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Blurred Vision: A Polly Hart Chronicle
First contact?
“Take it easy,” said Kylie, still with a hint of amusement. “You’re perfectly safe. Think of me as a tourist.”
Polly squinted back at her. She couldn’t help herself. “Are you invading earth?”
“Are you kidding? Do you know how much that would cost?”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“We found you after you activated the camera on the satellite and were impressed by the other stuff you did to hide your tracks. Easy for us, but we all thought it was very cool. For an Earth human, anyway.”
“You don’t talk like an alien.”
“How many do you know?” asked Kylie.
Polly couldn’t argue with that. “Good point.”
When Polly Hart agrees to swap places with a girl from another planet, she has no idea that this makes her a fugitive in the fabulous universe revealed by her new friend, and now she must outwit the school bully, a weird teacher and an interstellar hit squad to survive. So annoying!
Visit bit.ly/BlurredVision-Harrison
Cover photography – Earth: NASA Earth Observatory; Polly & Kylie: Dean Drobot/shutterstock.com
- GenresScience Fiction
256 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 16, 2019
1 person is currently reading
3 people want to read
About the author
Steve Harrison
3 books152 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Steve Harrison was born in Yorkshire, England, grew up in Lancashire, migrated to New Zealand and eventually settled in Sydney, Australia, where he lives with his wife.
As he juggled careers in shipping, insurance, online gardening and the postal service, Steve wrote short stories, sports articles and a long running newspaper humour column called HARRISCOPE: a mix of ancient wisdom and modern nonsense. In recent years he has written a number of unproduced feature screenplays, although being unproduced was not the intention, and developed projects with producers in the US and UK. His script, Sox, was nominated for an Australian Writers’ Guild ‘Awgie’ Award and he has written and produced three short films under his Pronunciation Fillums partnership.
His novel TimeStorm was Highly Commended in the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW) National Literary Awards for 2013, Jim Hamilton Award in the fantasy/science fiction category, for an unpublished novel of sustained quality and distinction by an Australian author.
Steve Harrison was born in Yorkshire, England, grew up in Lancashire, migrated to New Zealand and eventually settled in Sydney, Australia, where he lives with his wife.
As he juggled careers in shipping, insurance, online gardening and the postal service, Steve wrote short stories, sports articles and a long running newspaper humour column called HARRISCOPE: a mix of ancient wisdom and modern nonsense. In recent years he has written a number of unproduced feature screenplays, although being unproduced was not the intention, and developed projects with producers in the US and UK. His script, Sox, was nominated for an Australian Writers’ Guild ‘Awgie’ Award and he has written and produced three short films under his Pronunciation Fillums partnership.
His novel TimeStorm was Highly Commended in the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW) National Literary Awards for 2013, Jim Hamilton Award in the fantasy/science fiction category, for an unpublished novel of sustained quality and distinction by an Australian author.
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 25, 2019
Hurrying home from school with her friend Josh, Polly Hart only just managed to speak to her mum before she headed into her night shift. As Polly and Josh headed upstairs to the office, she was oblivious to what was going to occur in a few short hours.
The shimmering vision of a person just outside her bedroom window had Polly freaking out. Was that a path across the sky to her window? When the vision entered her room, Polly was quite frightened – but then it spoke. And it spoke English as well. And when Polly accompanied the vision who called herself Kylie, she found herself excited, fearful and sure she was dreaming.
But when Kylie changed places with Polly, that’s when things became too bizarre to believe. Almost immediately there was trouble – what had Kylie got Polly into? And who was going to get them out of it?
Blurred Vision by Aussie author Steve Harrison is quite different to his previous book TimeStorm which I loved. Blurred Vision is a young adult science fiction novel which is cleverly written; intriguing and fascinating as well. Planets, galaxies, advanced technology and more – a compelling tale with a great character in Polly. I hope we’ll see more of her in the future. Highly recommended.
With thanks to the author for my ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.
The shimmering vision of a person just outside her bedroom window had Polly freaking out. Was that a path across the sky to her window? When the vision entered her room, Polly was quite frightened – but then it spoke. And it spoke English as well. And when Polly accompanied the vision who called herself Kylie, she found herself excited, fearful and sure she was dreaming.
But when Kylie changed places with Polly, that’s when things became too bizarre to believe. Almost immediately there was trouble – what had Kylie got Polly into? And who was going to get them out of it?
Blurred Vision by Aussie author Steve Harrison is quite different to his previous book TimeStorm which I loved. Blurred Vision is a young adult science fiction novel which is cleverly written; intriguing and fascinating as well. Planets, galaxies, advanced technology and more – a compelling tale with a great character in Polly. I hope we’ll see more of her in the future. Highly recommended.
With thanks to the author for my ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.
January 31, 2020
*https://theburgeoningbookshelf.blogsp...
Harrison has written a humorous story with aliens both good and bad. We are conveyed to a world of space travel where a girl is the heroine of the story, surviving dire circumstances and doing it with a sense of adventure.
Through Polly he gives his readers a protagonist who is smart and adventurous. She can hack top NASA files and doesn’t baulk at danger if it includes an adventure.
When a portal opens outside Polly’s house she comes face to face with teen alien Kylie. They agree to swap places so Kylie can experience life in an Earth school. Polly is taken to Kylie’s spaceship.
The overseers of Earth, the Hywardathians, find out Kylie is on Earth. She has crossed a line and must be stopped. They are out to capture here at all cost which also puts Polly in danger. Polly must now try to save Kylie and switch back before it’s too late for them both.
I loved the concept of this “freaky Friday” style story and I enjoyed Kylie’s shenanigans at Polly’s school. However I kept getting pulled away from the story with large amounts of world building, or in this case universe building, through extracts from Vryl’s Galmanac a sort of Wikipedia of space.
I really wanted more of Kylie’s interactions with Penny’s school friends and to see more of Kylie’s world other than the spaceship they were stuck on.
Written in an easy style with a sense of fun and adventure Blurred Vision is well suited to the older end of Middle Grade 11 – 13 years.
Contains mild swearing.
*I won a copy of this book from the author.
Harrison has written a humorous story with aliens both good and bad. We are conveyed to a world of space travel where a girl is the heroine of the story, surviving dire circumstances and doing it with a sense of adventure.
Through Polly he gives his readers a protagonist who is smart and adventurous. She can hack top NASA files and doesn’t baulk at danger if it includes an adventure.
When a portal opens outside Polly’s house she comes face to face with teen alien Kylie. They agree to swap places so Kylie can experience life in an Earth school. Polly is taken to Kylie’s spaceship.
The overseers of Earth, the Hywardathians, find out Kylie is on Earth. She has crossed a line and must be stopped. They are out to capture here at all cost which also puts Polly in danger. Polly must now try to save Kylie and switch back before it’s too late for them both.
I loved the concept of this “freaky Friday” style story and I enjoyed Kylie’s shenanigans at Polly’s school. However I kept getting pulled away from the story with large amounts of world building, or in this case universe building, through extracts from Vryl’s Galmanac a sort of Wikipedia of space.
I really wanted more of Kylie’s interactions with Penny’s school friends and to see more of Kylie’s world other than the spaceship they were stuck on.
Written in an easy style with a sense of fun and adventure Blurred Vision is well suited to the older end of Middle Grade 11 – 13 years.
Contains mild swearing.
*I won a copy of this book from the author.
January 6, 2020
A very enjoyable romp thru space in the company of clever Polly and the weirdo aliens! Great fun.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews