Review of “Last Flight of the Starleap”
by Simon Panneton
When a sad little girl goes from running away from home to becoming the Universe's next most fantastic heroine, you must suspend some disbelief, but that's what fiction is all about. Take an ordinary person, preferably someone struggling with life, and thrust them into an adventure of a lifetime (or several lifetimes), and see how they respond.
In "The Last Flight of the StarLeap," Ellie responds -- does she ever!
The saddest, most excitable 12-year-old you've ever seen launches herself into the Universe with the help of a 40-year ghost, a self-aware spaceship, a giant bear, an elk, and a singular goal -- save someone she's never met by completing a list of impossible tasks in amazing places she's never been with a host of people she hardly knows because love is the most important thing in existence, and she is willing to do anything to make sure that others feel the connection she's hopelessly lost.
Buckle up. Starleap is an epic in a lot of ways. Not only are Ellie and her newest bestie Zachary, the ghost and former hero of the Universe, faced with impossible-upon-impossible odds, but the journey is long. Life is hard, and it's especially hard when you're a 12-year-old girl who just lost her parents, discovered animals can talk, spaceships exist and the Universe is full of amazing people, spectacular places, and a particular level of kindness she's never experienced on Earth.
Ellie and Zachary are a super team, and not just because they've decided they will be -- because they need each other more than they know. They struggle with their own problems, including self-doubt, fear, anger, and occasionally hopelessness, but their journey to overcome all obstacles for love gives them a singular focus that burns away all the pain.
I've mentioned love a lot here, but I don't want anyone to think this is a sappy love story. This is an epic adventure that literally spans the Universe, and the places you visit and things you see Ellie and Zachary do are among the most creative things I've ever seen in reading fiction for multiple decades. In the end, however, Ellie proves that there's really only one force in the Universe that can overcome anything, and it's not her -- it's love. So, stash a few tissues in a flat pocket for the final bit, and go find out what happens when the StarLeap gets its newest pilot, even if she's not old enough to drive.