Warchild

I don't know about you, but I get tired of getting my hopes up that a book will be great, only to be disappointed time and time again. This book finally broke that cycle of despair. It starts out with approx. 40 pages written in the second person perspective. And here's the shocker - it's not just a gimmick; it actually works. You are seeing the world through the eyes of an 8 year child whose ship (yes, a space ship) is attacked and destroyed by pirates. The adults are killed and the children are enslaved. The use of the second person is a powerful device that pulled me straight into the story - not an easy task with this jaded reader. But it's what happens next, and what continues happening that keeps you turning pages. Characters acting like real people. They don't always make the right decisions, and you don't always agree with them. Heck, you don't even always *like* all of them! But all of them, even the pirates, are understandable and seem real. The characters grow and develop. They get hurt and develop emotional scars. They hurt each other, and they heal. When I finished the book, I put it down, said "wow" and immediately re-read it again. I haven't done that since I finished Lord of the Rings almost 20 years ago.

I'm a novice when it comes to science fiction. I know plenty of students who walk around with those fat paperbacks, and when I used to work at the bookstore I certainly sold plenty of them--both in hard and softcover. Therefore, I sort of know what science fiction looks like, but I couldn't even give you a definition of the genre. Furthermore, I'm not really keen on books (or movies for that matter) with lots of violent battle scenes. So, why then did I find WARCHILD--a work of science fiction (actually published for adults) which was well-stocked with violent battle scenes--impossible to put down? And why do I think it's a great book for young adults? I was captivated by the vividly drawn young main character Joslyn Aaron Musey as well as the four complex adults who are his most influential teachers: the pirate, Falcone; the alien sympathizer, Nikolas-dan (a.k.a. Warchild); the deep space ship captain, Cairo Azarcon; and Corporal Erret Dorr. I guess it all comes down to the fact that no matter how many aliens and high tech weapons you jam into a well-written, politically savvy, coming of age story, it's still a well-written, politically savvy, coming of age story. Or, perhaps, I'm much more of a science fiction fan than I ever knew I was. The brilliance of WARCHILD has certainly opened me up to that possibility. The book has an unusual and powerful opening: Part I is told in the second person as the author plunks us down into the body of eight-year-old Jos just as Falcone's pirate ship, the Genghis Khan, attacks and destroys Jos' home--the merchant ship on which Jos' parents are stationed. Taken by Falcone, Jos spends a year in virtual isolation as the pirate trains, teaches, and intimidates the young boy. Falcone is then audacious enough to dock at the EarthHub station, Chaos, where several government spacecarriers are also docked, in order to treat the boy to a birthday celebration. As fate would have it, an alien ship chooses the occasion to attack. In the initial commotion Jos jams his dessert fork into Falcone's hand and runs for the nearest exit. Falcone, who has promised to shoot Jos if he attempts any such thing, tries to carry through on his threat in the midst of the battle going on: "Way down the dockring, almost out of sight from the curve of the walls, a small explosion went off at one of the locks. You hauled yourself up, moving slow in the rush. Your head pounded and smoke stung your eyes. You held your arm and tried to veer toward one of the carrier ramps."Then new faces poured out of that blown lock."They weren't human. They were tattooed, with skin in colors you'd never seen before on a face except as a mask. They shot at the soljets, sharp bright pulses. The soljets stopped boarding, knelt behind cargo bins, loaders, and ramps, shooting back in stiff streamers of bright red. It was a noisy station festival, full of light and color, except people were dying. Merchants and Chaos citizens caught in the cross fire fell."You froze.

Similarity has been made between Warchild and Ender's Game as both are about a child forced into battles between humans and aliens. 15 years after I read Ender's Game I still remember it because of its climatic ending. Warchild does not have the same stunning ending but which other scifi has come close anyway. However Warchild's characterization has depth and is emotionally wrought. Jos is a likeable hero. Written in first person, it is easy to feel for Jos as he became an orphan at eight and used by others for their own ends throughout his boyhood. Jos struggles with his loyalties and finally becoming his own man is compellingly written. Niko, Azarcon, Evan are intriguing side characters and one wish the story is longer just to know them better. The only complaint I have is the vagueness of Jos one year captivity under Falcone. We only know what really happened much later in the book. This is an outstanding story and definitely begs for a sequel.

