Review: farm girl goes military
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 9, 2012
This was an interesting book. In the near future Earth has discovered other planets: one containing a friendly race, another containing an aggressive culture that kills everyone aboard a ship it passes, and the last planet Earth terraformed and colonized. This planet is Providence, it is broken into 6 Utopias (which you don't hear much about) and a center farming district. The farming lands are strangely backwards, despite all the adults/parents being directly from Earth, women have little role other than marriage and kids. But Fiona's Father didn't have any sons and he petitioned the government to let his daughter be a farm hand with a share of land. So Fiona grew up a bit alienated. They didn't imagine she would be conscripted into the Military, as all sons are for 1 year. But she is taken to a camp and appointed to a squad of soldiers. Since she is smart, she excels at the academics but is physically weak at physical training. Along the way she makes friends, enemies, and falls in love. At the end of service is a war games, of sorts, and Fiona has to go with her squad of misfits.I liked the idea of the mixture of wild west/agriculture vs. space fighting, very Firefly/Serenity. But that women were so swiftly shoved into an inferior role, after barely 1 generation was a stretch. It would make more sense if the Great-grandparents or further were from Earth... but not that an entire community of adults reverted hundreds of years. I also found issue with the lack of technology, other than some clever elements from the new planet, there was little in the story. I also failed to see the usefulness of securing only a single year of services from every son, if you're just going to have them run around a camp. And after that year release the ones who don't want to stay while enlisting the others. Generally you train the soldiers to self-sustain the community with some sort of duty. It's a waste to have them do nothing for a bare year and be cut loose. I felt the aliens that we got a description of were too much like ones from the Avatar movie (sans tail). I think that the author didn't have a firm enough grasp where Fiona's character was going to go. She veered too far between being a missish farm girl and a soldier. I thought she'd have more backbone by the end of the book. The cliffhanger at the end was brutal and sudden.