To celebrate the upcoming September 8th release of Earth Flight, the conclusion to the Earth Girl trilogy, I'm reblogging my reviews of Earth Girl (Book 1) and Earth Star (Book 2).
Earth Girl by Janet Edwards brings us to Jarra’s Earth, in
the year 2788, when travel between the stars is as easy as stepping
through a portal. Except that, for “throwbacks” like Jara, the
other side of that portal means death by anaphylactic shock due to an
inherited fault in their immune system. Jara knows this first hand,
because as soon as she turned of legal age, she exercised her legal
right to leave Earth. She only survived because a medical team was on
alert, waiting to transport her back and save her life. But there
can’t always be someone waiting on the other side of her mistakes.
Now she decides to join an archaeological dig team of “norms” and
pretend to be from off-world so that she can spit in the face of
their prejudice against “apes.” When her lies put her life in
danger, what she learns has more to do with herself than her foreign
peers.
Janet Edwards gives us a book to lose ourselves in, from a
well-crafted backstory of Earth’s depopulation to the coming-of-age
romance of an off-kilter archaeology nerd. Before we even get to the
first life-and-death-scene, we’re wowed by NYC in ruins and the
future tech the team uses to excavate it, complete with environmental
suits and specialized vehicles. The sparse future terminology and
lingo, such as “tag points” and “amaz,” feel natural and are
easy to understand. The archaeology, history, and tech are all welded
together in a way that makes the exposition feel like action, because
each piece of data is so closely tied to plot. There’s also a bit
of kissing, offscreen sex, and many emotional moments driven by the
camaraderie of team work and near-death experiences.
Interesting scifi setting? Check. People dying? Check. There’s
also a strong underpinning of the
softer sciences – psychology and sociology, to be precise. Jarra’s
self-discoveries build us a multidimensional look at social prejudice
in her universe, one that eventually crushes her immature us v. them
paradigm. Many of the assumptions that Jarra has at the beginning of
the novel, mostly regarding people that she knows nothing about, like
her parents, eventually shatter under the weight of opposing fact.
Through this process, we get to meet many fascinating characters and,
through them, their diverse birth worlds and cultures.
Earth Girl sports a robust first-person voice that fills out
Edwards’ smart female protagonist. Smart, as long as you don’t
count common sense. Many of Jarra’s beliefs and life decisions are
unrealistic, like her determination to check that she will die if she
visits another world. Some of this determination stems from her core
strength, her ability to commit fully to a decision if there is even
the slightest chance that something will be gained. This is part of
what makes her a good tag leader and what leads to many of her heroic
actions. Yet, Edwards also shows us, before Jarra even meets her
intended “norm” victims, that Jarra can at times become
disconnected from reality and fall prey to magical thinking. It’s
great to have a risk-taker who’s willing to save your life. It’s
scary to have a risk-taker basing their risk assessments on pure
fantasy.
Told through Jarra’s unreliable perspective,
Earth Girl is
a fascinating blend of delusion and reality. But most of all, Edwards
captures the wonderful feeling of discovery, both of the physical
world and of the self. Find out more about the amaz Earth
Girl and upcoming sequels:
Earth Girl
Earth Star
Earth Flight
Janet Edwards
With Earth Star, the engaging sequel to Earth Girl,
Janet Edwards brings us a completely different sort of SF adventure while continuing the themes of discrimination, self
discovery, and the emerging theme of commitment. In Earth
Star Jarra suddenly finds her military connections to be of great
importance as she attempts to connect the distant past with a
military mystery of the present in the hopes of avoiding a future
disaster. Jarra has matured as a character over the previous book
yet still acts her age as she confronts a variety of personal
challenges, from boyfriend to bullying issues.
