Skiffy.

I recently purchased and read Peter Grant's novel, Take The Star Road.

It was very reminiscent of Heinlein's juveniles, a bildungsroman that follows an earnest orphan as he sets off to make his way in the universe. It is clearly written and well edited, well ahead of most self-published stuff and better than some mass-market published genre fiction.

Since Heinlein's early works were marketed at an audience of literal Boy Scouts, his viewpoint characters were squeaky clean and painfully earnest and Grant's Steve Maxwell is no different, despite not having to pass muster with the editors of Boy's Life. Incidentally, this leads to the one really jarring note in the book for me: a seduction-followed-by-off-camera-nookie scene early in the book that seemed totally out of character for the protagonist and could probably be written out of the book without distracting from the story.

Our hero also begins the book as something of an incredible kung fu badass for an otherwise wet-behind-the-ears teen, but this becomes sort of central to the plot and so is not necessarily any worse than finding out that somehow J. Random Hobbit has the magic ring that can rule the world.

As the intended first novel in a series, there's a lot of exposition and world-building going on front of you, some of which is obvious but most of which is easily blended into the experiences of Young Kid Seeing Big Universe For First Time. An awful lot of kung fu-ing goes on, and one's feelings about that will probably affect one's feelings for the book.

I'd give it three stars out of five and will probably buy the second book in Kindle format to see what happens with young Steve.

Incidentally, Peter has also recently released a non-fiction memoir of his time as a chaplain in the federal prison system: Walls, Wire, Bars and Souls. Having known the author for many years, I am looking forward to reading it.