The character of Guardian is clearly derived to a great extent from the character Spock (created by producer Gene Roddenberry and actor Leonard Nimoy) on the classic television series Star Trek, broadcast in 1968-70 when the author Monica Hughes was raising her own children. His impassive face, his many talents, his superior knowledge and scientific analysis, his efforts to be logical and his distress when his feelings interfere with the prompt completion of his duties—these are all traits Guardian shares with the half-Vulcan Spock.

Hughes has gone to considerable efforts to ensure that every mention of Guardian, right up until the last pages of the novel, could be interpreted as referring to a tall, tanned man with the manners of an English butler and the competence of a polymath. It is very clear that Olwen, and the author, consider Guardian to be a person...