Warchild

Rating:
Summary: Not Your Typical SF
Review: I have to admit, the cover of Warchild intrigued me, but the back blurb had me worried. Would it be just another space age drama of aliens versus humans? Absolutely not.

Lowachee's characters are cleverly crafted, and not a one falls flat. Each has the multilayered personalities found in real people. You love and hate them at different moments, urge them in one direction, and watch them turn in another. And this war between aliens and humans...not as simple as first I thought. Lowachee does a wonderful job of making you realize these conflicts cannot fall on the shoulders of one person. There are heroes and villains on both sides, and Lowachee shows us them all.

Warchild remains one of my favorite novels, superior to Burndive and just about any other SF novel I've read in many years. It restores faith in a genre ripe with old clichés, and deliver characters you will truly grow to love.

Rating:
Summary: highly recommended
Review: I have to say that I have been hard pressed to find many books that equal Warchild by Karin Lowachee. It is extremely well written with characters that you feel you can interact with. The plot is very believable, and you feel like your a part of what is happening. Many people don't like the first person point of view, and tend to avoid it, but Karin Lowachee does such a good job at it that you barely realize the point of view, you are just interested in what will happen next and how the characters are changing and growing.
I cannot do justice to this book through a review, I can only try to say how much I love it.
Read it, and I guarantee you won't be able to put it down after the first ten pages. I know I couldn't, I had to read it twice within a week because I was so attached.

Rating:
Summary: highly recommended
Review: I picked up this book off the shelf in dire need of reading something and someone new.

I've been reading so often it's hurting my pocket book.

This book is a bit like Enders Game. There will be comparisons at times. It's completely different though and has it's own soul.

I loved this book. I've read the last fifty pages over six times now, which I have never done, and I just bought the book two weeks ago.

The first book is much better than the second, though the second is a good read too.

I could go into quotes and all that stuff, but, I don't like doing that. All I can say is that this is a very good read, and from what I read, most others too.

I will read the third book but I hope she doesn't diverge from the main characters yet again, yet if she does, it should still be a good read.

I get stuck to characters and just want to read, so much so I went out of my way to find the second book "Burndive" and read it in two days. I found some of the reviews on the Amazon site helpful with regards to this book, one in particular which left me to expect less while still receiving a great read.

I look forward to the future of this author.

D

Rating:
Summary: A character that invokes empathy; a plot that keeps interest
Review: I read 'Burndive' by this author earlier, and wanted to nab this earlier title. It was just as good as 'Burndive,' in that the characters were rich, the galaxy very strongly detailed, and the conflicts both interesting and plausible.

The storyline is one of abused trusts - when a young boy named Jos survives the slaughter of most of his spaceship, he is taken by a pirate, and basically raped and abused for a year of his life, with the pirate's attempt to turn Jos into the perfect companion and tool. Jos manages to escape, only to be taken in by the enemies of mankind, aliens (and those few traitorous humans who empathise with them). There, Jos is enfolded into the arms of the assassin-leader of the sympathizers, and learns to feel good in a culture that seems gentle and caring and compassionate by comparison. And when he, too, is trained to defend this way of life, he is asked by the man he trusts the most to go undercover among the human soldiers and act as a spy.

Jos's feelings and confusion over his loyalties are very evocative - he finds people to love on all sides of the three-way-war, and his intense mental control, in direct contrast to his inability to handle his own reflection (and rarely being able to tolerate even a caring touch) make him a remarkably well written character that evokes reader empathy. I, for one, can't wait for the next Lowachee.

