Great Sci­ence Fic­tion for Younger Readers

Ann Bird­ge­naw has brought forth anoth­er in her series of Black Hole Radio sto­ries with the Furi­lani adven­ture. The adven­tur­ous kids, Hawk, Matt, and Celeste in the sto­ry use the Black Hole Radio, a rel­ic from Hawk’s grandfather’s shop to trav­el to many worlds, in this case Furi­lani.  A species of fur­ry sen­tient crea­tures called sploots pop­u­late the plan­et Furi­lani. The kids con­vince an exploitive alien busi­ness pro­fes­sion­al V’alvlax to pre­vent sploots from being used as a liv­ing adorn­ment for aliens, some­thing that the sploots are resis­tant to.

The Black Hole Radio sto­ry obvi­ous­ly tar­gets a child or young adult audi­ence. But even as an old­er adult, I found the sto­ry of Furi­lani to be delight­ful. Even though this is the first of the series that I am read­ing, there was noth­ing essen­tial that I missed from start­ing the series in the mid­dle. Hawk and Matt have gained a rudi­men­ta­ry ESP while Celeste has gained telekine­sis on a pre­vi­ous adven­ture. I am hap­py that the author has kept these pow­ers rudi­men­ta­ry and not allow­ing them to steal the show. The charm of this book is that the kids fig­ure out the prob­lem and invent a decent solu­tion with­out the powers.

Over­all, I rate Black Hole Radio: Furi­lani 4 out of 5 since the sto­ry is sol­id and enter­tain­ing while obvi­ous­ly appro­pri­ate for younger readers.