A science fiction superfan finds himself on his very own space adventure when he s randomly selected to join an alien confederacy in this exhilarating middle grade debut novel. [..]To evaluate humanity s worthiness, the Confederation of United Planets has hand picked three of Earth s most talented young people and then there s Zeke. He s the random. Unfortunately, Zeke finds life in space more challenging than he d hoped. When he saves his transport ship from a treacherous enemy attack, he s labeled a war criminal. Now despised by the Confederation, rejected by his fellow humans, and pursued by a ruthless enemy, Zeke befriends the alien randoms: rejected by their own species, but loyal to each other. But their presence in the Confederation may not be so random after all, and as the danger increases, Zack s knowledge of science fiction might be the only thing that can save himself, his friends, and Earth itself."
The books are just as verbose as that description - and that's me cutting it down.
TLDR: Know it all sci-fi geek kid is hated on earth and in his new world, but gets the girl eventually. And the girl is a cat-girl hacker. There's also a Cockney lizard guy who steals vehicles and is terribly underused, talented non-white kids, and a society of bad guys that I'm still not sure what their plan is.
When it's getting down into the nitty gritty tech and logistics, it's great. Much of Zeke's internal monologue is also pretty funny;
"Imprisonment, brainwashing, and spitballs, I told myself, were speed bumps on our road to success."
Unfortunately, all 3 books are basically "This kid gets shat upon by everyone, and yeah he's not competent, but it all works out for him anyway and he's seen as the hero / menace of the rebellion with minimal training." He succeeds in basically every rescue attempt either by being lucky regarding his abilities or with a ton of extra help. He's willing to do things without all of the resources, but the author will throw them all toward him anyway instead of giving us a marginally not annoying character to deal with.
Looking at Goodreads, you can see that Liss is more used to writing stories that skew toward teens, with heavier sci-fi/horror elements than something for Middle Grade. Also; someone said "Like Ernest Cline's books". Can't agree, if pressured, I could actually read all three of these again.
It's many trite stereotypes coming to their natural, tired conclusion with sprinklings of snappy writing available.
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