Powers That Be

DNF - PG 29

Why?

I don't like the writing style - it pulls me out of the story way too often. Yana also blunders and some odd almost ‘I'm better than you' mentality crossed with ‘I'm so out of my depth' - which, admittedly, she is. Totally.

I could like that part of it, but the way she keeps thinking the worst of people and trying to shift the blame in her mind when she screws up...yeah, that's not working.

I really enjoyed the setting of this book; based loosely on reality, the surrounding environment and community is powerful and well shown. The characters[return]are interesting and believable, and the premise of the book works well. Unfortunately, the resolution is just a little far fetched and fantastic for my[return]taste. However, it's still worth the read. You'll enjoy every minute you spend getting there, just beware that at the end you may find you did not enjoy[return]where you got.

An all-time favorite.

In the future the interstellar megacorp Intergal does what megacorps do: whatever turns a profit. This frequently involves seizing land for resources and resettling the populations into barely terraformed “new homes” and using these colonies as sources of unskilled labour or troops. Our main character Yana Maddock was a Major in the Intergal Company Corps, but was caught up in poisoned gas on a dust-world when the starving locals raided the base for basic supplies. Now with only a year to live she is retired to the arctic world of Petaybee in the hopes that the clean air will help. On arrival she is informed that if she wishes to continue to receive medical supplies she will serve as a spy in the village of Kilcoole as numerous mineral-research teams have been going missing.

This sounds dark, and it is, yet it is told in such an amazingly skilled style that you are sucked in to the world, care for and believe in the characters, fear for them and yet somehow - even when the story describes very dark moments, it is never oppressive and the novel balances the cold and the dark with the warm and the optimistic so that we can read of the horrors of Bremport yet still want to come back to this book as if to an old friend because of the joys of characters such as Bunny, Sean and Clodagh.