Chasing Naomi, by Mark Bossingham, is pure, unadulterated pop culture space adventure fun. The story features Allie, a teenage girl in the sixties, who suddenly discovers a spaceship buried for thousands of years, ready to take her on an adventure. The ship turns out to be a sentient being, the only other crew is a hologram, and Allie is off to join the federation, go to the academy, and have adventures. If you’ve consumed any entertainment set in space since the 1960s, you will feel immediately at home. It borrows liberally from every fictional space universe out there to tell its own story.
Allie is a pure-hearted good guy, so is “Ship,” the intelligent spacecraft that keeps changing its name, and although they have some harder-core bad dudes (or dudettes, I should probably say, the cast is almost entirely female) with them, this is a tale of good guys doing good deeds and saving the day.
It slows down and develops structural flaws toward the end, but overall it’s just a fun, well-written romp through a universe in which you’re going to feel at home right away.
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