By Sharon Shinn
Read : June 2009
Rating: Ho hum?
Well, it wasn’t terrible. There were some good points, but it certainly wasn’t Shinn’s best. (It’s feeling a little redundant saying that…)
Essentially, it’s a story of imperialism, told for a young adult audience with a penchant for romance. Averie’s father is a general in what is a (thinly veiled) parallel to the British Army. She’s been raised in a comfortable, wealthy household with little contact or interest in politics. She does want to travel, so when her father and her fiancee, also an army officer, are stationed in a (vaguely African/tropical) nation that the Not-British army has occupied, Averie is happy to go visit. She takes up residence there and makes friends with other Not-Brits. The Not-Africans are civil, but not overly friendly. Rebels attacks the marketplace while Averie and her friends are there, but rather than flee she chooses to help a native woman injured in the attack. She invites this woman to work in their household, a major financial boon but a social taboo among the natives. The woman agrees, and through her, Averie learns to appreciate the culture her father and fiancee and oppressing. She comes to doubt her nation’s policies. Her doubts intensify the closer she becomes to Ket Du’Kai, another Not-British officer who hails from another nation (a la India) the army is occupying; he joined the military to make the sort of connections he will need when he returns home and attemmpts to free his country through legal means. The Not-Africans are not as content to wait for their freedom.
So, are you also annoyed by the Not-Brit, Not-African, Not-Indian allusions? Because I am. The similarities are so bald that I really, really wish Shinn had just scrapped the sci-fi/fantasy/speculative angle and done a proper historical novel. Instead one has to wade through a morass of made up names and cultures, only to realize they’re copies of the real world. Basing it in a ‘fantasy’ realm does give Shinn creative freedom in terms of plot, and the plot is a decent story. I spent a good part of the novel thinking to myself, “THIS is going to happen. …But, no, that’s obvious, right? She wouldn’t do that.” And I was so convinced, by the book, that it wasn’t going to happen… that I was carried away when it did.
And, har, Averie is named Averie as in aviary, just like the bird goddess she connects with.
I’m sure there will be people out there who love this book. Some young girls are going to pick this up and fall in love with Ket Du’Kai. They will swoon with Averie as she learns about the merits of this amazing, exotic nation. And they will hate me for writing this review. I wish I had read this when I was their age, in their stage of life. I think I would have loved it then, too, and been more forgiving of its flaws. The flaws probably would have irked me, but not as much.
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