Bookworm Speaks! Mothership: The Ever Expanding Universe Review

Bookworm Speaks!

Mothership: The Ever Expanding Universe 

by Martin Leicht

****

The Story: Elvie Nara, a typical teenager in the year 2074, has a pretty good life. A best friend, good grades, and a bright future working the Ares Project on Mars. Before she knows it though, she falls head over heels for a boy named Cole and winds up pregnant and shipped off to a space station with a bunch of other pregnant teen mothers including her own high school rivals. To add insult to injury, a few weeks before her due date, the station comes under attack from a bunch of blaster toting commandos and one of them is her baby’s daddy. 

The Good: The greatest challenge win writing YA books is the characterization of the teenaged character. It is not right to say to dumb them down, rather to make the character think and act like a real teenager. This obstacle extends to writing children as well. The author hits it out of the park in the text. Elvie Nara is a teenager in every shape of the word. Her attitude and snakiness feel very real and despite being mentioned as being smarter than her compatriots she acts and reacts are very authentic. Her feelings of confusion at Cole’s impregnation and irritation at the antics of her fellow pregnant teens. 

It is also to the author’s credit that Elvie is giving a male character, Duckie, who is merely a friend and not a love interest. That happens a lot in YA fiction where the main heroine bounces back in forth between love interests and its refreshing to see such a character not be a love interest in this book. 

Cole is done very well as well. Despite some revelations that occur later in the novel, he acts very much like the confused teenager who happened to knock up his girlfriend. This continues throughout the book, given a layer of authenticity that seems to be missing from a large part of young adult fiction.  

There is a great deal of dark humor in this story. One has to give the author credit in showing pregnant girls being smashed, blown up, or spaced, and treat it rather humorously considering how grisly such an occurrence is treated in the real world or other forms of media. Due in no small part the characterization of the pregnant teens, the reactions to such calamities as wells as the overwhelming suspense and sense of crisis, really makes the text stand out even if the settings is overwhelmingly fictional, some would say absurd. 

The Flaws: Unfortunately, the main strength of the novel is a double edged sword as the main character is also one of the books flaws. Perhaps it is a result of Bookworm getting older, but Elvie’s teen attitude gets a little bit tiresome as the book goes on. The book is a first person narrative so the reader is treated to the inside of her head the entirety of the text. It gets really irritating near the end. Without giving too much away, while reading Bookworm said a lot: “You are about to die! Suck up the teenage indignation!” Perhaps it could be excused by the pregnancy hormones but it still can be tiresome. This extends to Elvies compatriots, the other pregnant girls. They are very one dimensional. Even near the end, they are not given a great deal of development. This may be due in part to the fact that they are explored through Elvie’s mind, but it would have been nice for Elvie to have seen more facets of their personalities. 

Also the way the aliens are described in the novel is pretty lazy. Without giving too much away. The simple fact is that the author could do a little more to make the aliens more alien. They are pretty much as developed as a Star Trek alien. 

Perhaps the intention was to pay a slight homage to the pulp science fiction stories of yesteryear, considering the cover art, this a logical conclusion, but those stories are considered cornball for a reason and this story is very corny and it works against the novel in a few places. 

Final Rating: The reader will have fun with it but that is pretty much all it will be…a fun ride but not one to be taken seriously, but it doesn’t need to be. What every writer or artist needs to remember is that it is okay to have fun, and this book is quite fun. 

Four out of Five Stars. 

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