The Colors of Space

Bart Steele carries a secret in his blood. Half-Mentorian, half-human, he moves through the Lhari's interstellar lanes under a false name, hunting for a father who may not exist. The Lhari control the stars, and they have long memories for the families that crossed them. When a stranger at the spaceport claims to be his missing father, Bart discovers that identity itself has become his most dangerous currency. The Eighth Color awaits at the edge of everything he knows, a mystery that could unravel what he believes about his past. Bradley constructs an alien universe where different species perceive reality in fundamentally incompatible ways, and Bart must navigate between them to survive. The stakes are immediate and visceral: discovery means disappearance. This is a coming-of-age wrapped in hard SF, a boy forced to become someone new simply to stay alive. The novel endures because it asks what family really means when the people who made you might not be who they claim to be.