Green Light Delivery

Middle-grade author Johnson (Ebenezer’s Locker) riffs on familiar SF tropes in her first novel for adults, featuring an everyalien caught up in intrigue beyond his understanding. Ganpril Webrid, a Yeril street vendor with claws and multiple tongues, is annoyed when his routine workday is interrupted by a robot who tells him that he has “been called.” The robot then stings Webrid with a feeler that leaves a pinpoint of light shining from his head. Webrid’s headache is somewhat ameliorated when he learns that 12 million dendiacs have appeared in his bank account and he’s been granted a universal carter’s license that will let him work on any planet he likes. Both developments are merely the prelude to an interplanetary adventure whose true purpose is withheld from him until the very end. The book’s joy lies in the humorous prose (“Her wink could have clipped the wings off a beetle”) as Webrid blusters his way across the galaxy. (June)