The book I loved this week is Recruits by Thomas Locke (T. Davis Bunn).  Davis Bunn is a prolific author and has been one of my favorites for decades. I’ve read every book I could get my hands on and have, fortunately, lived in cities with great libraries that considered him a favorite too and stocked most of his books. He is flexible at writing and successfully spans a number of different genres, there is something for everyone. If you haven’t read any of his books, you will be glad you did.

Recruits is a fantasy aimed at young adults but will be loved by young and old alike. Seventeen year old twins, who have had detailed dreams for years about a city in another world, are approached by a clandestine scout from this other world to see if they would be interested and able to become recruits to the human assembly, they have 30 days to prove themselves or their memories will be wiped.

I don’t know how to put into words the magic that happens when an author gets everything just right and the story becomes real for the reader, this was one of those books for me.

Part of the twins gifting was the ability to transition from one location to another, to far off worlds in other parts of the galaxy where they met up with many people of other races. I don’t want to spoil any of the story for you so will not give many details, I’ll just say there are lots of great characters, conflict and situations, family relations and stresses. The story grabbed my attention from the first page to the last and I didn’t want it to end.

I am a trekkie, a fan of Star Trek movies and TV shows, and this book felt, to me, like Star Trek Voyager and Deep Space Nine did when I used to watch them. As often happens, one thing led to another, and I started thinking about the whole question of whether or not there could be other inhabited worlds out there.

With recent discoveries about the beauty and vastness of outer space, and with newly uncovered marvels in our own world, it occurs to me that the mind behind all of this is highly creative. If I were the creator, I wouldn’t be content to have just one populated world, I would have many worlds, with a great variety of life forms.  I can’t imagine that the creator of this universe would be content to stop with just one world either. Maybe the stories birthed in the minds of writers like Thomas Locke are like the twin’s  dreams of another world in Recruits. Maybe there are other inhabited worlds out there.

You will have to read Recruits, maybe you will agree with me.