Book Review of The Cosmic Turkey

For every book we release, we'll be sure to post a review of it during the week before the book comes out. Our next book, The Cosmic Turkey by Laura Ruth Loomis, comes out on August 4th. This review comes from Aline Soules.

Take it away, Aline. . . .

“Thanks to recent advances in technology, my floatcar can self-navigate, adjust for traffic, and insult my outfit—but it still can’t find me a decent parking space. If it could, I might have avoided the arrest that started the whole mess.” How can we stop reading after an opening like that?

Hauled into court for “wanton and mildly atrocious destruction of government property,” our heroine, Janet, finds herself spending a year in the Galactic Universal Peacemongering Paradigm Emergent Action Spacefleet, GUPPEAS for short. She is assigned to be captain of a spaceship, “a battered husk of metal shaped like an ugly long-necked bird—a turkey, maybe—with the tail about to fall off,” which it does. Their mission? To rescue Dr. Pilar Villarreal, imprisoned on Pluto. 

The Cosmic Turkey is as delightful a romp as we’re likely to encounter. The heroine, Janet, begins life in Connecticut, but soon she is off to Pluto and galaxies galore. As she stumbles and bumbles her way through one planet after another and one adventure after another, we fall in love with her technological ineptitude, her sense of inadequacy as she assumes the helm of her spaceship, her struggles to lead her crazy crew, and her feelings for Beau Dangere and his sometime girlfriend, Richena.

If that wasn’t enough, we have the pleasure of watching the characters cope with the banning of caffeine—the sad absence of chocolate and coffee—and the efforts the characters make to cope with their withdrawal and reverse this arbitrary authoritarian decree.

Will Janet and her crew succeed in their mission? Will Janet and Beau get together? Will all come right in the end?

The author, Laura Ruth Loomis, offers us her wild imagination, her humor, and an enchanting dose of charm. From floatcars to spaceships to a game of curling on Pluto’s ice, Loomis lets her mind take her from one outrageous idea to the next. Yet, through it all, the novel is beautifully structured and we are confident that this author knows her craft. No matter how mad the idea, she shapes it into a puzzle piece that fits into the novel in exactly the right place.

Her book is a fun read. The Cosmic Turkey lets us escape the world for a few hours and revel in the pleasure of a tale well told. And a little birdie told me there might be a sequel. I can’t wait.

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​Our thanks to Aline! You can read the first chapter of The Cosmic Turkey free here.

Aline Soules

Author, Evening Sun; Emerita Librarian and selector, Juvenile/Young Adult Collections, Cal State East Bay

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