New to the planet Chuudoku, Kaslin is running from Histly, whom he couldn’t keep his eyes off when he first saw her—he goes for the arrogant, athletic type, unfortunately—because her response to his interest has been to torment him with her augmentations (physical enhancements, such as fingertip injection needles, that you can have if you can pay). He ducks into a cave whose slippery floor sends him sliding underground. She follows, but before he finds her, he has learned words to harden, soften, and light the cave’s rock, and he has freed some three-eyed creatures from the cavern walls. The creatures strip him, depilate him (it’s a thrill), and turn his skin translucent white. They don’t go that far with Histly, instead imprisoning her in the cave-stuff, which it turns out is also edible in many delectable flavors, provided it’s Kaslin eating it, or, later on, passing it to Histly via liplock. First contact with aliens has been made, with implications that are barely hinted before the last page. Hoffman is both a successful YA novelist and an adult SF novelist who prefers teenage protagonists. Kaslin—and Histly, for that matter—are vibrant creations, their psychology utterly credible for smart adolescents. That the book ends with everything but Kaslin and Histly’s relationship up in the air may indicate merely that Hoffman knew when she’d achieved perfection.”
—Booklist, starred review
?A book that’s rich and palpable, as well as being gonzo in the best sense. Once you ingest Hoffman’s mental soap flake of a book, you can never go home again.”
—SciFi.com (Grade: A )
?Fast moving, entertaining, and indecorous enough for a PG-17 rating...capable of stimulating the intellect as well as the senses.”
—Locus
?This is definitely a page-turning book and apart from being great fiction should be on the list of any neo-writer to show how a story should be written. A fascinating read.”
—SF Crowsnest
"This short novel is a sharp portrait of aliens remaking humans they meet from the inside out."
—The Denver Post
?Rollicking, funny, sweet, and constantly surprising.”
—New York Review of Science Fiction
?Nina K. Hoffman’s Catalyst is a marvel of inventiveness, beautifully realized in close sensory detail.”
—Kate Wilhelm
“Charming, inventive, and weird. Hoffman’s aliens and their environment are fascinating. And the humans? As always, the author saves a dash of compassion even for the person with the most disagreeable personality.”
—Bruce Holland Rogers
?Dreamlike and often horrific.... Any reader, young or not, will be rooting for that resolution.”
—Eugene Weekly
?Nobody does down the rabbit (or spider) hole like Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Sometimes when you read, you get a peek into an entirely different mind. This is one of those reads. Everything is so strange in this book but also strangely true. Not what you expect, no matter what you expect.”
—Ray Vukcevich
?This weird novel of alien contact from Stoker-winner Hoffman (A Fistful of Sky) careens like a pinball among the bumpers of science fiction, young adult literature, and softcore porn.”
—Publishers Weekly
