Entangled

Gr 9 Up—Cade lives in a world where humans are second-class citizens. Without a home planet, and unable to stop from falling into a detached sensory limbo called "spacesick," people are at the mercy of the galaxy's many other intelligent alien races. The teen protagonist is a tough loner, making a living on the fringes of a desert economy by playing club sets on her guitar. Her music is also the only thing that helps with the static in her head. She is unprepared for the day that the Noise finally quiets, and a mysterious holographic scientist reveals that she is an experiment, and has become entangled—or inexorably intertwined at the particle level—with a boy named Xan, who is in danger halfway across the known universe. Cade sets out on a quest to find him and makes a few friends along the way. Capetta's writing is jarringly uneven. It's only when the musician gets to know her fellow travelers that the novel becomes more engrossing and easier to follow. The multidimensional secondary characters are the book's strongest elements, while the premise that space is unkind to the human race is believable. Cade and the absent Xan are annoyingly Special with a capital S, and there are plot and setting holes aplenty. However, the intriguing twists will keep readers anxiously waiting for the sequel.—Katya Schapiro, Brooklyn Public Library