Readable if unspectacular story of a young Dana Scully, who after running foul of a serial killer plumps for science over woo. There's some good character stuff here, and the highlight for me was the focus on her relationship with her sister Melissa, who essentially got fridged in the show, alas. Scully's always had flashes of psychic ability, so it's clever of this prequel to play into that, but it was blatantly clear who the real villain was. I know she's only 15 here, but her ability to detect bullshit clearly isn't honed yet, else the paper thin plot would have been obvious to her too. And talking of bullshit detection: I wasn't particularly enamoured of the implication that Captain Scully was somehow involved in The Project - not everything has to tie in together! But though I wish that plotline had been dumped like the stinker it is, the rest of the book's a little better... but then again it'd take a lot for me to want not to read about Dana Scully.