Scan barcode
tessisreading2's review
4.0
From the back cover: Across the galaxy the Stellar Federation lies in fragments and the Patrol is long disbanded... But one of its fleet still controls the remote farmworld of Amphora... Shot down over hostile territory, Lieutenant Dia Catlin, a young and idealistic Patrol pilot, is nursed back to health by a rebel doctor and his alien assistant. Escaping rebel torture with their aid, Dia returns home an inadvertent hero. In the wake of honors and promotion, she is thrust into the highest echelons of the Patrol, where she begins to see the dark reality of its operations. Then the rebel doctor is taken prisoner and Dia is forced to weigh her allegiance against his life - and against the welfare of the entire planet.
The back cover description and the cover illustration make it seem like this is one of those 1980's science fiction novels of derring-do, like Bujold or McCaffrey, and that seems a little misleading - this is, for the most part, quieter, and while there are some daring escapes, violent scenes, etc., the bulk of the novel takes place in quieter moments: first while Dia is injured and imprisoned, being treated by the mysterious doctor and his alien ally, and later after Dia's return home, as she navigates her world and finds herself asking questions about things she used to simply accept. Dia is very much not a rebel - she's from a high-ranking family and she herself gets an accelerated promotion; when she's offered the opportunity to further her career by.
Because she's so thoroughly and successfully embedded in her society, her realizations are slow and kind of low-key. She's not an action movie heroine blasting her way through corridors, despite the fact that she's a pilot; her mother is a politician and Dia is pretty adept at navigating the politics and interpersonal drama of the Patrol herself. I really appreciated this: over all the book unfolded kind of like a mystery, as Dia learns what's going on around her and what she has missed seeing all her life, and the interpersonal relationships felt realistic. Even the minor characters don't feel like caricatures. The book ends where another book would be ready to pick up the series, or might even have started:. The emotional emphasis of the book, its heft, is really on Dia, though, so to me this made sense. You can imagine an entire series unspooling from here (which it didn't, unfortunately), but Dia's personal arc reaches a satisfying conclusion.
The back cover description and the cover illustration make it seem like this is one of those 1980's science fiction novels of derring-do, like Bujold or McCaffrey, and that seems a little misleading - this is, for the most part, quieter, and while there are some daring escapes, violent scenes, etc., the bulk of the novel takes place in quieter moments: first while Dia is injured and imprisoned, being treated by the mysterious doctor and his alien ally, and later after Dia's return home, as she navigates her world and finds herself asking questions about things she used to simply accept. Dia is very much not a rebel - she's from a high-ranking family and she herself gets an accelerated promotion; when she's offered the opportunity to further her career by
Spoiler
embarking on a romantic relationship with someone forty years her senior, she takes it without much in the way of qualmsBecause she's so thoroughly and successfully embedded in her society, her realizations are slow and kind of low-key. She's not an action movie heroine blasting her way through corridors, despite the fact that she's a pilot; her mother is a politician and Dia is pretty adept at navigating the politics and interpersonal drama of the Patrol herself. I really appreciated this: over all the book unfolded kind of like a mystery, as Dia learns what's going on around her and what she has missed seeing all her life, and the interpersonal relationships felt realistic. Even the minor characters don't feel like caricatures. The book ends where another book would be ready to pick up the series, or might even have started:
Spoiler
"the first day of the revolution"
More...