Title: Under The Heavens [The Ark Trilogy 1]
Author: Ruth Fox
Genre: Young Adult, Science Fiction
Rating: 5 Stars
Description/Synopsis:
Even the darkest secrets will come to light. Bubbly social media star Hannah Monksman is captaining Seiiki and carrying the last of Earth’s whales to a new paradise planet. Viewers have been following Hannah’s journey, but what they don’t know is her true identity―Kim Teng who won her role as Caretaker with the help of underground operatives known as the Crusaders. Kim forms a close bond with the whales in her care, and their mental Link allows conversation on the lonely spaceship. But when one of the whales, Adonai, begins acting strange, Kim begins to suspect that she is a pawn in a secret mission meant to ensure the whales never reach their destination. Or it may just be the isolation getting to her.
WARNING – SPOILERS MAY ENSUE BEYOND THIS POINT – REVIEW BELOW
This book was an unexpected surprise that I had no intention of getting into – in fact, I didn’t even know this book existed at first. I’d picked up the second book in the series mistakenly thinking it was the first, and after reading about two chapters in, decided there was no way that my assumptions were correct. That led me to find this book, and I thought, well, I guess I’ll start here and give it a try. I was disappointed.
I ended up really enjoying this book. Though at times I still felt like I’d missed a previous book, because the story started off-screen months before the book began, it was still a much easier slide into this book than the second. I loved the way the whales were handled and how the author used their intelligence and ignorance to pose some very human questions about the afterlife, our place in nature, and the future of our kind. Fifteen, the somewhat unintelligent but bubbly wild whale was the unsung hero of the story, and by far my favorite character, followed closely by Adonai.
I loved how the author handled the loneliness of a single passenger on a giant spaceship full of whales, how that affected her mental state, the paranoia that sometimes came with it, and the way Kim used her schedule and the computer to combat some of what that did to her mental load. The story was full of action and tension, but also some beautiful moments of reflection and wonder.
Author Unpublished 