Good in the sense that it's very well written, the character development is engaging. Weird in that you're basically inside the head of a young boy from age eight to seventeen, as he goes through various sorts of interstellar war-torn hell and is brutalized, emotionally disturbed, and deals (not too well) with all of these issues. All in all, not a pretty book, but definitely worth reading. In that sense, it reminds me quite a bit of some of William Barton's works. Besides the heavy subject matter, the book spends a lot of time and probably the great majority of the text dealing with the boy's internal mental state - albeit always through his thoughts and reactions to what's going on around him. This, again, gives the book a more contemplative feeling than I normally prefer (and is why it reminds me of Barton's work). However, it was gripping enough that I had trouble putting it down and finished it fairly rapidly. The basic backdrop of the book is a sort of just-barely-hot war between an alien race and humanity. In theory the two races had a brief war and came up with a treaty, including a DMZ. However, the treaty is falling apart as the humans raid the alien's colony worlds and the aliens raid the human stations and fight the occasional deep space skirmish with human warcraft. The alien race is definitely at a disadvantage but is managing to stay in the game and even kick ass, largely because of the corruption and disorganization of the human race's bureacratic galactic empire. The aliens also have the help of "sympathizers", humans who are taking the aliens side. The earth politicians are barely in control of the farther reaches of their empire and the star-faring warships that keep the war going. They're definitely not in control of the pirates thatraid and devastate merchant ships, killing the adults and enslaving the survivors. The book starts when the merchant ship Mukudori, home of the main character, eight-year-old Jos Musey, is pretty much sacked by a pirate ship. The boy ends up in the hands of the pirates, but it doesn't end there. He later ends up in the hands of the aliens, who train him to be a spy and assassin, then put him to work. Along the way he has a lot of problems figuring out who to trust and when, including himself. One tip: the first chapter is all told in second person; i.e. "You do this. You remember that. etc". Normally this bugs the hell out of me, and would be enough for me to instantly relegate the book to the trash pile, but I flipped ahead a bit and saw that it was just a literary device for the opening chapter. I pretty much read through it and did my best to ignore it. After reading the entire book and looking back, I can even see the real reasoning behind it (and it's not just fun with literary devices). Trust me, this book is well worth the time. However, I recommend having some more optimistic reading material queued up behind it. Come to think of it, I

Don't be deceived: this is no sweeping space opera, for all that it has its share of action. It's much better: a thoughtful story about the effects of war on a young boy, Jos, an early casualty when pirates attack his ship. The book opens on this scene, breathing you into the fright of a child who is trying to stay hidden: "You didn't see their faces from where you hid behind the maintenance grate. Smoke worked its fingers through the tiny holes and stroked under your nose and over your eyes, forcing you to stifle breaths, to blink, and to cry."(For those who cannot bear the second person, bear it. Lowachee soon switches to the less immediate--though no less poignant--first person.)He is inevitably torn away from his homeship and has his childhood ripped apart so brutally that even when the chance comes for him to rediscover trust, he does not believe it.Lowachee paints no pretty pictures about humanity. It is war and the lives of soldiers that she depicts. Although she offers no cosmetics for the grimmer parts of her story--the way Jos and others he encounters are treated--she uses a delicacy that left me all the more horrified and at the same time drew me toward the characters through its lack of crude detail. Much of Jos' life is a tragedy, where each thing he comes to value only becomes another loss. And all throughout he searches for a home, the place where he can belong.The writing is beautifully taut, whether during battle or during introspection, reflecting how Jos is always on guard. At one point I came up from between the pages for a gasp of air and had to orient myself in the real world--I'd been that firmly rooted within Jos' mind. This is an emotional story with its characters vividly rendered, and it deserves a look by anyone searching for a powerful read.