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Summary
Summary
A sensational YA science fiction debut. Jarra is stuck on Earth while the rest of humanity portals around the universe. But can she prove to the norms that she's more than just an Earth Girl?
2788. Only the handicapped live on Earth. While everyone else portals between worlds, 18-year-old Jarra is among the one in a thousand people born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Sent to Earth at birth to save her life, she has been abandoned by her parents. She can't travel to other worlds, but she can watch their vids, and she knows all the jokes they make. She's an 'ape', a 'throwback', but this is one ape girl who won't give in.
Jarra invents a fake background for herself - as a normal child of Military parents - and joins a class of norms that is on Earth to excavate the ruins of the old cities. When an ancient skyscraper collapses, burying another research team, Jarra's role in their rescue puts her in the spotlight. No hiding at back of class now. To make life more complicated, she finds herself falling in love with one of her classmates - a norm from another planet. Somehow, she has to keep the deception going.
A freak solar storm strikes the atmosphere, and the class is ordered to portal off-world for safety - no problem for a real child of military parents, but fatal for Jarra. The storm is so bad that the crews of the orbiting solar arrays have to escape to planet below: the first landing from space in 600 years. And one is on collision course with their shelter.
Author Notes
Janet Edwards lives in the Midlands. As a child, she read everything she could get her hands on, which included the works of many of the great names of Science Fiction. She read Maths at Oxford, and went on to suffer years of writing unbearably complicated technical documents. When the company she worked for entered the stormy waters of take over land, she decided it was time to jump ship and try writing something that was fun for a change. She has a husband, a son, a lot of books, and an aversion to housework.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7-9-Just because Jarra is Handicapped doesn't mean she's a nardle-brain, and certainly not that ultimate insult: an "ape." Almost 700 years in the future, Earth has been largely abandoned, a huge data crash lost most of written history, and portals allow instant transportation across vast distances. Since the Exodus, most people live on other planets. Jarra and other Handicapped cannot use the portals, and for some reason (never made clear), they are considered less intelligent by the Norms, who portal here and there on a daily basis. Jarra decides to show them that she is just as good as they are and applies to an off-world college conducting an archaeology dig on the abandoned buildings of New York. Reinventing herself as Jarra Military Kid, JMK watches vids and takes combat lessons and thinks about how the Norm jaws will drop when she eventually reveals that she is Handicapped. Since she grew up on Earth and has been to the New York digs many times, her skills quickly allow her to shine, particularly when solar flares close the portal, stranding dig teams on Earth. Jarra is an independent heroine, though she giggles an awful lot. The future that Edwards constructs is creative and the dig descriptions are well thought out. The future society, with Twoing contracts before marriage and the varying sector Moral Codes, keeps things lively on the romantic level. The "person against nature" conflict with unstable dig conditions and solar flares makes a refreshing change from "person against paranormal" or "person against government" conflicts currently popular in many YA books.-Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
Jarra has the last remaining human disability: her immune system shuts down if she leaves Earth. Passing as "norm" in her first year of university, she builds relationships with classmates who call her kind "apes." The exploration of stigma and prejudice is simplistic, but Jarra's resourcefulness and the action-heavy scenes of excavating Earth's ruined cities are smartly written and invigorating. (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A disabled teen archaeologist works in fascinating, hazardous conditions on a far-future Earth. It's 2789. Humanity lives on numerous planets. Transportation, including between star systems, merely requires stepping into a portal--even schoolchildren do a "mass off-world kiddie commute" daily. But off-world atmospheres are fatal for the rare babies born Handicapped, who are portalled to Earth within minutes and must stay forever. Parents tend to disappear, unwilling to live on Earth just to raise a "throwback." Earth provides those on its Handicapped wards full care, education and career choice, but Jarra's bitter that "exos" (non-Handicapped norms) consider her an "ape," "the garbage of the universe." Enrolling in a Pre-history course that's taught on Earth but administered by an off-world university, Jarra plans to quench her thirst for history while teaching some exos a lesson. Terrific nitty-gritty details limn her team's excavations of a high-risk dig site that was once Manhattan. Although readers won't see disabilities they recognize, Edwards successfully shows that being physically unable to partake in society's core structure equals disability. Jarra slides temporarily--implausibly--from matter-of-fact first-person narrator to a character in denial of her reality, but more important are perilous rescues, Jarra's skills, a solar superstorm that closes portals and endangers hundreds of Military, and some humorous romance with sparkling chemistry. Action, rich archaeological detail and respectfully levelheaded disability portrayal, refreshingly free from symbolism and magical cures, make this stand out. (Science fiction. 11-16)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Tired of bitter, angst-ridden heroines and their associated dark dystopias? Look no further than Edwards' refreshing debut, set in the darn-near-utopian universe of 2788 and starring a confident, motormouthed, giggly 18-year-old named Jarra. She's Handicapped (an ape if you're rude), the one-in-a-thousand born with a condition that doesn't allow her to portal outside of Earth. And who wants to hang around boring old Earth? Nobody, unless you're studying prehistory. So Jarra conspires to join a first-year college archaeology course of off-world teens to prove that an ape can sift through the ruins of New York City just as well, or better, than any privileged Betan or Deltan or Gamman. Make no mistake, this is hard sf (though not painfully hard) that largely forgoes heart-pounding drama in favor of fascinating technicalities and flawless world logic. Yes, there is a romance, but it's far from the swooning sort: Jarra comes to respect the otherworld norms she has set out to shock and soon is considering boy and girling with Fian, or even entering with him into a Twoing contract. If these patient, intelligent particulars are making your eyes glaze over, that's because they're all too rarely found on Planet YA. As Jarra would (loudly) say, this book is totally zan!--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2010 Booklist