Micah Trace and the Shattered Gate

The Shattered Gate starts in a not-too-distant future on Earth. A man is attending a sporting event with friends, staying in touch with his girlfriend by phone. Everything goes pear-shaped when an attack of some kind begins and he finds himself enclosed in an unbreakable pod, being pulled away from Earth. Aliens have arrived...and they aren't here to help.
Fast forward 400 years to the planet Ceres. The 144,000 people snatched from Earth were taken there, to serve as a source of genetic material for the Cerans so that the Cerans could continue to survive on their home planet. Micah Trace is a descendant of the humans brought to Ceres. He has never seen the planet from which his ancestors hailed, and he is overwhelmed with a longing to travel there. But the people of Earth have never forgotten the Cerans' visit 400 years earlier. Can Micah reach Earth and open up communications with the people there before they shoot the expeditionary ship out of the sky?

The book raises interesting questions of bioethics and how we treat those different than us. The Hybrids, the ones taken from Earth, are viewed by some as worthy and vital to Ceran survival, and by others as little more than cattle, to be used when the Cerans have need. The Hybrids themselves are divided in what they want. Some want to be fully integrated into society on Ceres, and others feel the Hybrids should be separate, their own society on the same planet. There are Cerans who are favorable to the Hybrids, such as the king and queen, Artax and Hanani. Others, like counselor Sanballat and barrister Tobiah, are open in their disdain for the Hybrids. Both Sanballat and Tobiah are included in the mission to Earth, which made for some interesting reading. I'm curious to see if both maintain their unfavorable stance on Hybrids and on Earth in book two!

I love the characters in the story. Sanballat and Tobiah are just so deliciously nasty, you can't help but despise them. Garreous, the young scientific genius, is delightful, and his relationship with the princess Susa is sweet. Aquis, the hulking former sports star, is just a joy to read, and the relationships between Micah and his best friend Wes, and Micah and Eaton, another Hybrid who has traveled to Earth to observe, are well crafted.

One thing I'm not entirely clear on (and that may be my misreading rather than the author's lack of telling) was whether the humans pulled from Earth interbred with Cerans to strengthen the Ceran gene pool, or whether they bred only wtih other humans and served literally as replacement parts for the Cerans. I think maybe the latter, since Micah is described as half human. But if it is the latter, I'm not sure how there would be any half-humans after 400 years had passed. That's a relatively minor quibble, though.

All in all, this was an enjoyable sci-fi read with a premise I've not seen before. I'm looking forward to book two and, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story!” This is a solid four-star read for me.