Lotus Blue by Cat Sparks

Confession time: I've read a lot of teen fiction. I'm pretty sure by now I could identify it blind-folded and spun in a circle.

And I still have no idea if Lotus Blue is teen fiction or not.

It's a dystopian sci-fi novel by Cat Sparks, which combines the advanced tech and rich world-building of Dune with the post-apocalyptic nightmare of the Max Max movies. It's set in futuristic Australia, after world-wide war has broken civilisation down to chaotic remnants. The main character Star and her sister Nene live as nomadic traders, scraping a dangerous living on the Sand Road. But after a disastrous event, Star discovers a terrible secret and is forced into confrontation with the forces that once shattered humanity.

This is one of those books that straddles the boundary of target audiences. In some ways it's geared toward the teenage girl readership, as as it follows a young woman's voyage of self-discovery.  And while there's a lot death, it never crosses the line into sensationalizing it.

However I'd hesitate to call it teen fiction due to the nasty edge of realism. Decisions have dire consequences and there's no brooding bad boy lurking conveniently in the background to swoop in and save Star. Love triangles are also mercifully lacking. In fact -  interestingly - sexuality is barely alluded to, possibly because the characters have so many other urgent priorities, like not dying. Not-dying is very important to them.

I should also note that Star is much less annoying than your average teen protagonist. Yes, she makes foolish decisions the reader can see coming a mile away. No, she never gets away with it. In fact, her entire character arc is about learning practicality. Bad things happen, some dreams won't come true, not all friends can be relied on, and denial won't change anything.

This development is contrasted with her enemies, who don't grow at all and are arguably responsible for nearly everything that goes wrong due to their inability to perceive anything except what they want to see. The most destructive thing in this world apparently isn't the pure unrelenting malice of rogue AI but the foolishness and willful ignorance of humanity. You don't have to be a moustache-twirling villain to end the world. You just need to be the dumbass that presses the button labelled 'don't press this'.

It's a melancholy outlook, but I liked it. Maybe Star was never going to reach for the sky or be saved by a white knight on a mighty steed, but by the end she could damn well survive whatever horrible trauma life threw at her and keep on trucking (Heh, trucking. That's a little black comedy joke you'll only get after Chapter Two).

Final Verdict: Good. If you're looking for something in the vein of Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker, I'd definitely recommend this.

"No matter what the Road threw at them, Nene was always

steadfast in her hope. Nene's hope was wearing Star to the bone."

The Sea and Summer by George Turner

One of the things I love about this blog project is that I keep discovering all these obscure, wonderful Aussie writers that have been forgotten or overlooked by the mainstream.

George Turner's The Sea and Summer (published in the US as The Drowning Towers) is a perfect example. This novel centers around a family during a time of social turmoil and uses this very personal setting to explore the consequences of climate change. It's a fascinatingly melancholy tale that richly deserves it's status of science fiction classic, and yet I'd never heard of it before now.

Despite being written by the seventies by a successful mainstream novelist and being one of the few Australian-written books on Gollancz's SF Masterworks, it seems almost unknown by my generation. Considering that I did a creative writing degree at an Australian university and all my friends are book-nerds or librarians, I'm bewildered that I haven't even heard of it before. Not even a passing mention
                                                            or a website review.

What I enjoyed about The Sea and Summer was the lack of an antagonist. Most dystopian books are stories of resistance, of little people against oppressive regimes like 1984 or the Hunger Games. For them there are terrible external enemies that must be vanquished for the world to right itself. 

But for George Turner's characters, the enemy is far more subtle than that. It comes from within. The family's downfall from 'Sweet' (financially self-sufficient) to 'Swill' (living on government subsidies) begins with the loss of the father's job. And as the burdens of poverty and social class press in on them, the entire family makes choices on how to deal with it; some selfish, some tragic. 

