“Stars don’t go missing!”

I really don’t know what to expect when I open a Storytrails book, besides writing quality that glows with a level of professionalism and maturity that I don’t usually find in kids’ books. The Second Conquest is no exception, even if I have mixed feelings about it.

This is the third book in the Storytrails Book of Science Fiction collection. I bought this collection for the simple fact that Storytrails books are rare and expensive, so I figured if I were to review them for the website, I may as well get a collection for the same price as a single volume.

The Second Conquest has us following the adventures of a nameless space ship engineer aboard Conquest II, one of many starships built for the express purpose of evacuating humans from an earth on the cusp of nuclear war. When war abruptly breaks out during a routine inspection, and two such starships are destroyed in space dock, Conquest II’s captain gives her crew the option of returning to earth to die with their families, or take off now and see what the cosmos has in store for them.

For a YA book, this took a bleak turn in an awful hurry. But I kinda like it.

The crew is inexperienced, but a supercomputer named Hastings has the ability to pilot the starship itself, so Conquest II is really the only shuttle prepared to lift off at a moment’s notice. A handful of people go back to earth, come what may, and a missile attack batters the ship as it lifts off, leaving the devastated earth behind.

Our troubles are just beginning for our intrepid hero, however. Pretty much everyone is killed by radiation sickness except the protagonist and a limpy-hobbly engineer named Devlin. Also, Hastings doesn’t seem to register Devlin’s presence on the ship, even when he’s right there beside the hero. And when Conquest II is sucked through a black hole and parked in orbit around an alien planet, the computer’s assessment of the planet doesn’t match what our hero sees with his own eyes.

This begs a very important question: is the computer malfunctioning, or is our hero losing his mind?

The question of the hero’s sanity is the most engaging part of the story. Even when he lands on the planet surface, he can’t tell what’s real and what’s illusion, and it weaves an intriguing narrative around a lone man at odds with his own mental health. His encounters with the natives of the new planet are harrowing. He pets what appears to be an earthly fawn grazing in a grassy field, only to find the creature feels slimy to the touch–not velvety soft like a fawn should be. The planet is a living nightmare, and even if you manage to get the “hero is killed by the wildlife” ending, you’re left wondering if any of it is real, or if he’s just going insane while he dies of exposure. It’s pretty great.

Where the story drops the ball is the weirder stuff with Benedict, a fellow space explorer also trapped on the planet–since his maiden voyage in the 1920s! It drops the psych-horror narrative abruptly and goes into Jules Verne territory, and the secret of Devlin’s identity is a bit of a letdown, and a vague one at that. It feels like Allen Sharp wrote himself into a corner after getting off to a bang-up start. Would’ve been stronger if he’d stuck with the “space madness” angle.

That said, two of the story’s endings are pretty good in a Twilight Zone way.

There’s not much to say about the art. This book only has two illustrations to its credit, two and a half if you count the title page image. Both illustrations are pretty cool, and I wish there was more.

The Second Conquest starts off really strong with solid immersion and a great “is he insane or not?” predicament, but it falls short when it comes down to Devlin, Benedict, and the hero. If it had left out that fantastical element and stuck with the space horror angle, this would have been one of the better Storytrails books for sure. It’s worth a read regardless, but don’t be surprised when it runs out of steam halfway through.

Time for bed. Uncle Mac out.