MISSION TO BRIMSTONE

Baynes’ YA SF novel brims with lust, love, and sentient plants.

Saad was born on The Human Race, a spaceship sent from Earth in response to a distress signal from a distant planet called Brimstone. Saad, Gibby (Saad’s crush), and the 70-plus other teenagers aboard have no real parents or family—they were all were test-tube babies, mostly raised by the bots on board the ship and trained by the crewmembers to help with daily tasks. Now 16, the teenagers are accustomed to the cavern The Human Racesank into upon landing eight years prior, and to the odd, moving vegetation that inhabits the planet. Other than the empty, ruined cities, there’s no evidence of the humanoid race that sent the distress signal but that’s, honestly, the least of Saad’s problems; he’s suddenly going through puberty. And he’s not the only one: Gibby soon follows, and the two teens become eager to explore each other’s budding bodies and desires. Unfortunately, the ship’s rules don’t allow them to touch one another. Both of them are interested in the strange plants in the cavern, called Flukes; they devise a plan to get assigned to study the empty cities and their strange plant life (Gibby is particularly sensitive to Flukes, and can actually communicate with the plants), thereby getting all the alone-time they want. But they quickly learn the Flukes are more sentient and aware than any of them had guessed (and there is evidence that something else is going on to trouble the crew, as media is censored and the ship is recalled earlier than planned, for mysterious reasons). The Flukes themselves and Gibby’s communing with them are fascinating story elements; unfortunately, Gibby and Saad’s near-constant state of desire steals focus from this narrative.

A middling SF novel that focuses more on teenage sex drives than plot.