LONGER REVIEW: The Last Rocketship

It’s been five years since Reya learned that the world was going to end. Her scientist father explained it to her and her brother Lux at the breakfast table—how, in a little more than a century, the sun would go supernova and destroy the Earth; how he and their mother would be working on the global Programme to transport humanity’s elite off-world; and how Reya will serve as a teen influencer (or ‘flooncer) to encourage personal sacrifice on behalf of the Programme. When Reya’s parents fly off on the third of a planned 100 rocket ships, she and Lux are left behind to await a later ride as society begins to wither around them. When Reya is invited to cover the latest launch for propaganda purposes, she brings Lux along, and the two discover a horrifying secret: The Government has been lying—the sun will explode in mere months, and the ship whose launch she’s meant to cover, Rocketship 87, will be the final one leaving Earth. The siblings decide to stow away aboard Rocketship 87 rather than stay on their doomed planet, hoping they will finally be reunited with their parents. It is only after takeoff that they realize the extent of the trouble they’ve gotten themselves into: The ship is automated and the passengers are in hibernation, which means there is no food or water to sustain the siblings. Additionally, they have to contend with another stowaway—a government agent who followed them aboard to arrest them—as well as the ship’s powerful and idiosyncratic AI program. As they blast a final message back to Earth warning the public of the sun’s impending demise, the siblings realize that the ship isn’t actually heading for a rendezvous with their parents…in fact, it seems to be heading in the opposite direction.

Phayre brings Reya and Lux’s teenage culture to life with an ebullient lexicon of light-based future slang, including lightsome for good, murksome for boring, gloomsome for sad, and super-lume for great. The jargon does much to sell readers on the swiftly shifting society and Reya as a strong personality. “There were so many murkee bands out there these days, singing about the end of the world in a way that was just so down and depressing,” thinks Reya as she muses about her favorite pop star. “But Aurora? She knew how to raise people’s spirits, and she was light years ahead of her time. She was all sparkly before sparkles even became a thing.” Not all of Phayre’s coinages are quite so brilliant: the hibernation technology is called SLEEP (“the Slumber, Longevity, Energy and Essence Preservation system”) and the automated astronauts are called the CREW (“Cybernetic Robotic Everlasting Workers”). Even so, the combination of an immediately gripping premise, inventive worldbuilding, and two well-rendered protagonists makes for a fun, immersive read. Young readers will undoubtedly wish to return for the further adventures of Reya and Lux, lost in space.