Set in the unimaginably different, advanced, supercool world of 2002, this YA novel pretty much did nothing for me. Awkward and stilted, bizarrely pessimistic yet so deeply sure of Humanity's ability to do better and better, the tone was problem one. Problem two was the exceptionalism...one person saves us from ourselves!...that I find so deeply troubling and destructive in superhero stuff. Religion and its "saviors" ring the same alarm bells in my head.

I gave it an extra half-star because the thing trapping us on the planet was of our own making, and while it's not radiation, we are in fact about to suffer that fate. ( )

A real "sense of wonder" book. ( )