The Colours of Space

The eye-catching cover of this book accurately reflects the tone of its contents: highly-coloured and fast-moving with a nod at realism. bart Steele, as a result of the death of his father, finds himself entangled in a dangerous attempt to wrest the secrets of warp-drive between galaxies from the non-human Lhari. His interstellar travels increase both his knowledge of the Lhari and of himself. He begins to realise that knowledge carries responsibilities and people are not always what their outward appearances proclaim them to be. The language of the book is sometimes repetitive and the plot somewhat predictable (the romantic interest, for example, arrives transparently early) but this could probably be offered positively to 2nd or 3rd year boys, with a supply of Asimov's latest writing for teenagers as a natural progression.