Book Review: The Highest Frontier by Joan Slonczewski

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The Highest Frontier is a far future science fiction novel involving a young woman named Jenny Ramos-Kennedy. She is part of a rich and politically influential family in a world with astonishing technological and biological advances and an environment drastically affected by global warming. (The polar icecaps have melted to the point where Antarctica now has potentially arable land.) This is also a world undergoing an invasion by an extraterrestrial species referred to as “ultraphytes.” These creatures are an invasive species of epic proportions and what makes them especially dangerous is that they have an extremely lethal “stress” reaction.

The story follows Jenny through her first year at Frontera College, a school built in orbit.