VAL VEGA: SECRET AMBASSADOR OF EARTH

In Francisco’s debut novel, a teenager is tasked with mediating an interstellar conflict.

Sixteen-year-old Valeria “Val” Vega lives with her mother; her brothers, Miguel and Timoteo; and her uncle, Umberto Olmeda, a diplomat who’s often away traveling. When Umberto dies unexpectedly and mysteriously, Val and her family are plunged into grief. Then, Umberto’s colleagues Johnny, Wasala, and Pash-Ti, drop another bombshell. Umberto wasn’t an ordinary diplomat, they explain—he was Earth’s ambassador in an intergalactic council—and before he died, he’d named Val as his successor. Val soon finds herself in the middle of a centuries-old power struggle over the planet Hosh, involving three alien civilizations: the Levintis, the Etoscans, and the resident Hoshians. Val must act as a mediator in the new peace treaty discussions. However, the more Val learns about the conflict, the more she finds out about each party’s nefarious motives and tactics. She also learns that Umberto’s death was actually an assassination. Val desperately wants to help bring peace to the planets and solve her uncle’s murder—but she wonders if she’s capable of doing so. Francisco presents a thrilling coming-of-age SF story that not only explores the precariousness of colonialism and sectarian conflict, but also the complexities of identity and relationships. Val is a smart, resourceful, and highly empathic protagonist, and her arc as an intergalactic diplomat is compelling. However, it’s her scenes on Earth that make her so easy to root for, as when she acts as an English-to-Spanish translator for her mother while planning her uncle’s funeral and when she and her friend Des make up after a fight. Readers will enjoy the author’s sharp prose style and quippy dialogue, as well as the book's vast, imaginative worldbuilding, including high-tech gadgets and intricate extraterrestrial biology. The cast of human characters is also realistically diverse: Val and her family are Puerto Rican and speak Spanish at home; she identifies as “more sapiosexual than anything”; her crush, Will, is nonbinary; and Umberto is gay.

A captivating, heartfelt tale about family, diplomacy, and finding one’s place in the universe.