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Ambassador #2
Nomad
Gabe Fuentes is in a race against time—and aliens—in this intergalactic sequel to Ambassador , which Booklist called “an exciting sci-fi adventure, perceptively exploring what it means to be alien,” from National Book Award winner William Alexander.
When we last left Earth’s Ambassador, Gabe Fuentes, he was stranded on the moon. And when he’s rescued by Kaen, another Ambassador, things don’t get It turns out that the Outlast— a race of aliens that has been systematically wiping out all other creatures—are coming. And they’ve set their sights on Earth.
Enter Nadia. She was Earth’s Ambassador before Gabe, but left her post in order to stop the Outlast. Nadia has discovered that the Outlast can conquer worlds by travelling fast through lanes created by the mysterious Machinae. No one has communicated with the Machinae in centuries, but Nadia is determined to try, and Gabe and Kaen want to help her. But the three Ambassadors don’t know that the Outlast have discovered what they are doing, and have sent assassins to track them down.
As Nadia heads deeper into space to find the Machinae, Gabe and Kaen return to Earth, where Gabe is trying to find another type of alien—his father, who was deported to Mexico, and who Gabe is desperate to bring home. From a detention center in the center of the Arizona desert to the Embassy in the center of the galaxy, the three Ambassadors race against time to save their worlds in this exciting, funny, mind-bending adventure.
When we last left Earth’s Ambassador, Gabe Fuentes, he was stranded on the moon. And when he’s rescued by Kaen, another Ambassador, things don’t get It turns out that the Outlast— a race of aliens that has been systematically wiping out all other creatures—are coming. And they’ve set their sights on Earth.
Enter Nadia. She was Earth’s Ambassador before Gabe, but left her post in order to stop the Outlast. Nadia has discovered that the Outlast can conquer worlds by travelling fast through lanes created by the mysterious Machinae. No one has communicated with the Machinae in centuries, but Nadia is determined to try, and Gabe and Kaen want to help her. But the three Ambassadors don’t know that the Outlast have discovered what they are doing, and have sent assassins to track them down.
As Nadia heads deeper into space to find the Machinae, Gabe and Kaen return to Earth, where Gabe is trying to find another type of alien—his father, who was deported to Mexico, and who Gabe is desperate to bring home. From a detention center in the center of the Arizona desert to the Embassy in the center of the galaxy, the three Ambassadors race against time to save their worlds in this exciting, funny, mind-bending adventure.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published September 22, 2015
2 people are currently reading
85 people want to read
About the author
William Alexander
14 books127 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.
William Alexander won the National Book Award in 2012 for his first book, Goblin Secrets, and the Earphones Award for his narration of the audiobook. He has since written three more novels for Middle Grade audiences: Ghoulish Song, Ambassador, and Nomad.
Will is Cuban-American. He studied theater and folklore at Oberlin College, English at the University of Vermont, and creative writing at the Clarion Workshop. He currently teaches at the Vermont College of Fine Arts program in Writing for Children and Young Adults.
Source: William Alexander's website
William Alexander won the National Book Award in 2012 for his first book, Goblin Secrets, and the Earphones Award for his narration of the audiobook. He has since written three more novels for Middle Grade audiences: Ghoulish Song, Ambassador, and Nomad.
Will is Cuban-American. He studied theater and folklore at Oberlin College, English at the University of Vermont, and creative writing at the Clarion Workshop. He currently teaches at the Vermont College of Fine Arts program in Writing for Children and Young Adults.
Source: William Alexander's website
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
March 25, 2016
This is the second book in Alexander's Ambassador series featuring eleven-year-old Gabe Fuentes. Although the story unfolds slowly, the plot is a carefully crafted multilayered puzzle that introduces a rich variety of alien cultures. Gabe is a likeable character and even with the unlikely premise, the reader cares about Gabe's family on Earth dealing with deportation while Gabe frantically works at saving Earth from an alien invasion. Alexander tells a big-hearted compelling story that celebrates the "rights of migration and nomadic hospitality" here on planet Earth and beyond.
January 1, 2025
Spart and compassionate kids, tough problems on the family, solar system and galactic scale. Good book.
May 4, 2021
We discovered William Alexander's fantasy middle grade work, his medieval faire-setting A Festival of Ghosts and A Properly Unhaunted Place, a few years ago and read and reviewed them for my annual December, Review-a-Day Countdown to the Holiday.
I'd been meaning to read more of his middle grade books (there are a bunch!) and came across this sci-fi duology. I passed them along to my teen son, who also loved them.
