Aetherbound
by E. K. Johnston
High School    Dutton    256 pp.    g
5/21    978-0-7352-3185-6    $17.99
e-book ed.  978-0-7352-3186-3    $10.99

On her family’s long-haul space freighter, the Harland, Pendt knows that she is useless. Without “star-sense” or other valued skills, Pendt is left waiting until she can legally enter a contract at age eighteen to begin earning back the calories and oxygen she consumes. Watching her cousin forced into a pregnancy, however, Pendt begins to guess what sort of contract awaits her. She escapes at Brannick Station, where twin brothers Ned and Fisher Brannick suggest a deal: in exchange for a male heir, they’ll protect her in the event that the Harland returns. (Fisher can’t operate the Y ­chromosome–locked Net like his brother, and while the reason is treated discreetly, it makes the eventual Pendt/Fisher romance that much sweeter.) The world-building is compelling, offering up: the claustrophobic (and loveless) Harland; the station where Pendt is finally given the calories she needs to work her “gene-sense” magic; a galaxy-wide ruling body, the Hegemony, which holds the twins’ parents hostage; and the rebellion that Ned would join if he weren’t tied to the station. This engrossing, triumphal sci-fi tale is a gritty space-wizard drama in the tradition of Anne McCaffrey.

From the July/August 2021 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.