Item - The Star Crystal

After reading The Star Crystal as a youth, I was quite sure the series would last for much much longer than it ultimately did. It has a bit of everything: mystery, great pictures, characters, engaging puzzles and even minor art lessons. Even the spaceship, the Mobius Express, has its own flair. After all the villains and baddies in the first five books, I wasn't expecting a "Best art" trophy and mystery to keep me engrossed. I still find it satisfying today.

You see, there's a plot to steal the Star Crystal, a beautiful priceless gem to be given to the best artist in the galaxy. To foil this, you are disguised as an art expert accompanying Quarboss Tro, a very triangle-shaped diplomat tasked with presenting the award. This may seem lame and nonviolent, but just getting to the Express has its own perils. To reach the Star Crystal's hidden location, there's an introductory goose chase. You're chased down by a gang of alien robbers, and if you make the wrong hyperjump at the spaceport, you're sliced into diamond-shaped pieces. Crystals, almost, ha ha. Then you get marooned in a large forest after your hyperwarp -- again, the secret Interplanetary Spy hideout is meant to be tough to find.

This all is prelude to your work on the main ship. Three artists there, candidates to win the Crystal, are among the suspects. There's Callisto, a big square boisterous fellow who creates impossible objects with a warp chisel, Freeba, a perpetually perturbed painter with a circular mouth, and Cecilia who has enormous ears and plays music on a nautilus horn. Given the emphasis on art, you have a few puzzles where you have to decide which things are similar or, elsewhere, if a shape is impossible. They're a nice change from the more concrete puzzles found in other books, as they don't get dry and yet still fit with the plot. Slip up, and you don't blow up, but your cover is. Security gets called. Or worse--one ending where you're turned into a work of art by an angry artist is especially cool, although the artist's carelessness is, once you've finished the book, quite shocking indeed, given what you learn at the end. Well, I suppose all BaIS entries require some suspension of disbelief, and they're worth it, and this was too cool and unique to leave out.

After you question the artists, there's a murder overnight. Finding the criminal's identity requires going through the water passengers' area, which of course allows for all kinds of pitfalls. You can potentially drown, or communicate badly with water creatures and get electrocuted. There are even chances you will get framed for the murder or detained for suspicious behavior if you go about the chase wrong! Or, well, you're thrown in a small cell, but MAN does it have a great view. The imagination is all over the place, but the story is focused. Slipping up at the end gives a surprisingly funny-but-sad ending. Another favorite ending is the last page. It is a "you win" affair in all the other books, but here it is actually a death end! It, along with a paper cutout of the Mobius Express on the previous two pages (but I couldn't dare to cut such a lovely book up,) is a fun way not to divulge the identity of the criminal to either impatient or careless readers. (Okay, wandering eyes may catch it involuntarily, but my young self was engrossed enough I didn't.)

The illustrations may be the best in the series, as there's great variety with the characters, and you get a good balance of exotic worlds and technology and characters. Callisto is the best of the bunch to me: a right-angled intergalactic tough guy with a semi-terrifying grin. He even has a chittering pet named Tunk, with weird spiky hair and fur, who plays a role in the plot. The puzzles themselves are pretty trippy, too. For one of the final ones, you have to determine whether or not a shape is impossible.

The plot, on reflection, could be convoluted. You might even worry you weren't really necessary and they could've just arrested the perpetrator with what they knew. But I see it as: Spy Center needed the suspect to be overconfident, and they believed you were good enough to take them down.

Also, I was relieved to read DTar's comment about the puzzle once you board the Mobius Express. It's one of the few mistakes the book makes. As a kid I was sure I was right, but I was also sure adults didn't make big mistakes. Now, it's a reminder not to worry too much about small mistakes I'm not (yet) aware of, given how well Star Crystal turned out.

More reviews by andrewschultz

I agree with Demian that this is one of the best books in the series. The book has a comparatively coherent and gripping story, with its mystery regarding 'whodunnit' and the idea of a colourful cast of suspects from which to choose. It's not quite Murder on the Orient Express, but the idea is the same!

The idea of a promotion at the end of the adventure was a good one, and added interest for coming books.

More reviews by Aussiesmurf

This is among the best books in the series. Its strangeness and use of optical illusions helps it immensely; the puzzles aren't very hard, but some of them are interestingly designed. As a bonus, the book also includes a model of the Moebius Express (a moebius strip, of course) to cut out and assemble.

More reviews by Demian

One thing always bothered me about this book is the puzzle on page 40, wherein you are to land on one of two platforms on the Moebius Express and be carried by conveyor belts to the first class section.... If that section can be reached from either side of the strip, then either landing point will take you there. If that section is only on the face that is shown, then the "wrong" platform is the "right" one!

More reviews by Dtar