Capsule Reviews: Summer Fiction

Crescent, An Empty Land of Plenty, Prophet of Bones, and Equilateral

Written byBob Grant

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By Homer Hickam
Thomas Nelson, May 2013

Homer Hickam’s Crescent, the second novel in his Helium-3 series, takes us again to the colonized surface of the Moon, where a pitched battle rages between human pioneers and Legionnaires (a.k.a. crowhoppers), genetically modified insurgents bent on killing humans. The book follows young lunar miner Crater Trueblood, who captures and ultimately befriends a crowhopper, the book’s eponymous Crescent Claudine Besette.

Though Hickam’s prose is often purplish, the former NASA engineer does infuse the story with a fair bit of interesting science, making Crescent an entertaining and informative read for the tween set at which the series is aimed. But don’t expect to get swept away in the adolescent romantic arc of the book if you’ve seen a few ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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