Review: Starflight

Author: Melissa Landers
Series: Starflight, #1
Released: February 2nd 2016
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Length: 369 pages
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: Amazon

Life in the outer realm is a lawless, dirty, hard existence, and Solara Brooks is hungry for it. Just out of the orphanage, she needs a fresh start in a place where nobody cares about the engine grease beneath her fingernails or the felony tattoos across her knuckles. She's so desperate to reach the realm that she's willing to indenture herself to Doran Spaulding, the rich and popular quarterback who made her life miserable all through high school, in exchange for passage aboard the spaceliner Zenith.

When a twist of fate lands them instead on the Banshee, a vessel of dubious repute, Doran learns he's been framed on Earth for conspiracy. As he pursues a set of mysterious coordinates rumored to hold the key to clearing his name, he and Solara must get past their enmity to work together and evade those out for their arrest. Life on the Banshee may be tumultuous, but as Solara and Doran are forced to question everything they once believed about their world—and each other—the ship becomes home, and the eccentric crew family. But what Solara and Doran discover on the mysterious Planet X has the power to not only alter their lives, but the existence of everyone in the universe...

Melissa Landers’s Starflight has been receiving some pretty enthusiastic reviews lately, full of praise for the cleverness of its plot, excellent dialogues and the author’s wicked sense of humor. If you’re familiar with Landers’ debut, Aliented, I’m sure you know that humor is her strongest selling point, but even in that Starflight is far superior. I was surprised by this book’s spirit and charm, not to mention the loud bursts of laughter it surprised out of me. The words ‘pirates in space’ should be enough to sell you on the idea of this book.


Solara is a fantastic heroine, resourceful, genuinely strong and willing to do anything to achieve her goals. She’s made some mistakes in life for which she’s still paying dearly, but she’s determined to make the best of her situation. At the very beginning, she agrees to work for Doran, a boy who bullied her in school, because it’s the only way for her to travel where she wants to go. Doran treats her horribly and she pays him back at first opportunity, which leaves us wondering how a romance between the two would ever work.

When they join a pirate ship with its odd crew of misfits, Doran and Solara are forced to work together if they want to stay alive and preferably free. Theirs isn’t an easy truce and they spend most of this book fighting and miscomunicating. It actually does work out in the end, mostly because Landers allows them both plenty of time to transform.

The secondary characters take this book from cute to really special. I liked everyone, from the kind and repentant kleptomaniac to our true starcrossed lovers. I expected Solara and Doran to remain alone, but they found a new family in space when they least expected it.

Starflight will be getting a companion novel about Cassia and Kane, but Solara and Doran will play at least some role in it. Some things were left unresolved and I can’t wait to learn where their travels might take them.

A copy of this book was kindly provided by the publisher for review purposes. No considerations, monetary or otherwise, have influenced the opinions expressed in this review.