The Comet's Curse (2009)
The Comet's Curse is a 2009 young adult fiction book written by Dom Testa.
A comet's tail brushes Earth's atmosphere and leaves behind a virus that kills anyone past adolescence. With the adult world dying, a scientist gambles everything on the Galahad, a starship crewed entirely by teenagers and aimed at a distant solar system. Two years into training, sixteen-year-old Triana Martell leads the ship's council when the launch finally comes, and then the sabotage begins. Someone has stowed away, and that someone wants the mission to fail. Dom Testa opens his Galahad series on a brisk survival-thriller note, with the whole species riding on kids.
Quick answers
What is The Comet's Curse about?
A comet's tail brushes Earth's atmosphere and leaves behind a virus that kills anyone past adolescence. With the adult world dying, a scientist gambles everything on the Galahad, a starship crewed entirely by teenagers and aimed at a distant solar system. Two years into training, sixteen-year-old Triana Martell leads the ship's council when the launch finally comes, and then the sabotage begins. Someone has stowed away, and that someone wants the mission to fail. Dom Testa opens his Galahad series on a brisk survival-thriller note, with the whole species riding on kids.
When was The Comet's Curse published?
The Comet's Curse was published on 20 January 2009.
Who made The Comet's Curse?
The Comet's Curse was written by Dom Testa.
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A few thoughts on The Comet's Curse
The locked-ship paranoia and hunt for a saboteur play out well on screen in Passengers, another story of survival aboard a starship where something has gone wrong in transit. For the young-crew-alone-in-space danger, the rebooted Lost in Space runs a similar current, trading the virus plot for a family stranded far from help.
All-teen crews holding a spaceship together while everything goes wrong
Triana takes command of the Galahad only two years into training, and the sabotage starts almost as soon as the engines do. Illuminae, Gemina, and Aurora Rising all put their own teenage crews through ship-wide crises with no adults left to fix things quietly, and Lost in Space straps an entire family into the same kind of malfunction-by-malfunction survival story.
YA sci-fi where teenagers must run the show because the grown-ups can't
The whole premise of The Comet's Curse only works because every adult on Earth is already dying, leaving Triana's council to run a starship with zero backup plan. Starsight and Cytonic hand a teenage pilot the same kind of impossible authority, Steelheart's Reckoners answer to nobody older or safer than themselves, and Scythe and Iron Widow both drop their young leads straight into adult-sized power with no training wheels attached.
Long-haul space voyages where one wrong move could end the whole mission
Two years of training and a single act of sabotage are all it takes to threaten the entire Galahad mission before it even reaches deep space. Passengers strands its own doomed voyage on one person's split-second choice, Ender's Game turns a training simulation into a fight for the whole species, and A Wrinkle in Time and The Host both send ordinary people chasing a threat that could end everything.