They really do read like one book that got broken into two for middle-grade reader expectations of length. The first is 222 pages, and clearly ends unresolved. In fact, by the end, it feels like it's just getting started. While the second book is a bit longer, 264 pages, and wraps up everything started in book one. I'd recommend reading one right after the other with no pause between them.
Nomad takes up where Ambassador leaves off, although it begins in the point of view of the Ambassador immediately before Gabe -- Nadia Kollontai. Her aunt and uncle are Jewish, but living in the USSR in 1974 and working on the super-secret moon base. She and the Envoy steal aboard the last N-1 rocket fired by the USSR to the moon and Zvezda Base to meet a rogue pilot and fly in the Machinae lanes.
The Outlast are in our arm of the galaxy and using the Machinae lanes to conquer world after world.
The Machinae are mentioned, briefly, in the first book as being the only species that can travel the vast expanses of the universe quickly, going from point to point. But they won't open their "lanes" to any species other than the Outlast, which has lately been using them to achieve Universe-wide domination and extermination of all life that isn't theirs.
Nadia leaves the base with the pilot, which explains how the poor purple Envoy got to the moon base in the first book, and Gabe's story picks up again.
SPOILER ALERT: This review will explain where the first book ended, so if you don't want to know how Ambassador ends, skip this part.
When we last left Gabe, he's figured out who's trying to kill him -- the Kaen -- and why -- because they don't want it known they're pirating our water from the asteroid belt, and because it looked like, in Gabe's ignorance of inter-galactic affairs, that he was conspiring with the Outlast, at least initially.
He's struck a bargain with the Kaen to stop trying to kill him, if they'll come get him on the moon base and take him back to Earth. Then they can continue outrunning the Outlast, which is headed in Earth's direction.
Ambassador Kaen (and this part's a bit confusing -- the Kaen are a "tribe" of nomad species, a conglomeration of many kinds, who have one unifying language, but that's about it, but Ambassador Kaen is a girl -- a human girl -- because in the Kaen's travels they've picked up people before, namely the Olmec, and incorporated them into their tribe) comes to pick up Gabe from Zvezda moon base.
He's shocked to learn she's human, but it turns out the Kaen (as a nomad tribe) are descendants of early Olmecs and Aztecs. He and Kaen confront the four Kaen captains who ordered Gabe's assassination. They convince them, together with Nadia, whose ventures into the Machinae lanes have left her near-blind but completely un-aged, to explore how the Outlast are using the Machinae lanes. Their only hope against the Outlast is to band together to figure out how to fly the Machinae lanes and convince the Machinae to shut down the lanes, if they want to save Earth and the Kaen fleet from the advancing Outlast.
At first, Gabe doesn't understand the Omegan, the Outlast Ambassador, is part of a hive-mind of sorts, where if one knows a thing, they all know a thing, and therefore all the Omegan knows or experiences, the rest of the Outlast know. Gabe endangers other species, just by drawing the attention of Omegan. But in the process of speaking to Omegan, Gabe learns somehow the Outlast's linked consciousness allows them to travel the lanes, because the Machinae recognize it.
Unfortunately, the Outlast are just as smart as Gabe and Kaen and even more determined to maintain their domination of the lanes and stop the humans.
The Kaen fulfill their agreement and return Gabe to Earth, but as he tries to rescue his father in Mexico, he gets caught trying to enter the US without any documentation and he ends up in an ICE detention facility as well.
After fighting his way out, he's got a solution in mind for his parents' immigration predicament -- one the Envoy is more than capable of executing, at Gabe's order.
Nadia and her rogue pilot give the lanes one more shot, and when the lanes come down, the Outlast go down -- and out of this universe -- with them.
This was a satisfying conclusion to the two-book series!
Visit my blog for more great middle grade book recommendations, free teaching materials and fiction writing tips: https://amb.mystrikingly.com/
I'd been meaning to read more of his middle grade books (there are a bunch!) and came across this sci-fi duology. I passed them along to my teen son, who also loved them.
They really do read like one book that got broken into two for middle-grade reader expectations of length. The first is 222 pages, and clearly ends unresolved. In fact, by the end, it feels like it's just getting started. While the second book is a bit longer, 264 pages, and wraps up everything started in book one. I'd recommend reading one right after the other with no pause between them.
Nomad takes up where Ambassador leaves off, although it begins in the point of view of the Ambassador immediately before Gabe -- Nadia Kollontai. Her aunt and uncle are Jewish, but living in the USSR in 1974 and working on the super-secret moon base. She and the Envoy steal aboard the last N-1 rocket fired by the USSR to the moon and Zvezda Base to meet a rogue pilot and fly in the Machinae lanes.
