Shortly after cosmonaut, Akilina "Leena" Chirikov, blasts off from the Soviet Union in 1964, she finds herself thrown into an alternate dimension full of weird science and ancient mysteries.

Stranded in a strange new world she meets various larger-than-life comic book characters like another lost person from Earth, Lieutenant Hieronymus Bonaventure of the Royal Navy, and his anthropomorphic feline companion, Balam, an outlawed prince of the jaguar men. Unlike the pragmatic heroine, swashbuckling Bonaventure is happy to seek amusement through adventure and feats of derring-do whilst Balam only wants distraction until the day he can reclaim his throne. Having nothing else to do, they agree to help Leena find a way back to Earth.

These can be seen as the perfect ingredients for an utterly fanciful and ridiculous old-fashioned yarn akin to the stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs or Alex Raymond's "Flash Gordon". However, this book was billed as a "modern" take on the planetary romance genre. Leena is an archetypal rational Soviet cosmonaut and proposes logical explanations for all the weird and wonderful things she experiences. This tends to ground the story, giving a veneer of plausibility and making it a less frivolous science fiction adventure than a traditional early 20th-century sci-fi pulp tale.

The premise used here is a tried and tested "Wizard of Oz" style trope: Lost in a fantasy world, the dutiful protagonist seeks a way back to Earth so she can report to her superiors about what she has discovered. However, through a variety of strange experiences and adventures in the alternate world, she develops strong ties to her new companions and begins to question whether she truly wants to return home at all...

With lots of action, this "updating" of the planetary romance genre is a fun romp, although the worldbuilding and characters remain fairly lightweight and superficial. Development of both through a series of sequels would probably provide the story with the extra few gears it needs.