When I started to read this book I wasn't aware of the significance of the second part of the tag line. I assumed it was a book about the science of the much-underrated sense of smell - and part of it is - but the main theme is that 'how its loss can change your world' part. Paola Totaro lost her sense of smell early in the Covid pandemic, and this would have a big impact on her life, driving forward the urge to find out more about changes that can occur to the sense of smell. Loss or modification of the ability to detect odours is more common than we tend to think, but has largely been ignored by the medical profession, in part because we tend to under-rate the importance of the ability to detect odours. Totaro covers both the total loss of detection and also the, arguably more devastating, situation where substances as innocuous as water, along with many foods, can start to smell disgusting - another common impact of Covid. I'm not a great fan of 'me-centred'
This is what I'd call a good old fashioned science fiction book - and it's none the worse for it. Star Binder follows a long tradition in what used to be called juvenile SF and now young adult books, which have teenage protagonists but that are enjoyably readable by adults - a tradition that ranges from James Blish's 1962 A Life for the Stars to Brandon Sanderson's modern Skyward series. These in themselves fit into a wider grouping of books where youngsters succeed where adults can't - think of anything from Harry Potter to the Famous Five. The main character, Jim Trillion, is a thirteen-year-old, fending mostly for himself with his friend Sergei on a rough and ready colonised Mars. As a result of a brave action, his is recruited into a secret training programme that feels militaristic, but at the same time clearly isn't. So far, so average - and if this were all there was, with a few good action scenes, I'd feel it was a bit meh. But what Robert Apple