Val Vega: Secret Ambassador of Earth

Val Vega is fretting about her upcoming SAT tests and feeling heartbroken because her estranged friend Des is dating Will. Val has a huge crush on William, and her friend is the one who’s dating Will. Fortunately, there’s a welcome distraction, when her favorite uncle arrives. Tío Umberto is a diplomat, and he’s just come from Istanbul to New Jersey for a visit.

But it’s not long before Val’s anxieties at high school seem much smaller, because a few days later, she learns that Umberto has been murdered, and it looks like it was an assassination. She wonders if a member of her uncle’s staff could have committed the murder, since they were the only people on Earth that would have known what his real mission was. He was the show more secret Special Ambassador from the primitive world of Terra to the Interstellar Assembly, an ambassador with voice, but no vote. He was also amid negotiating a peace treaty between two hostile great powers on the colonized planet of Hosh.

Special Ambassadors are appointed by their predecessors. And Tío Umberto thought that his niece, Valeria, being the most empathetic person, he has tested, would be the human best suited to fulfill the requirements of the position. Val has just inherited his job.

First she learns that none of her uncle’s staff is human, next that they have a means of transiting from New Jersey to Turkey to alien planets anywhere in 472 star systems faster than light thanks to an Interstellar Transit System. Two days after her uncle’s funeral, Val is standing on Hosh.

Francisco has channeled Heinlein. This is one of the most exciting and satisfying works of science fiction for a young adult audience that I have read in years. The background to all this adventure and intrigue is a world colonized and divided by two hostile alien races on the verge of an all-out war that could extinguish the Indigenous inhabitants of the planet. It also deals accurately and humanely with feelings of grief, self-doubt, reconciliation, and empathy. show less