Catherine Jinks's genius is in depicting friendship - to me, all her best books explore friendship, loyalty, and the way unlikely friendships can develop into something stronger than the adversity against it. If you haven't read Jinks' Pagan's Crusade and its sequels, I highly recommend them.

Eye to Eye is YA science fiction - not something I'd usually pick up, but well worth the reading. A damaged spacecraft with a highly developed articifical intelligence lands on a primitive planet, and is discovered by a scavenger boy in the desert. Without either really understanding the other, a kind of bond is formed between the two - as close to friendship as you can get where one party is neither human nor capable of emotion.

True to YA fiction, there is only one plotline. The book hints at the backgrounds and cultures that both come from, without going into detail. This works - all that really matters in this book is the two main characters and their interaction with each other. The ending seems a little contrived, but it still fits in okay. I don't think there really is a truly satisfactory ending to a story like this.