On Tuesday the 28th of November, I had the pleasure of being at Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner’s book launch for Unearthed, the first book in their new YA SF duology. Garth Nix was the host and the evening was brilliant, offering great insight into how these authors work together to create some pretty epic stories.
They discussed how the idea behind Unearthed was born while watching an Indiana Jones film one evening in New York during their Starbound book tour. They were complaining about how there wasn’t enough of these kinds of adventure stories in literature and then realised that they were authors and could actually do something about it.
Indiana Jones IN SPACE.
Everything is better if set in space and I can’t agree more. Cats…IN SPACE! Cowboys…IN SPACE! Really, it can be anything and it’s instantly ten times better.
With a deadline to read this novel before three weeks of travel and not having the space for real books (thank goodness for Kindles), I curled up in my comfy chair to devour it and what a ride!
The romance between Jules, the idealistic archaeologist, and Mia, the jaded tomb raider, is a lovely balance to the action and adventure. They are forced to work together to survive on an alien planet, outrunning rival scavengers and solving traps and puzzles to find the prize left by an unknown alien race that will lead to humanity’s salvation…or doom.
The multiple climaxes lead to a juicy cliff hanger, but we’ve been promised the sequel so I’ve just got to be patient. Until then, I’m off to find more books that are like Indiana Jones but IN SPACE, because I’ve a craving and I reckon there’s a GoodReads list for this.