'Nathan

Rating:
Summary: War and Lost Innocence among the Stars!
Review: I was impressed with this novel! Lowachee's debut novel was one of the most powerful novel of interstellar warfare I've ever read! She tells the tragic and heroic story of a young boy comes of age during terrible interstellar war and the divided loyalities he has in this conflict. Young Joslyn Musey sees his life torn from him as the merchant ship he calls home is attacked by space pirates and he is taken prisoner. Jos's capitivity is under the sadistic pirate called Falcone. Jos escapes only to be captured by earth's enemies the alien race called the Strits and their human allies. He is befriended by Human turncoat general called Warboy and he is taught to become a spy for the strits in their war against EarthHub.He is sent to
space battleship, Macedon under the command of charismatic captain Azarcon.Lowarchee's novel is gripping tale of one young man who is torn between the loyalities of his shipmates on the battleship and his alien benefactors. Lowarchee's future is the most impressive I've seen since Cherryh's Union-Alliance novels and the atmosphere of on the ship is so realistic you could almost taste it! The battle scenes were brutally realistic in tone.Characters in Warchild were unforgettable such as our hero Jos who immediately gets our sympathy as he tries to remain loyal
to crew of the Macedon and strits. Falcone-the ruthless pirate who uses manipulation and brutality. Dorrs-Jos's commanding officer who has a taste for battle and bloodshed but who will stand by his men if the need arises. Niko-human sympathize general who befriends Jos and who teaches him to become a spy.Lowarchee's chilling vision of warfare in space where children are used as soldiers and spies has eeries resemblance to the conflicts we have in our time. I look forward to the other next novel!

Rating:
Summary: Richie's Picks: WARCHILD
Review: I'm a novice when it comes to science fiction. I know plenty of students who walk around with those fat paperbacks, and when I used to work at the bookstore I certainly sold plenty of them--both in hard and softcover. Therefore, I sort of know what science fiction looks like, but I couldn't even give you a definition of the genre.

Furthermore, I'm not really keen on books (or movies for that matter) with lots of violent battle scenes.

So, why then did I find WARCHILD--a work of science fiction (actually published for adults) which was well-stocked with violent battle scenes--impossible to put down? And why do I think it's a great book for young adults?

I was captivated by the vividly drawn young main character Joslyn Aaron Musey as well as the four complex adults who are his most influential teachers: the pirate, Falcone; the alien sympathizer, Nikolas-dan (a.k.a. Warchild); the deep space ship captain, Cairo Azarcon; and Corporal Erret Dorr. I guess it all comes down to the fact that no matter how many aliens and high tech weapons you jam into a well-written, politically savvy, coming of age story, it's still a well-written, politically savvy, coming of age story. Or, perhaps, I'm much more of a science fiction fan than I ever knew I was. The brilliance of WARCHILD has certainly opened me up to that possibility.

The book has an unusual and powerful opening: Part I is told in the second person as the author plunks us down into the body of eight-year-old Jos just as Falcone's pirate ship, the Genghis Khan, attacks and destroys Jos' home--the merchant ship on which Jos' parents are stationed. Taken by Falcone, Jos spends a year in virtual isolation as the pirate trains, teaches, and intimidates the young boy. Falcone is then audacious enough to dock at the EarthHub station, Chaos, where several government spacecarriers are also docked, in order to treat the boy to a birthday celebration. As fate would have it, an alien ship chooses the occasion to attack. In the initial commotion Jos jams his dessert fork into Falcone's hand and runs for the nearest exit. Falcone, who has promised to shoot Jos if he attempts any such thing, tries to carry through on his threat in the midst of the battle going on:

"Way down the dockring, almost out of sight from the curve of the walls, a small explosion went off at one of the locks. You hauled yourself up, moving slow in the rush. Your head pounded and smoke stung your eyes. You held your arm and tried to veer toward one of the carrier ramps.
"Then new faces poured out of that blown lock.
"They weren't human. They were tattooed, with skin in colors you'd never seen before on a face except as a mask. They shot at the soljets, sharp bright pulses. The soljets stopped boarding, knelt behind cargo bins, loaders, and ramps, shooting back in stiff streamers of bright red. It was a noisy station festival, full of light and color, except people were dying. Merchants and Chaos citizens caught in the cross fire fell.
"You froze. You had never before seen an alien. They came closer around the dockring, moving with the precision of skill and focused aim. They wore long outer robes that fluttered behind them, as if they were flying. None of the soljets paid attention to you now. "Someone grabbed you over the face. You recognized the smell of the hand.
"You bit. He released you and you ran straight into the platoon of soljets ahead of you.
" 'Drop the gun!' one of the jets yelled.
"Falcone might've been chasing you. You didn't look. You ran as fast as you could. People screamed at you to stop and get out of the way. An alien face looked at you from across the decreasing distance of jet-occupied dock. The eyes were completely black.
"A fist slammed into your back and threw you to the deck. The last word you heard wasn't one you understood.

