The Girl Who Stole A Planet

by Stephen Colegrove, Alice Dragan (Editor)

Amy Armstrong is having a perfectly normal life as a perfectly normal fourteen-year-old thief and proprietor of stolen goods in 1995 California, until a talking cat interrupts her latest break-in and transports her a thousand years into the future to a burglary operation that crosses space and time. She explores the inside of an asteroid belonging to a mysterious creature called The Lady, makes friends with the crew of intelligent cats and dogs, and meets a teenage boy from 1889. The search for a way home takes Amy through Victorian London, to an orbiting prison run by artificial lizards, and to the ultimate realization of who she really is.

Genres: Science Fiction

306 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 2, 2016

Reviews

[James Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really fun read about Amy who is a teenager thief. There's a huge girl bully at school that threatens Amy so she tries to steal a gold Nintendo machine to pacify her.

It doesn't quite go the way Amy expected as she ends up on a huge spaceship. That's bad enough but the ship is 'manned' by talking, genetically engineered cats and dogs who just also happen to be thieves.
They steal things for 'My Lady.'

To make things just a little bit more complicated Amy is blamed for stealing an entire planet. She, Sunflower (a talking cat that's been with her since she got there), Betsy ( a dog) and Philip (another young human that ended up on Junktown (the name of the place) try to escape to 1899.

They don't count on being followed by a killing machine and having to stop a war in space. It's all really delightful.

[Eran Rabl · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not a bad story, but it certainly dragged on and on. It seems as if the author tried to be sophisticated, both with the story itself and with the wording and phrasing, but ended up with overly-absurd story line (and despite that - predictable twists and conclusions) and with overlong and not really funny lines which I had to re-read two or three times just to get them.

On the plus side, I loved three out of the four main characters and I did like the actual story, even though I'd trim some parts of the book to get it going faster.

[Sincerely Bluejay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilariously creative

Though it jumped around a lot towards the end this was hilarious and special. It made me laugh and cry and even at times want to demand something more from Betsy, but every bit of this was a joy to read and I highly recommend it.

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was cute. It had talking cats and dogs, as well as inter-dimensional time travel. The main character, Amy, was fierce with a light peppering of sassy.

[Danielle R · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tough one to rate because it unfortunately took around 40 pages to get in gear and start being interesting. In a book that's only 300 pages, that's too long for a set up. (Amy didn't really steal a planet, she just 'oopsed' it into the wrong dimension.)

The opening also made very little sense to me. So Amy is a teen thief and her very large scary classmate M.K. has demanded a TV/VCR combo for her father's boat for this birthday, Amy bungles stealing it, and instead chooses to steal a very well-known solid gold Nintendo from a local rich kid because she thinks the bully will accept that instead. Um... what? While she's stealing the Nintendo, a space-cat shows up and accidentally kidnaps her. Only then did the story actually grip me.

Junktown, the talking animals, the little sprites, the mysterious Lady, the space-time travel, the alternate dimensions. This is the meat of the story and there's a lot going on, maybe too much, I feel like any of these could have sustained a whole novel, but mashing them all together leaves me feeling like I'm eating a supreme pizza: the crust got a little soggy and I had to break out a fork, but man, these are all my favorite toppings.

There are a lot of moments that dragged throughout this book, maybe a little too much world-building or sci-fi gibberish, but any time I started getting bored, I was treated to some stellar dialogue. Amy, Philip, and Sunflower in particular were hilarious. (Betsy was cute, too.)

"What's it shooting at? It's not even close to hitting us?"
"Squirrels. It's came from the dog army surplus, remember?"

I also really enjoyed the moment that we finally knew for certain that Philip and Amy had been deposited in the wrong London. Shock! What a great reveal!. Alright, I've talked myself into it. It's a pretty average book but once you get past the slow opening, it's got a great cover and a lot of highlights that I enjoyed. It deserves four stars just for a talking cat and dog combo. 4/5