"The Planet Thieves" by Dan Krokos

I will admit that I picked this book up off the library shelves solely because its title made me go, "Who steals a planet?" The answer: these guys.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't a book about people who go around stealing planets for fun and profit. Basically, Earth is at war with some aliens because they both want to colonize a planet. And the humans built a giant teleporter machine thing (coughMacGuffincough) to yoink the planet away from its star and dump it in orbit around the Sun. 

And then the spaceship carrying it gets attacked by the aliens and captured. And the aliens kill everyone on the ship except for the captain (who's gravely wounded) and a bunch of trainees the spaceship was also carrying. So the trainees (who are all about thirteen, because this is junior fiction) have to try to kick the aliens back off the ship so they don't get at the giant teleporter and use it for nefarious purposes. (Like, y'know, its actual purpose.)

This was a much better treatment of "kids are the only ones who can save the day" than in most books. Instead of the adults all being lame and short-sighted, the adults are all dead. Well, except for the captain, but he's mortally wounded and basically just picks out the most competent trainee to be in charge now.

Toward the end of this, I started to suspect that this was intended as the first book in a series, what with |another race of hostile aliens showing up out of the planet that the humans and first set of aliens both want to colonize and forcing the humans to ally themselves with the first set of aliens in order to not get epically destroyed|. Turns out, I was correct. Not sure if I liked this enough to seek out the second book, though.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for laser fights. This one would make a fairly good videogame; it has the necessary Overarching Quest and isn't mostly made of characters reacting to events.

I'm giving The Planet Thieves 4 stars. Not my new favorite book, but it was an enjoyable read.

(Endnote: The spiky purple gloves are stolen from an enemy alien wizard-y person. They're called Rhadgasts. Without fail, my brain read that "Radagast" every. single. time.)