Navigating the Stars (Sentinels of the Galaxy, book 1)

Lyra Daniels has been used to moving and leaving friends, but now that she’s 17 and not expecting another move, it’s particularly upsetting when her parents tell her they’re taking her with them to another planet — a very distant one, at that. By the time she and her parents arrive via the space-crinkling technology that allows that kind of travel, Lyra will still be 17, but her friends will be decades older.

But that’s that, and they travel to the newest planet discovered to have terracotta Warriors. Her parents are archeologists and have been studying the fascinating phenomenon of ancient Chinese terracotta Warriors being found on 22 planets (so far) in the Milky Way. The question still remains: What alien race brought the Earth-based Warriors to other planets, and why?

It takes several months to travel to Yulin, and during that time, the only other person Lyra’s age on the spaceship is an annoying guy whose father is the ship’s head of security. He clearly indicates he doesn’t want to be friendly, so Lyra spends her time “worming” (illegally getting around) the quantum net, or Q-net, which keeps track of everything in the galaxy, stores all information gathered, and allows the spaceships to travel the way they do. No matter; they’ll never see each other again … until they find out the planet they left has “gone silent” and there are serious security concerns about Lyra’s parents’ work. Then Niall’s father and the whole security team are assigned to Yulin, along with Lyra and her parents. And things there start to get very interesting — and dangerous.

The premise of this story is pretty cool, with Chinese guardians we have on Earth being discovered on other planets. It’s all a fascinating mystery, and each piece of the puzzle that is revealed is fun to collect and arrange mentally. The space travel and science piqued my interest, as these things always do. The characters and teen romance are fairly typical, but all of it together kept me reading intently and moved me right along into the second book in the series, Chasing the Shadows.

Rated: Moderate. Language is fairly minimal. A character starts saying the f-word once, but it’s cut off. There are around 10 or 15 uses of moderate language and 25 instances of mild language. Sexual content includes kissing, makeout sessions, and mention of roaming hands under clothing. Violence is mostly mild; it’s mentioned several times that all the people on a planet’s research base had been killed, blood and guts included. There are shootings; most involve using weapons that stun or knock out, but there are uses of weapons set to kill.