers pulled it off. And in such a fun way too. The banter between Doran and Solara was hilarious.

The rest of the characters were really funny too. I loved the crew of the Banshee. They all had their own stories and reasons for being on the ship. The relationship between the characters, their interactions, the camaraderie, definitely made the book for me.

The pace was fantastic too. This isn’t a very big novel and yet so much happens. And it all happens at the right, natural, pace. Another great thing was that the romantic plot was resolved at the 80% point. Usually, we’re still wondering, till the end, whether the protagonists will tell each other how they feel and if they even want be together. This time, that conflict was resolved before the climax went down.

Honesty, this is a great book. It’s funny, it’s sweet and it’s entertaining. We’ve got a great set of characters, good writing and an engaging story. It’s definitely a book that you find yourself rereading often. Hell, I’ve read it at least four times.

If I had one complaint, it’s that I would’ve like some more depth with the world-building. It was good for the most part. I especially loved the touch about there being a painful and expensive procedure that can make your sweat smell good. Like, humanity may never find the cure for cancer, but I can be sure that that is totally happening. Still, would’ve liked more political and geological details.

Overall, great book, highly recommend. Just read it.

HJ

five stars for starflight.

Reviewed in Canada on October 12, 2016

Verified Purchase

STARFLIGHT.. where oh where did you come from!?

I feel like I heard almost nothing, no buzz, about this book -- and as I know nothing about the author, nor have I had the courage to pick up ALIENATED yet, I don't even know what prompted me to add it onto my TBR almost a year ago -- in the months leading up to it's publication and even after the release it was so very quiet in the blog and twitter 'verse, with hardly any mention of it on anyone's radar (that I saw). Or at least there seemed to be no urgency for people to read it right away. But then, unexpectedly, I saw a review comparing it to Firefly and I immediately decided to give it a try. What can I say; I'm a sucker.

Except not this time!

This book was so. much. freaking. fun. Maybe it's because I went into this blind, with no real expectations. Or maybe I would've loved it regardless of hype. Because other than reading like a mishmash of the aforementioned space opera show that is so near and dear to my heart, this was seriously refreshing. We have no love triangle. No insta-anything. We have pirates. We have hate-to-slow-burny-love. Tons of action. Interesting side characters. Deadly space assassins. Hilarious banter. Conspiracies. And plot twists. And who doesn't love twists?

While there's a lot still unknown about the world(s), Landers did a good job giving readers what they needed to know in order to picture some of the structure to this future life of ours, but I'm hoping for more in the second book. However there is no super technical sci-fi space talk, she keeps things pretty light, so maybe that's the trade off.

The fact that there was no cliffhanger (and won't be one for the next one, either) and I'm already wanting to grabby hands the sequel companion novel is a pretty awesome feeling. There's no sense of being manipulated (which, hey, I'm not really opposed to) into reading the next book in order to find out what character or event hangs in the balance for our motley crew. It's just straight up joy in wanting to dive back into this writing and this series and these characters.

Even though it does appear that STARFALL is a companion novel, I would like to think the bits of Solara and Doran's story also get resolved within it's pages. For though this doesn't end on a cliffhanger we are left wondering.. what happens next? What do they do with what they learned? Unless Landers has even more planned, in which case I would be more than happy to wait and find out the answers to those questions in 2018!

STARFLIGHT seems like a bit of a dark horse book. But I hope it gets a lot more attention because it definitely deserves it. Truly, an unexpected delight full of thrills, love, adventure and how you can find your home in the most unlikely of places.. and with the most unlikely of people. This will be a book I read over and over again. Highly recommend

Nia

Very funny

Reviewed in Spain on March 10, 2016

Verified Purchase

This book was the first one I read by Melissa Landers and it was a very fun and entertaining read. It made me wanna read more of her. If you love sci-fi or pirates you're gonna love it!

Lola

Four Stars

Reviewed in Canada on April 10, 2018

Verified Purchase

Pretty entertaining.

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