Grasp The Stars by Jennifer Wingert
17/09/2004 . Source: Paul Hanley 

pub: DAW. 482 page enlarged paperback. Price: $ 6.99 (US), $ 9.99 (CAN). ISBN: 0-7564-0220-4.

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This is set on a space station orbiting Earth in a future, following a rather nasty sounding war, where a rather chastened humanity is in contact with various alien species.

One of the main protagonists, Rachel, is in charge. She is beset with difficulties. Closure of a major space port in another star system floods her space station, Earth Port, with alien vessels whilst a snap inspection by the governing council on Earth further stretches resources.

Unbeknown to Rachel, she is supposedly being deliberately put under pressure to see if she is suitable for promotion onto the ruling council that governs Earth. However, sinister forces are at work whilst the various alien groups are inclined to treat the humans with contempt.

The centre of the mystery is Meris, a creature of incredible longevity, who is almost literally the mother of her people. She is a prize worth fighting for and the threat looms of a galaxy-wide war. Gradually, all the threads come together with the good guys winning the day, through courage, skill, good humour and comradeship.

I enjoyed the story but I think Jennifer Wingert made the good characters rather too good. The bad, whether human or alien, were also rather cardboard characters. I also feel that it is highly unlikely that human nature is going to change so much that people, albeit only most people, become incapable of violence as they seem to be in this situation.

I do feel though that Jennifer Wingert succeeded in creating a universe to call her own and generated the tensions and difficulties in running anything involving lots of people, presumably more difficult when so many were aliens.

The settings were relatively narrow being mainly occurring on one space station. Though this is a vast structure, this perhaps helped to create a slightly claustrophobic effect which added to the atmosphere of the book. Whilst this was not therefore some great, sweeping, galaxy-wide saga but quite an enjoyable read despite some of the characters being frankly irritating.

Paul Hanley