"That was all I remembered about Falcone. It was enough."

The choices and challenges Jos faces through the following years periodically threaten to rip him in half. The politics of the prolonged interstellar war are reminiscent of many of today's international conflicts--fighting over resources with accompanying deceit and doubletalk on both sides. Falcone, who had once been a spacecarrier captain, but had acted so autonomously in deep space as to be discredited and jailed before political allies broke him out, makes me think of the great British explorers such as Drake who were so far from the homeland that they acted on their own and were considered pirates by most of the world.

Smart and with a lot of heart, WARCHILD is great science fiction for young adults--whatever science fiction is. I know Jos is a kid who is out there, just waiting to be born two hundred years from now.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended!
Review: If you enjoy the novels of C.J. Cherryh, this book is for you. While nobody can do the intricacies of interstellar politics quite as well as Cherryh does, Lowachee's protagonist, Jos Musey, comes across as more realistic and, despite his reticence, oddly more likeable than Cherryh's creations.

I read this book through in one weekend, neglecting my family and my work, and ended up reading it under a streetlight at ten o'clock at night, just because I couldn't wait to get home before getting through those last few pages.

This is Lowachee's debut novel and I, for one, hope it's the first of many.

Rating:
Summary: Great Read!
Review: If you like "Ender's Game", "Midshipman's Hope" and military scienfice fiction in general then you will want to get the book ASAP. The other reviewers have already said most of what I would have said. In all I highly reccommend the novel. The only negative for me (and what kept it from a 5 star book) was that I really wanted to see Jos use all that training he got. It may seem childish, but I wanted to see Jos kick some butt and become a leader. I felt a little cheated because that never really happened. There is certainly room for a second book.

Rating:
Summary: One of the most compelling genre debuts in quite some time
Review: Karin Lowachee has written a marvelous debut novel. One of the most engaging and exciting debuts since _Ender's Game_, way back in the mid-80s.

In _Warchild_, Lowachee has written a startingly good mil-SF yarn. I'll forgo any plot summary here. I'm sure it's available elsewhere on this page. Suffice it to say that Lowachee's novel is not only one of the best SF debuts in 2002, but it's one of the best SF novels of the year.

The plot is exciting. Lowachee's aliens are fascinatingly different. The three-way conflict between space pirates, aliens, and Earth Fleet is convincing and compelling. Lowachee writes most of the novel in first-person, though the opening section is, daringly, written from a second-person perspective. This is a compulsively readable book. I was hard pressed to put it down.

By the end of the novel, I was ready for more. Here's hoping there's a sequel!

Rating:
Summary: Already reading it a second time,can't wait for a third
Review: Karin's done a spectacular job here of writing a SF war novel that isn't so much about the war going on between humans and strits as it is about the toll war takes on its combatants.

In Warchild those combantants -- military, civilian, alien and sympathizer -- are children. Youths whose idealism is fuel for death and destruction. She tells the story of Jos Musey, a newly orphaned 8-year-old, and follows him into captivity aboard a pirate ship, a brief respite on an alien planet, and back again amidst humanity. Throughout the book resonates with a tone that makes you want to sob with sympathy for Jos. The abuses he suffered with the pirates aren't shown in gory detail. Jos speaks in second person, distancing himself from them in the novel's first section. This didn't happen to him, it happened to "you" instead.

I bought the book as soon as it came out and I'm already looking forward to reading it again.