After a devastating alien attack destroys Earth, a handful
of survivors cling to the hope of revenge on Gaea Station, a satellite cobbled from
the few remaining warships. A generation later, young people have been genetically
modified and rigorously trained to be “warbreed” fighters, huge, strong, and…obedient.
Normal human teens are assigned to other tasks churning out babies to keep
humankind going. Warbreed Kyr (Valkyrie) has spent her entire life training to
face “the Wisdom,” the reality-shaping alien weapon that doomed Earth. She
excels in every physical test, she drives her lesser mess-mates mercilessly,
and she has no emotional ties to anyone except her brother. She fully expects
to be given a prized post…but Command has other ideas. Instead, her brother is
sent on a death mission and she is consigned to the Nursery to bear sons for
Gaea Station until she dies an early death.
At first, I found Kyr a highly unsympathetic character.
She’s arrogant, entitled, and generally a self-centered bully. She’s
unthinkingly cruel to the helpless young alien whose ship is captured. In
short, I didn’t like her at all. But I kept reading on the strength of the
prose and the hope that she would eventually get her comeuppance. And then the
plot spins around in another direction…and yet another…
Refusing her Nursery assignment, Kyr ends up on the run with
her brother, the alien, and her brother’s unrequited crush, a brilliant but psychopathic
computer whiz (who is also a boy, but queer relationships are forbidden on Gaea
Station because of the crushing need to increase the human population.)
Their flight takes them to a planet inhabited by both humans
and aliens, where lush green, fresh air, blue skies, and joyful play contrast
with the bleak sterility of her previous life. Not only that, she encounters
her older sister, who was supposed to be dead, and her nephew, fathered by the
autocratic Commander whom Kyr had once worshipped. Faced with the undeniable
reality that the universe is vaster and more wonderful than she imagined, Kyr
begins to question everything she has been taught, even her own memories. She
starts asking who she would be if Earth had not been destroyed or if the
Commander had not been a power-hungry tyrant bent on retaliation. If she’d
grown up in an enriched, natural environment. If she’d been allowed to love
anyone—starting with herself.
By this time, I was thoroughly hooked. With each deviation
from the opening scenario, the entire universe changes—and Kyr with it. The
author brilliantly takes us inside each iteration of Kyr, the good and the bad,
the memories and the blindnesses. It’s a tour-de-force that kept me turning
pages and falling in love with a true heroine.
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