ur novel opens in blood, smoke and confusion, as the merchant ship Mukudori attempts to repel a boarding by space pirates. Secreted away from the fighting by his parents is 8-year-old Joslyn Aaron Musey, our frightened protagonist. But Jos eventually overcomes his terror to emerge during the battle, only to be taken captive by the raiders (but not before gamely killing one). Aboard the pirate ship Genghis Khan, the spirited and attractive Jos catches the eye of the captain, Falcone, notorious throughout the spaceways for his merciless predations. Fixing on Jos as his protege and catamite, Falcone tutors the boy for one horrid year, before Jos manages to escape during a visit to an orbiting station. But his freedom is shortlived.
Humanity is currently in the middle of a long war with a race of aliens called the strits. The strits rely on human allies referred to as symps, who have embraced strit culture, and it is two of these symps who will determine the next phase of Jos' life. Until he is 14, he will exist under the tutelage of Nikolas-dan and Ash-dan, brothers who play a large part in the strit war effort. Becoming skilled in martial arts and many other talents, such as "burndiving" or computer hacking, Jos is turned into a tool for the strit cause. Finally he is given his assignment: infiltrate one of mankind's biggest warships, the Macedon, and learn all he can about its rogue captain, Azarcon. But Jos does not reckon on confronting Evan, a fellow survivor of the Mukudori, who might very well derail his espionage.
In the fulfillment of his mission, which will usurp another three years of his life until its explosive climax involving a three-way face-off among Nikolas-dan, Falcone and Azarcon, Jos matures further, layering on yet another personality atop the two others so far. And when push comes to shove, all three manifestations of his character vie for dominance.
Space opera in a vigorous new voice
This novel represents the latest winner in an ongoing contest conducted by Warner Aspect for the best first novel from a new voice in the field. As such, it might seem to exert special pleading for velvet-glove treatment. But Lowachee and her book need no such coddling. Warchild is an accomplished, vigorous, exciting debut which can stand shoulder to shoulder with many a book that might have entered the field by possibly tougher standards. Lowachee's prose is sturdy and crisp, with a smattering of innovative neologisms. Her plotting shows ingenuity and good dramatic staging. Her characterizations are rich and uncliched. And her speculative components, while not groundbreaking, are all well-handled.
Given all these pluses, the book exhibits a few small handicaps that in the end do not detract significantly from its pleasures.
Perhaps the most significant impediment from perfection, to my mind, is the book's repetitive tripartite structure. Jos has, in effect, three separate lives (discounting his first eight years). He's Falcone's plaything, then Nikolas-dan's student, then a soldier aboard the Macedon. Each time he embarks on a new life, he goes back to the beginning of the gameboard, experiencing the same uncertainties and hazards of any newbie, with a fresh cast of supporting players. Once is entertaining, twice is tolerable, but three times is definite overkill. True, his sequential experiences determine the growth of his personality and drive him onward, but it's not a straightforward arc. I'm thinking of Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy [1957], a book which certainly must have served as a model for Lowachee, and the more propulsive, stepwise development of its foundling. But Lowachee does attempt to gather up all the strands of Jos' past in the final section, and manages to integrate Jos' split personality to some extent.
On a lesser note, I'd mention that the strits never emerge into full-fledged otherness, and that perhaps a few battle scenes might have been cut from the manuscript without any great loss. But the overall thrust and focus of this novel is how a bright and plucky 8-year-old survives being manipulated by larger forces in a world at war, and manages to turn into a not-so-damaged young adult. Jos is onstage 100 percent of the time, and the fact that by the end of the book you are not tired of him, but rather would like to know more of his subsequent life is testament to Lowachee's burgeoning skills.
