Search - Catalyst: A Novel of Alien Contact

I normally am a huge fan of Nina Kiriki Hoffman's books. Not this one. Very disappointing. I kept waiting for that lush warmth that her books seem to radiate, even while writing about difficult subject matter. Nope. Uncomfortable. Sexual in a strange cringing way.

oh Nina, what did you do wrong?? you're one of my favorite authors, and have never ever let me down in such a way. Maybe you should lay off the Science Fiction. It's not that it's a bad book, as such, but it doesn't feel very enriching, nor complete. it just sort of ends, without much in the way of anything interesting happening. the characters are okay, but i found myself frustrated with most of their naivete. hopefully the next book is better.

A very short book.
This book reminded me in many ways of many kids/YA books I’ve read about young people making first contact with an alien species. (Andre Norton’s, for example). A young teenager on a colony world, fleeing a bully, stumbles into a cave and finds an alien “city.” Issues with the bully get resolved, the adults get called in, and positive aspects should come out of this for all.
The radical elements here are that the colony world in question is really a criminal world, bootlegging illegal drugs (an issue that is brought up but never really discussed), and that there are a couple of sexually explicit scenes (which have caused other reviewers to go so far as to call the book “soft-core porn.”) It’s not. The scenes aren’t even that explicit, and aren’t inappropriate, age-wise, for young teens, either. It’s just that there’s a definite disconnect between the content, and the style of the language in which the book is written. There’s a very ‘juvenile’ feel to the writing – especially when ‘alien’ words are stuff like “bink bink boo bootah.” So more mature content, when it arrives, feels very jarring.
Interesting, but not Nina Kiriki’s Hoffman’s best (or most original) work.