JumpStart

Valiant #0.5

by Merrie Destefano

It's seventeen-year-old Sara's job to save Earth. The only problem is every time she's tried so far, she's failed. The fact that she can travel through time isn't helping either, especially when everyone believes she's the only person who simply cannot die—she's the only one who can jumpstart all the events and give humanity one last chance.

Get a first glimpse at time-traveling Sara as she desperately tries to change the one event that sets an alien apocalypse in motion: the launch of the Valiant rocket ship to Titan.

ebook

First published July 1, 2020

Reviews

[Nancy (The Avid Reader) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone thinks that seventeen-year-old Sara is the only one who can save Earth. JumpStart is her story of how she tried to keep the rocket ship Valiant from leaving Earth and going to Titan. Everyone is counting on Sara to stop the impending alien apocalypse that is sure to come if that ship takes off.

JumpStart is a great sneak peek into the world of Valiant. JumpStart has lots of action for such a short book with twists and turns to keep the pages turning. JumpStart is not the first book in this world that I have read.

I read the first book Valiant in 2018 and I must say I loved it. I can’t to see what Sara and the rest of the crew have planned for us in future books of the Valiant world.

I highly recommend the Valiant series to all fans of science fiction and aliens.

[Gypsy Madden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short story length. I obtained a free copy via the author’s newsletter.

To save the world, Sara and her team have to stop the Valiant space shuttle. They have repeated time (like the movie Ground Hog’s Day) over and over again, with each time being a failure to stop the shuttle from lifting off. Each time the shuttle lifts off, the aliens notice it and invade, ending the world as we know it.

This is just one attempt by Sara and her team to stop the shuttle. And I have to say, their attempt seems rather hairbrained and suicidal, when there are much easier and effective ways to stop a shuttle than to do a Mission Impossible scale the outside of the shuttle building. I didn’t connect with any of the characters, mostly because I felt like I really didn’t know any of them. Like all I knew about Justin was that he was Sara’s best friend and she was crushing on him. All I knew about Sara was that she had a younger brother named Gabe, and that she was crushing on her best friend. And who was that guy who popped up at the end? It said he was an alien and it named the type of aliens that invaded the earth who they were attempting to stop? Also, why would the launch of this shuttle suddenly trigger an alien invasion when we have been launching shuttles for decades? Things aren’t really explained in this. I always love Ground Hog’s Day repeated stories with them trying to figure out how to get things to work out properly to escape the cycle. And I love the idea of YA sci-fi and alien invasion. But I think this really could have been fleshed out more to hook the reading audience better, because as it stands right now, it doesn’t sell me on the idea of purchasing a 6-dollar full size book.

[Christy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief look into the world of Valiant!

[Tez · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know the history of science fiction, but somewhere along the line I'm guessing that "alien invasion" stories sprung up as an allegory of fear of foreigners. There's enough "immigrants are invaders" rhetoric in real life. We don't need it represented in fiction, too.

(The aliens are called Xua. Sounded somewhat Asian to me. A Google search links it to the Vietnamese language.)

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this awhile ago, but just found it on Goodreads. I loved Valiant and it was nice to read somthing in this world while waiting for the next book.

[Lydia Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great short story!