The Outlast are in our arm of the galaxy and using the Machinae lanes to conquer world after world.
The Machinae are mentioned, briefly, in the first book as being the only species that can travel the vast expanses of the universe quickly, going from point to point. But they won't open their "lanes" to any species other than the Outlast, which has lately been using them to achieve Universe-wide domination and extermination of all life that isn't theirs.
Nadia leaves the base with the pilot, which explains how the poor purple Envoy got to the moon base in the first book, and Gabe's story picks up again.
SPOILER ALERT: This review will explain where the first book ended, so if you don't want to know how Ambassador ends, skip this part.
When we last left Gabe, he's figured out who's trying to kill him -- the Kaen -- and why -- because they don't want it known they're pirating our water from the asteroid belt, and because it looked like, in Gabe's ignorance of inter-galactic affairs, that he was conspiring with the Outlast, at least initially.
He's struck a bargain with the Kaen to stop trying to kill him, if they'll come get him on the moon base and take him back to Earth. Then they can continue outrunning the Outlast, which is headed in Earth's direction.
Ambassador Kaen (and this part's a bit confusing -- the Kaen are a "tribe" of nomad species, a conglomeration of many kinds, who have one unifying language, but that's about it, but Ambassador Kaen is a girl -- a human girl -- because in the Kaen's travels they've picked up people before, namely the Olmec, and incorporated them into their tribe) comes to pick up Gabe from Zvezda moon base.
He's shocked to learn she's human, but it turns out the Kaen (as a nomad tribe) are descendants of early Olmecs and Aztecs. He and Kaen confront the four Kaen captains who ordered Gabe's assassination. They convince them, together with Nadia, whose ventures into the Machinae lanes have left her near-blind but completely un-aged, to explore how the Outlast are using the Machinae lanes. Their only hope against the Outlast is to band together to figure out how to fly the Machinae lanes and convince the Machinae to shut down the lanes, if they want to save Earth and the Kaen fleet from the advancing Outlast.
At first, Gabe doesn't understand the Omegan, the Outlast Ambassador, is part of a hive-mind of sorts, where if one knows a thing, they all know a thing, and therefore all the Omegan knows or experiences, the rest of the Outlast know. Gabe endangers other species, just by drawing the attention of Omegan. But in the process of speaking to Omegan, Gabe learns somehow the Outlast's linked consciousness allows them to travel the lanes, because the Machinae recognize it.
Unfortunately, the Outlast are just as smart as Gabe and Kaen and even more determined to maintain their domination of the lanes and stop the humans.
The Kaen fulfill their agreement and return Gabe to Earth, but as he tries to rescue his father in Mexico, he gets caught trying to enter the US without any documentation and he ends up in an ICE detention facility as well.
After fighting his way out, he's got a solution in mind for his parents' immigration predicament -- one the Envoy is more than capable of executing, at Gabe's order.
Nadia and her rogue pilot give the lanes one more shot, and when the lanes come down, the Outlast go down -- and out of this universe -- with them.
This was a satisfying conclusion to the two-book series!
Visit my blog for more great middle grade book recommendations, free teaching materials and fiction writing tips: https://amb.mystrikingly.com/
October 30, 2023
I was so disconnected from this book, which is why I cannot bring myself to give it a higher rating. I felt myself drifting away as Gabe learned about other alien lifeforms and began to fully embrace his role as an ambassador. The alternating perspectives in this book kept pulling me out of the narrative as soon as I found a connection back to Gabe's character again.
I must admit, this book did have some interesting world building and unique alien creatures. Learning more about the Outlasts was cool, but the minimal amount that the reader gets to know about them does not keep the story afloat.
This book almost entirely focuses on Gabe and his dealing with the alien lifeforms called the Kaens. If one loves space adventures, I could see one enjoying this one more than the first, but personally I enjoyed book one more due to the character development and family drama.
The ending also came really fast and wrapped a complicated story plot into a nice, neat bow, which seemed rather unrealistic.
Despite the issues I had with this book, I could see many young readers who enjoy space adventures and science fiction as a whole eating this series up. Unfortunately, there were too many issues that I couldn't bring myself to really enjoy it.
I must admit, this book did have some interesting world building and unique alien creatures. Learning more about the Outlasts was cool, but the minimal amount that the reader gets to know about them does not keep the story afloat.
This book almost entirely focuses on Gabe and his dealing with the alien lifeforms called the Kaens. If one loves space adventures, I could see one enjoying this one more than the first, but personally I enjoyed book one more due to the character development and family drama.
