Gr 6-9 New Zealand teenager Jake Raven feels like an alien when she spends her summer vacation visiting her father's new family for the first time. Resenting the attention that her father gives her stepsister Dora and younger stepbrother Lewis, Jake sulks and pretends aloofness, all the while afraid that her father will discover how unhappy she has been living with her overprotective mother. Only when Dora, Lewis, and Jake meet Bonda strange boy hiding from mysterious forces following himdo they begin to have a common interest: helping Bond escape. The three gradually discover that Bond is an interplanetary alien descendant of theirs, on assignment to gather information for a repository of comprehensive information about the universe. As Bond's adversaries close in on him and his three new friends, the four young people become enmeshed in a dangerous time and space warpan encounter that leads to somewhat too easy resolutions: Bond's successful completion of his mission and Jake's and Dora's coming to terms with their own lives and working to bring their whole family together. Readers may have some difficulty understanding the details of Bond's mission on Earth and the inadequately explained explosive changes in time and space witnessed by the two teen heroines. However, the human thread of the storyJake's rough voyage from alienation to acceptance in dealing with her step-familyis skillfully and believably developed and offsets some of the science fiction uncertainties. Jack Forman, Mesa College Library, San Diego Copyright 1986 Cahners Business Information.
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