Adventures in Wild Space: The Snare

 

Author: Cavan Scott

Time: 18 BBY, a year after the events of Revenge of the Sith. The Empire is beginning its rule.

Place: Thune, an inhabited planet in Wild Space.

This is a sequel to The Escape--well, technically it's the first book in the Adventures in Wild Space series. At the end of the last book, Lina and Milo Graf's parents were abducted by Captain Visler Korda. They are cartographers, and Korda wanted their maps of Wild Space. The children escaped Graf-World along with Milo's pet monkey-lizard Morq and droid caretaker CR-8R ("Crater"). Their mom transmitted some encrypted data to CR-8R, which he's been trying to decrypt. It's taking a very long time.

The kids don't know where their parents were taken. They decide to go to Thune, where their parents' best friend and agent Dil Pexton lives. Thune's capital city is like Venice, but in a swamp. There are bugs everywhere and it smells bad. It's basically Florida.

They contact Dil, and he is very creepy. He asks for them to visit him, and to make sure they bring CR-8R. The children don't have enough sense to know when they're walking into a trap, but at least Lina asks Milo and CR-8R to hang back at the ship. Dil betrays them to the Empire. Korda captures Lina and holds her for ransom. He really wants whatever's in CR-8R's memory.

Because Milo is into biology, he learns the one of the bugs, the Thunian wart-hornet, is very aggressive. He rescues Lina by calling a swarm of wart-hornets to attack Korda and the stormtroopers. They escape in a wooden boat (I love that it's wooden) and make it back to their ship. As they're flying away, CR-8R intercepts a transmission: "...remember, you can resist the Empire. For your families, your freedom, your very future...." The kids decide to fly in the direction of the transmission, in the hopes of finding help to get their parents back.

Quotes: 

• "Observe the blemished red skin, the beady yellow eyes, and the unsightly rolls."
• "I think someone has been watching too many holodramas..."
• He still wore his replacement jaw as a trophy of that fight.

Final Judgment: 3 out of 5 wart-hornets. I appreciate that Lina and Milo are capable. They're not just floundering around helplessly. The action scenes were written well. I am definitely interested in reading the rest of this series.