This is a serious review. Only two of the 5 star reviews seem to be serious. Like some other readers, I saw the YouTube documentary on the controversial reviews on Down the Rabbit Hole channel. I am a Top 1000 reviewer with 767 reviews and over 3200 up votes. If I like a book that doesn’t mean you will, but I stand behind this review as objective within my tastes. Not everyone agrees with my reviews. I am no stranger to controversy and have a huge feud with fans of Mistborn, for example. As another review pointed out, the first few pages have some archaisms. For me it just gave it a nice charm, indicating this is not quite the reality we know. The author further explains in a post script that a key plot element involving a decision of a US President he does not think would really happen, it was done to set up what if scenarios. That’s fine. The cover is an amateur painting done by the author and object of ridicule in some reviews. So what. You don’t have to look at the cover. But really, it’s kind of cult-ish. The only problem is some people see what they expect, and it sets low expectations. But book is way better than the cover. Is it juvenille? It is told from the point of view of a 10 years old girl, who is not past 18 until the very last page. It’d better be juvenille. Is it a typical 10 year old girl. No. It states specifically she is has scored over 98 percentile on aptitude tests. The personalities of such people are often not likeable. I think this explains about half the critique. For example, although DL Harrison’s Alica Jones has similar alien connections and even greater scientific ability, he does not write her as a goody two shoes egghead. He writes her as lusting after military grade hunks and nights on the town with her girlfriends. Theresa is much more realistically written for what she is supposed to be. As far as the use of religion in the plot, it’s not overdone at all. Lots of girls like this will be religious. The commentary is balanced. The author is aware Theresa is not a popular personality type. In chapter 28 he has her say of herself in reflection: “Theresa was never that popular with many people. She wasn’t cool, hip, or totally awesome . . .” There is a lot of major modification of the planet, from making new islands and moving existing ones to changing the tilt of the Earth on its axis. This probably bothers a lot of environmentalists. However, if you pay attention to the plot, Theresa didn’t start this, nor does she think herself capable of really managing it. Her mysterious helper started a weather disturbance that was going to kill everyone in 2 years. Since he is not really sentient, just reacting, she has no way to tell him to just undo it. The middle third of the book is her learning painfully how to get him to do anything at all and undoing the messes which often makes bigger messes, so the author is environmentally aware. The middle third was my least favorite part. The first third was my favorite. A young girl, somewhat above average, gets what amounts to troublesome super powers. She aspires to nothing but an ordinary life and keeps this mostly secret until she is in college. It is very suspenseful and while her handling of it is more mature than most 10 year olds, it is not out of order for a 98 percenter. I read the first third in one sitting. It is a page burner (i.e. hotter than a page turner). This novel uses a unique concept. It is not your standard sentient alien or FTL space opera, which is all a bunch of lies anyway. If it’s not done to suit you, well, fine, almost nothing suits me if I get too picky about physics. It is a decent premise for a story. But the concept is not the point of the book at all. And I hate concept books that have 2-dimensional characters that don’t face crisis and learn or grow. The author feels the same way, saying in regard to another genre of literature: “The problem with that trash is it didn’t address an individuals decisions in life. It was insulting to avoid challenging the viewer’s ideas as if his ideas didn’t matter.” To the author, your ideas matter. They might not match his, and he doesn’t claim he has the perfect solution to, really anything. A disclaimer: There is a lot of SF literature and thinking in which we are “saved” or “destroyed” by contact with some alien civilization. This is NOT that kind of plot or thinking. The alien in the story is [mild spoiler] not even sentient, and doesn’t bring any knowledge. Nor does Theresa have any brilliant ideas beyond what any 98 percenter would have. A lot of her methods are brute force and have a lot of unplanned consequences. The way in which it is similar to Harrison’s Jones and just a few other books coming out now is that gradually as Theresa explores more sophisticated ways to use her alien helper in the last third, she creates (not encounters, creates) a “breakthrough civilization,” something a few scientists have speculated about. As we reach some threshold in the tools of computing and power, we may suddenly advance thousands of times our current level. Both authors push beyond the ordinary, to imagine this transcendent level. This is an area in which SF has been butting its head against and failing for decades. Star Trek is aided by Q, but stubbornly resists to its detriment. SG-1’s Daniel joins the ancients but can’t handle it and comes bouncing back down to Earth. Theresa, like Alice Jones, punches through. Theresa even more convincingly and successfully, as Alice leaves unresolved conflict with her own government in her wake, and relies on the aliens will at least give us technology if not save us paradigm. [PLOT SUMMARY – MAJOR SPOILER] For those that either want a plot summary in advance, or just aren’t going to read this book but are curious, here is a brief plot summary, just the high points. – A blob of something comes out of a fox and goes into Theresa. She gives off heat for a day or so, though she doesn’t notice it herself. But the government does and watches her. Eventually she talks with one of her watchers, and befriends a priest to sort of protect her when dealing with her watchers. She is strong and can throw accurately, and pitches for the boys baseball team in high school. This puts her on TV a lot. She collects her share of trolls (just as the author does in real life). She gets a scholarship to Boston College, there is an incident where the campus police notice her tails and create an incident, Theresa suggests they call the president and everyone agrees to keep it secret. She wants to have a normal life. She is seriously two-timed by one boy, then takes up with a rather quiet physics major whose help will be pivotal in the rest of the story. The suspense gets pretty heavy after a change in presidential administration and her handler disappears, and she is kidnapped by the government. They attempt to blow her up with a nuclear weapon, just to be on the safe side, but she escapes. However, the thing that went inside her decides to “calm the winds” over the whole planet, which means eventually everyone will starve. – In the middle third of the book, Theresa tries and tries to learn how to get the alien thing to do something about the weather, but nothing works. She has been rescued by the British, by the way, and holds up on a British estate under the protection of the Prime Minister, some descendant of Blair apparently. Eventually she gets rain started by just elevating columns of water, but all hell breaks loose, including rising oceans, massive hurricanes, etc. She and her physics husband for a while seem to fix every mess with a bigger mess. Various parties become annoyed and want to sue her, or kill her. She enters politics, agreeing to help immobilize terrorist groups. OPEC threatens to cut off the world’s oil supply. She starts moving the ocean floor around to find more oil. Really massive terraforming dominates the rest of the novel. By the way, there is only one of these alien things. They know this because it shows up on a certain kind of radar. – In the final section of the book she has good control of the alien thing, and takes on big problems in the world, like peace in the middle east (offering to relocate Israel if needed) and disarming and liberating North Korea. Reversing her earlier minimalist course, she decides to throw her weight around, often referring to herself as Empress Theresa. She actually is given the rank of General in the US Army for the Korea thing. – Just as people begin to accept her and most of the unplanned consequences are under control, 200 more of the alien things show up and infest 200 more people. She has no control over them. In a few months they will learn to control this thing as she did, and a few are bound to be greedy or evil. She and her husband sneak off and disappear. They put the whole world to sleep, except the other 200, for 600 years while she and Steve figure out what to do. The very end is rather dramatic not only in presenting the breakthrough civilization, but the way in which Steve and Theresa gift it to the world and essentially bow out. I have one more fantasy series I can compare this to, the Ink Mage by Victor Gischler. In the course of 3 novels Rina acquires power until finally she is transformed into a goddess. However, while she may have saved the world, she does not change it and forgets about her lover, going away to do whatever goddesses do. Like SG-1, and Babylon 5, it proposes sufficiently powerful beings must leave. Even Alica Jones essentially leaves at the end. Boutin challenges that ancient convention inherited from Greek and older literature, and he is hated for it. I say good job, let’s have a sequel!