Some of the others were only passing acquaintances whose stories had to be deduced from passing hints, but then, it isn’t long, as I said before. I particularly liked Fubu, an alien with vocal cords ill-adapted to human languages, so he communicates through handwritten notes. The characters were surprisingly well-developed for a reasonably short book, especially within the limitations of the plot. There was also a plot twist that sadly I guessed a mile off, but it didn’t make much of a difference. Perhaps that reflects Nico’s priorities, but I would have liked it to be introduced earlier in the book so that it could have been developed more. It’s got a suitably escalating plot, as “find toy” becomes “escape Omnia” and then “save Omnia from AI overlord”, though I felt this last element was somewhat rushed, and didn’t feel as convincing as it could have done. Once I’d got over the fact that I was unexpectedly reading a book aimed at a younger audience than I’d anticipated - though I don’t know why I missed that - I was able to settle into the story a bit more. Only one problem, and that’s that nobody is allowed to leave. It’s got a mixture of human, alien and robot employees, and Nico finds himself an apprentice there, which somewhat interferes with his original mission. The protagonist is eleven, trying to find a missing toy for his younger sister, and in typical eleven-year-old style he doesn’t quite do the cost/benefit analysis an adult might have done in his desperate search to find it.īut maybe that’s just as well, because it leads him to Omnia - effectively intergalactic Amazon on speed. I’m not sure I realised this was a children’s book when I requested it from NetGalley, so realising that it was threw me off for a moment.

The Unforgettables by G.L. Tomas