The ending also came really fast and wrapped a complicated story plot into a nice, neat bow, which seemed rather unrealistic.
Despite the issues I had with this book, I could see many young readers who enjoy space adventures and science fiction as a whole eating this series up. Unfortunately, there were too many issues that I couldn't bring myself to really enjoy it.
April 22, 2024
This was a fantastic follow-up to one of my surprise favorite books of the year (Ambassador - which needs to be read before this). These books are meant for middle school/junior high readers and would be fantastic to read with them as parents. With that said, I sincerely enjoyed them as an adult and think that anyone looking for a relatively quick-moving and well-plotted, sci-fi adventure would love this. I was impressed by the subtle touches throughout this. From the various POV characters, who each feel extremely intelligent, sensitive, and heroic on their own terms; to the creative, playful, and thoughtful way that intergalactic diplomacy works in this world; to individual narrative choices (like limiting the audience in a scene set in an almost incomprehensible extra-dimensional world to view this from a POV character who is functionally blind and finds out information through questions and answers and non-visual observations). I think Alexander manages to convey quite a lot with restraint and thoughtfulness and was left greatly admiring the various characters and how these two books unfolded.
August 11, 2020
When I finished "The Ambassador" I was a bit worried knowing that there was only one more book in the series. I had a galaxy's length of questions and plotting threads I didn't think one more book could possibly satisfy. I was flabbergasted to find those questions answered and the threads folded back into a fantastically tidy and wonderful conclusion. The narrative engineering is so compact and powerful it is truly impressive; the author is a master of just enough information. I thoroughly enjoyed this series and I highly recommend it for variety of ages.
March 8, 2018
This book shouldn’t have been written. It’s no surprise it appeals to old white folks. It’s racist.
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July 11, 2015I enjoyed reading this sequel to Alexander's Ambassador. Liked the parallels to current issues around immigration, especially those undocumented from Latin America. Clever connections to those ideas floated about at times about the remarkable ancient cities, pyramids, and other marvelous constructions being the result of alien contact. Alexander turns that idea around completely. That said, while the first book gave us more of Gabe's family,here the focus is on Gabe's diplomatic efforts in the universe. Fine world building here that will appeal to readers who enjoy that. And I definitely wanted to read to the end to find out what happened. But I'm a character-driven reader and that is where this was less successful especially when it came for the secondary characters. Their back stories were compelling, especially that of new character Nadia, but while I did feel for them, I would have liked more featuring them, their feelings, interactions, etc. But this is very much a space opera with a lot of action throughout and some very, very complicated plot threads. Will be interested to see what others think.
March 6, 2016
Gabe (Earth's ambassador to the Universe) and the Kaen have resolved their differences from the first book, but now they have an even bigger problem. The Outlast are coming and they want to kill them all. Gabe has problems of his own, too. His father was deported back to Mexico and Gabe is thousands of miles away trying to save the Earth. Only his sister Lupe knows where he is, so his mother must be going out of her mind with worry. Just as Gabe and the Kaen are forming an uneasy alliance, Earth's former ambassador, Nadia Kollontai, returns. She had disappeared 40 years before, though not that much time has passed for her. She has some ideas about possible ways to stop the Outlast, but the three ambassadors must convince the leaders of the Kaen to trust their plan. This thrilling science fiction adventure contains important statements on immigration, as well as a fun interpretation of Mayan history. Highly recommended for grades 4 & up, but read Ambassador first.
June 11, 2016
Read this book before I knew it was the second in a series. Still found it wonderful and exciting, and now want to read the first book, Ambassador. I loved the multiple points of view, and the question of after being the ambassador for Earth among the universe of aliens, Gabe still has to worry about his father being deported back to Guatemala for being an "alien" here on Earth. Just what really is an alien? And, OH MY GOSH, ancient, Mesoamerican humans that left Earth to travel the universe?! How cool is that!
February 11, 2016
A perfectly competent and enjoyable sequel to the awesome Ambassador. This book wasn't able to surprise me like the first one did, but William Alexander's continued focus on communication and nonviolent problem solving helps create a science fiction 'verse that is fascinating and unique.
October 20, 2015
This story would have made a lot more sense had I read the first in the series (which I didn't know existed until the end of this book).
March 24, 2016
Again, I grab the second book in a series. So it makes sense but I always feel that I am missing something. For kids who like sci-fi and a thoughtful read.
November 17, 2016
I found the story quite boring but I did not read the first one so to be fair, I will have to go back and see if it helps.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews