Book review: Everything I Need to Save my Friend and Doom the Universe, by Adrian Speed

I don’t want to give unqualified praise (oh, go on) for this very engaging science fiction and fantasy adventure because savage and murderous crows like me usually reserve actual flattery for when they’re plucking the eyeballs out of literature — but it has to be said this is a stand out piece of sci-fi entertainment fiction and if you read it you will get a little glow of satisfaction that you have trusted my recommendation. I could give it a 4.5 from 5 but it’s about time I rounded something up. Read it, give it a blast. Could this story be re-written as a script for a mini-series in the style of Farscape? Yes, certainly. Farscape was testicular and I think you would enjoy this more.

First of all I’ll mention what might have been better in my opinion. At the time of writing, a reviewer could probably count how many people have read this from cover to cover on one claw, but when the pace picks up and there are a few more opinions, I expect every single one of those will mention that the inclusion of an ancient order of mystical knights with glowing swords and telekinetic powers reminds anyone who hasn’t spent the last four decades unconscious in the deepest jungles of Borneo of a rather famous precedent. Redesigning that to be unrecognisably different would be a struggle because it has been made essential to the plot, so that’s an imperfection. If you can’t suggest something to replace the energy sword thing that would work better, just go with the flow and accept that happens in another galaxy too. Still, should it be the main symbol on the cover?

I didn’t read this for ages. Why did it stay parked on the shelf? Well, when I first saw the dust-wrapper image, the impression that formed was of Jedi-style fan fiction, the sort of amateur fantasy indulgence where you promise your besties from school that they can be in it. I can say now that my initial impression was quite wrong and this is a properly written story with originality, by a good writer, a perfectly marketable tale that is in no way amateur. I fell into that old “book by its cover” trap, again. To emphasise, the author has made a good job of this story, which will hopefully be a starting point to further adventures in writing. To fix that misleading initial impression, which might stop people reading the book, I would encourage revisiting the cover to see if it could be re-worked by a professional artist, for example not mixing character photographs with a character cartoon?

I did notice that everyone appears to be in that usual sixteen to thirty five age range, no grannies or kiddies in space, but to confound that a robot and some aliens floating in a gunge tub said they had been pottering about for centuries, so that’s an argument against the narrow demographic accusation. Still though, frail and aged aliens in this galaxy look like… what? The alien body designs were otherwise well-realised and the details of non-human biologies, robot evolution and how genetic body shape pathways had influenced each culture’s customs have been imagined thoroughly, so I’m not complaining. What else went kooky? Not much. There were very few errors (sharp intake of breathe, Alltrike, M17 dropped the floor) and, hum, that’s the end of the pettifogging.

What went right about this book? Well, starting with the skin and spine of it, the vocabulary was good enough to pass unnoticed and it read well, without the description and use of language extending into any fulsome flights and delights. It was functional by clearly relating the story, without pretence, so felt balanced and when the author’s voice blends into the background then you know you’re engaged in full with the story. It didn’t feel like fantasy (which some of it is) when one of the characters has a trained scientific mind and attempts to analyse alien equipment or seemingly magical energy to discover how it works. That’s good. If, after the application of informed procedure, they have been unsuccessful and frustrated in explaining the device against the background laws of physics, I found myself accepting that as enough because they’d made a pretty good effort to sit up all night and crack the question. One researcher can’t answer it all and much of the science in this is valid, so when the inexplicable something retains its secrets, it seems only fair to nod and move on with the story.

Okay, it isn’t quite the end of the pettifogging because one of the characters is a super dooper investigative research scientist and [going off on a tangent here] all life on Earth has four types of nitrogen bases found in its nucleotides — adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G) and cytosine ©, so if she ran into alien life, the Nobel prize-winning question that she could EASILY answer would be to check whether these forms of life have a different set of markers to that which evolved on Earth: A, T, G and C (no exceptions). Martha is apparently brilliant and has taken apart and rebuilt a replicator, so she should be able to synthesise sodium and a simple detergent. Well, opportunity missed, hun.

This has a good equality trend because both the brainy and the active heroines are female and all the men are aliens (I have suspected this for a while anyway. The tentacle thing is mad). Additionally, solving problems with thinking and after consulting ethics always gets a clap from me. These characters do buzz around the place a bit, take a swing or two and loose their thunderbolts in a flurry of pzzaz, this activity keeps them warm, but what’s more effective in this place of low gravity and slow reactions is their knowledge and speed of mind. Luckily, the two human characters arrive in this new galaxy pre-equipped with past learning and a positive mental attitude. Just imagine what chance of salvation the aliens would have been left with if the poor chubs had got the average of members humanity (Do you know how to do this? No. Do you have the capacity to learn? No. Have you ever found yourself outwitted by flat-pack furniture? Yes).

All the aliens are accustomed to much lower gravitational pull. Surely, in that case, all they’d need to capture a space ship would be to ask the computer to increase the pull to 1G, which would incapacitate everyone except the two humans. It would mean hacking into the ship’s mainframe but the story tells us that there is a friendly robot who can do that. It’s the non-lethal alternative.

There’s a young adult psychological attraction to this that spirals the reader into fantasy immersion and forms the book’s centre of gravity: The characters are teens from Earth who are drawn into a cool place where they are put on a plinth, respected as individuals and not parented. Would you enjoy being an active protagonist foretold in legend, with fab abilities in an interesting new place, far away in the stars, where people laud you and depend on you for doing something they can’t? No homework, no bedtime?

Pulling the same theme as the old (Disney?) film called The Last Starfighter, they have skills on Earth which are either shared by too many others here (e.g. speed of reaction or the ability to imagine and visualise an idea), which have nothing immediately problematic to expend them on (just netball), but then they find those things are unusual and valued in a far removed place. Theory is all well and good, so if building natural dams ever becomes essential to the survival of the human race we’ll be worshipping beavers, but I do wonder if some of these fantasy heroes came up against any civilisation harbouring the awesome technology to drop a plank on them from an open window, wouldn’t they lose anyway?

For anyone in a rush who’s skipped to the end of the chat, this is the story of two earthlings who have an energetic total immersion crash course in a cosmopolitan, alien pan-cosmos struggle for survival that requires them to develop their responsibilities, clarify their minds, reach their hidden potential, stand up to a demonic foe and face the twin threats of no palatable food and no bras in sub-1G (seriously?).

I would plead with you to read books like this, this book even, but anyone like me with the newly found ambition to become a brave Lynvarian Knight (bra or no bra) and save the Universe isn’t, really, supposed to do that sort of thing because it’s slightly too whiney. Even so, what an entertaining romp this has turned out to be. I recommend this title by Adrian Speed because I think it is enjoyable enough to appeal to any reader, female or male from thirteen to thirty five. For the more analytical sort, it’s also a worthy example of science fiction combined with balanced fantasy. I’d walk into this imagined galaxy without hesitation. It just needs a smarter and more commercial cover, to send out the right signal to browsers and hopefully this review puts that straight.