Book was ok, I suppose. I was quite surprised it veered heavily into Christian fantasy, where the main character enters a portal to chat with Jesus. Not what I expected, but the chapter was fun to read.

Most of my issues with the book were that it felt more like a polished draft that preferred to fix typos and skipped the steps of development and refining. The world-building was never really fleshed out. This was especially noticeable in the first 2 chapters. I soon began getting very distracted and pulled out of the story because the sentences were constantly too short.

He is a boy. Adam lives in Los Angeles. He loves staring at the stars.

I think the author would benefit from taking some writing courses. There are some cheap online ones where he can learn how to alternate sentence length. They teach writers to avoid their writing tics and adopt a better rhythm.

I liked having space alien cats injecting the autism gene into the world population because these humans were relatively immune to the villain's magical branding. It offers some interesting world-building concepts I have never seen before.

Just that... well... the main character Adam doesn't quite act autistic over 90% of the book. Yes, he is nonverbal. But since the alien cats are telepathic, any person would soon become used to mentally speaking to them in the same way. Protagonist has 1 flare-up late in the book during a non-pivotal side quest chapter but acts very neurotypical in his decisions. He never avoids eye contact and doesn't do repetitive rituals like fixating on specific newspaper sections.

I also don't quite understand some of the world-building that lands him homeless in the first place. The part where he gets along poorly with his adoptive parents was believable (and then it is never addressed again by the cat aliens for no reason). But there are robot cops everywhere, and not one single robocop spots him loitering in the street? Wouldn't robocops have his photo on their record? This was a wasted world-building opportunity. This world could have become extremely hostile, and robocops are not programmed to search for autistic runaways like Adam. Quite a missed opportunity. For being a person that enjoyed living homeless, Adam seemed ridiculously comfortable taking baths and sleeping on a warm bed... er... box.

Alien cat society is intriguing. They boop each other, tend to ignore the protagonist, and do their thing. The humanoid ones wear peculiar tiaras, and they sleep in boxes. We never understand why some inhabitants of the pyramid are normal cats. Do they have telepathy? Can they change appearance into their humanoid form?

The villain is flat, flat, flat. Not fleshed out at all. Bad guy seems more like a plot ploy because the story needs a villain over a complicated, well- fleshed-out character who could stand on his own. The book would benefit from a second POV based on one of the cats, such as Nikola. Give them more motives other than "the boy is the chosen one... because... well... he is the chosen one". There is zero tension between the cats and Adam. It just seems all too easy.

In a nutshell, this book has some cool plot ideas that could have become a really awesome book. A major rewrite and expansion of this world could have made it worthwhile. ( )