This book is really mis titled. Perhaps instead of writing a review of it I should just make a long list of better titles.

Growing up Martian.
Comet Strike.
Proving Ground.
I want to work in the Oort.
Terraforming Mars.
Hostile Takeover.
Being Martian.

The book really wasn’t bad, but I kept waiting for Dekker Dewoe to grown up, getting his education, then start mining the Oort. Instead he stayed in school until the last chapter and then only went back to Mars orbit. The real story hear is the culture shock a boy from Mars has to deal with when he arrives on Earth to meet his estranged father and then go to school.


I’m not sure but if I was asked to guess I would say this was his first full length novel. Overall it wasn’t a bad effort. Some plot points get wrapped up abruptly and others not at all. The story is that of a crew on a generational starship that has been exploring the galaxy so long they have lost sight of what their original mission might have been and where they started from. Every few years they drop out of FTL and make planetfall where they replenish their stores and continue on. After discovering a planet where all the inhabitants have been brutally murdered in the thousands they stumble across an alien spaceship. In the course of exploring the derelict alien starship some strange occurrences have the crew fearing the supernatural. The mystery of the alien starship would seem to be the central plot of the novel but is wrapped up succinctly and ultimately unsatisfactorily.


How do you take two drastically different alien lifeforms and get them to join together all their political and social institutions? Easy pit them against a third alien race race that is inherently manipulative and deceitful. Dawn is the story of terrorists cooperating together to keep Humans and Thranx from cooperating. Dawn is holding an inter-species art fair that will demonstrate how much they have in common. Human extremists plan on destroying the fair and killing most of it’s participants. Thranx isolationists also mean to disrupt the fair and kill it’s artists both Human and Thranx. They end up discovering each others plans and strike a deal to cause their mayhem together. The irony is they cooperate to stop Humans and Thranx from cooperating. Meanwhile the Aann conspire against their human hosts on Cosgrove and plot at every turn to disrupt the Human settlement of what should be an Aann world. The Aann have to make everything seem like an accident and come to the humans aide before they will cede their right to Cosgrove. However a lone Thranx archaeologist who no one will listen to plots to expose the Aann by any means necessary. It all adds up to Humanx.