Publisher: Pocket Star
Author: Keith R.A. DeCandido
Release Date: 11/28/2006
Pages: 320
MSRP: $7.99
Recommended Audience: Young Adult
The Good: Gets Nova’s backstory across, use of UNN news feeds to tell you about the ongoing battle of the Zerg is unique
The Bad: The made up slang is lame, he sensors cuss words with “flick”, not very sophisticated
The backstory of Nova is very interesting, and this book was to be the behind-the-scenes of her from the canceled PS2 game. The book starts out at Nova’s 15th birthday and leads up to the death of her family. She then runs from the rich area to the Gutter to live in alleys and she discovers she’s a teep/teek or telepathic/telekinetic. What she has to grow through is pretty horrible, including her working for the drug lord Fagin, and the Wrangler who is sent to capture her for the Ghost program.
The story is very simple and isn’t very sophisticated, but it gets the job done and you can really feel bad for what Nova is going through. Knowing she’s just a girl makes her seem more vulnerable, including the fact that she almost gets raped, and must kill for Fagin to stay alive. For some reason, DeCandido tries making up his own slang that the people in the Gutter use and it feels forced and is pretty lame. His style of writing is very simple, but he gets his point across. I would have liked to have seen some more detail in the world of the city she lives in, but due to the shortness of the novel you get the bare minimum. The book doesn’t feel very StarCrafty except some names from the game and the ongoing battle with the Zerg that goes on in the background of the book through UNN feeds she hears. I thought this was the most clever part of the book, but overall that’s it.
Nova is a decent novel and gets the story of her across, but don’t expect anything fancy or deep here. With the terrible use of the made up slang, and his simple style of writing this makes for a weekend read, but after that, you will probably forget about it.
