I really didn’t like the narration here, but I don’t think it’s Ms. Ellis’ fault. The story is written as a pseudo child’s story, so Ms. Ellis reads it as if reading it to a class of small children, with the kinds of inflection that parents and teachers and librarians use with children. Maybe I’d make a bad parent because of it, but I never use that tone of voice or inflection with kids. I hated being talked to that way, and I hate talking to anyone that way. But that’s the way people do things with kids, so I can’t really blame Ms. Ellis.

The story itself is okay. As I noted, it’s written as a pseudo-children’s book, telling the story of an astronaut in the future. In that future, Latin America has taken the lead in space exploration after the failed Apollo moon mission (it made it there, but didn’t make it back). But astronauts aren’t so much explorers as they are young soldiers, because aliens are attacking Earth, and astronauts have to shoot them down. The hook isn’t so much the science fiction as the juvenile fiction style. One thing that comes through with that form is just how indoctrinating it is.

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