In a way their family is a metaphor for modern attitudes to environmental and economic disaster. That sense of "this problem's too big, I can't fix it, I can only save myself". That sense of abdicated responsibility as they make their own individual grabs for solvency. Yet - and this is very important - none of the family ever manage to escape the Swill. They each pay dearly for an illusion of freedom, but they all end up in the Swill one way or another. The problem is too big to be escaped, as is the inevitable creeping cultural shift. The only way to survive it (not stop it, there's no stopping what's been put into motion) is together.

It's the most oddly depressing and yet hopeful book I've ever read, with a pensive attitude towards climate change. It matter-of-factly dismisses the notion of  the end of the world, pointing out humanity's ability to adapt to much worse disasters with far less technology. But it also is very clear that adaptation will come with painful, difficult change. We don't get away without consequences.

Perhaps the subject matter is why this book isn't well known. With climate change and economic strife in the news, the last thing that readers want is reality tainting their escapism. Which is a shame, because of all the books on the subject, this is probably the most realistic and least hysterical. 

City of Light by Keri Arthur

As a rule, I steer clear of Keri Arthur's work. Not because it isn't good (it is), but because it leans too far into paranormal romance territory for my tastes. I like my action bloodier and my romance more subdued.

But her recent novel, City of Light, is like she psychically sensed all my reservations and wrote a 300 page book just to prove me wrong. 

It's set in a future dystopia after humanity lost a war with shapeshifters (thus combining my two favorite things; magic and science fiction). Life is hard on everyone, but especially Tiger, a genetically engineered supersoldier that miraculously survived the purge of her kind after the war. She spends her time hiding out in an old lab and talking to ghosts, until she rescues two living people and is reluctantly drawn into a mystery of disappearing children and illegal experimentation.

What's interesting about Tiger is that she exists so much in her head. Being discovered as dechet is a death sentence so she spends most of her time calculating who to lie to and what to lie about. It makes the outside world so exhausting it's completely understandable why Tiger would prefer to be alone and not deal with that rig-moral.

The real surprise is that she's not more introverted and bitter than she is. What happened to her kind is horrifying, especially when they were the most blameless faction in the war. They were exploited by humans, murdered by the shapeshifters, and depicted as monsters by history.  It's the kind of horrendous injustice that can only be reflected by real life and Tiger is way too calm and philosophical about it.

To kill or not to kill Jonas.
That is the question. 

For example, there is that gem of a moment where potential love-interest Jonas first refuses to believe in the dechet massacres, then says it was the only way to get rid of the "perversion". And he throws it in the face of a woman he suspects to be a survivor. If Tiger had decided to throw Jonas to the vampire horde there and then, I'd have held her coat. I didn't hate even Branna this much because at least Branna was upfront about wanting to kill Tiger. Jonas' words are something more insidious.

I will say this though - Tiger doesn't turn into a puddle of goo when Jonas softens toward her. She correctly perceives that his shift in attitude isn't a change of opinion toward her kind, just a re-evaluation of how valuable her skill-set is. Like her human masters before him, he wants to use her. And she is not afraid to tell him and his asshole friends to eat a dick.

Slow. Fucking. Clap.

I really hope that she doesn't backslide in the next novel, because it is incredibly satisfying to see a protagonist stick to her guns. If Jonas does become a love interest in Winter Halo, he'd better do some damn character development first.

WTF...

Someone added Down Under by Tam Ames to my Goodreads list of Australian Science Fiction.

It looks like a gay love story in futuristic dystopian Australia involving a road trip with a man who shape-shifts into a kangaroo. This is either a hilarious satire of urban fantasy or stone-cold serious, which will also be hilarious.

I'm guiltily intrigued. I must read this. Because he shapes-shifts into a kangaroo.

I mean, most people would go straight for dingo or crocodile. You know, the traditionally dangerous Australian animal.

...though red kangaroos are freaking scary. Have you ever been up close to one? They are massive and built of this ropy muscle with clawed hindlegs for disembowelling, and if it's hit by a car, the car loses...

On second thought. Kangaroo shapeshifter. Good choice.