Earthborn

Review also includes:

Who Goes Home?, ****, 228pp, ‎978-1782953159

The extraterrestrial aliens of Waugh’s ‘Ormingat Trilogy’ may seem far removed from the rag-doll Mennyms of her earlier books, but what interests her is at root the same. Behind closed doors, ostensibly normal English houses and families may contain exotic beings, fighting to preserve their secrets by appearing ordinary and avoiding notice. The Ormingat space-invaders come from a peaceful planet and mean no harm. They are merely keeping watch on Earth’s dominant and less peaceful species, to protect themselves against the danger that humans may one day invade Ormingat. The observers have a limited posting in human form and must not contact each other; when their term is up, their individual space ships will return to Ormingat, with or without them. One source of possible betrayal threatens their secret espionage: their children.

The first book, Space Race, told the story of an Ormingat-born child sent to Earth experimentally, to provide data on Earthling childhood. In Earthborn the central character is Nesta, a 12-year-old girl born here on Earth to Ormingat parents, and in Who Goes Home? the spotlight is on Jacob, 13, who has an Ormingat father and a human mother. Each book is a variant on the same problems. How will these children cope with knowledge of their double origins and planned repatriation? And what risks do they pose to the secret Earth-life of Ormingat’s adult observers? Each child’s plight is different, but the dangers are the same.

The books are skilfully interlinked, and told (like the Mennyms books) with lightness and humour linked to genuine tension and suspense, and with an everyday practicality that enhances their imaginative strangeness. They are crisp, deceptively simple, highly readable stories, which can be read separately but come best in sequence. Much the best is Who Goes Home?, the only one in which the Ormingat parent is as interesting, proactive and divided as the children, but all three are effective science fiction with a thought-provoking not-quite-human centre.