Exo

[psocoptera]

Exo, Fonda Lee, was nominated for this year's Norton (Nebula YA) but lost to Art of Starving. This was great - I was just talking in my Want review about the comparative rarity of really good YA science fiction and boy this is one. Teen soldier in a world under alien occupation, dealing with anti-alien terrorists. I feel in general like the alien-colonizers premise is really rich in drama and potential, whether that's Tripods or Oankali or the Boov - I mean, that's a heck of a trio of classics right there. (Or what's that book or possibly novella where the aliens can read minds or sense hostility or something, but a young man (possibly with an Arabic or Indian name) manages to assassinate one of them in a sort of Zen state of peacefulness? I've been trying to come up with this but I can't find the right search terms. Not that it was on the level of Xenogenesis or Smekday, it just bugs me when I can't come up with things.) Anyways, the particular agenda and policies of the aliens, the nature of the inevitable resistance, it all makes for some great conflict however the author spins it, and Exo is sometimes difficult and often gripping and I can't wait to read the sequel, Cross Fire, out recently or soonish I think.

(Sort of funny to think that in Exo my sympathy is totally with the collaborationists and yet here in real life I like to think of myself as part of the resistance. I mean, an ineffectual part. I suppose really under an alien occupation I'd be making the same pointless phone calls to my alien senators and signing the same unread petitions and all that. Gah.)