Nucleation
Author: Kimberly Unger
Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Publication Date: November 2020
As an operator for the company Far Reaches in an age of private space exploration, Helen Vectorovich’s job is to pilot vehicles, known as waldos, billions of miles away. She does so from her “coffin”, which allows her to merge her own senses with those of her distant waldo. Helen is an elite explorer who never directly faces danger - until she suddenly does. When a routine mission turns deadly, Helen must fight to save both her job and her life while searching for the saboteur. Junior pilots jockeying to replace her, rival companies trying to take control of the botched mission, and bad rumors about her sanity spreading give Helen more than enough challenges. Her situation gets worse when it begins to appear that the mission’s failure may not have been an accident.
From the first page, Nucleation has no shortage of perils and surprises, but the fierce, ingenious character of Helen carries the story as much as the plot. As an operator, Helen has to exist in and understand two places - her own world and that of her waldo. This tension is the story’s mainspring. For readers who find the large number of scientific and technical terms confusing, the dialogue between Helen and her colleagues and the momentum of the plot keeps the story intriguing. Helen is part Hermione Granger and part Lara Croft blazing through a fast-paced story that is part science fiction, part space western. Nucleation can feel like too much action crammed between the covers, but this is a forgivable excess. I recommend this novel for middle grade and YA readers who enjoy speculative fiction adventure, fast-paced action, and resourceful female characters and don’t mind some colorful language.
D. K. Nuray, age 14
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