Salvage

May 19, 2014
Duncan makes an excellent debut with a novel that's part feminist polemic and part coming-of-age adventure. In a space-faring future, supply ship "crewes" have developed into patriarchal tribes, with strict gender roles and a mythology to justify them: "Women of the air, stay aloft," the girls of the vessel Parastrata are warned. Ava is considered to be deviant for several reasons: she is of suspect Earthly descent, and she has a knack for both math and mechanical engineering, disciplines that are forbidden to women on her ship. After further transgressing Parastrata's laws through a romantic encounter, she is cast out into the Void. With a fierce desire to survive and with the help of a female spaceship captain named Perpétue, Ava escapes space for the deadly gravity of Earth, where she eventually discovers emotional, sexual, and intellectual liberation. Duncan's thoroughly realized setting and subtle control of Ava's voice result in a powerfully immersive story that uses its far-future SF premise to thoughtfully explore gender politics. Ages 13âup. Agent: Kate Testerman, KT Literary.

March 1, 2014
Haunting, colorful environments distinguish this debut novel about a girl fighting for survival in the far future. Ava lives on the Parastrata. She knows nothing beyond her polygamous, fundamentalist religion, whose followers began living in spaceships some 1,000 years ago and which holds women as property since they harbor an interest in Earth "like a soft, rotten spot in [their] souls." Informed that she's marrying a man on another ship, Ava's thrilled to see Luck, a boy she met years ago, in the greeting party. They know they should wait until after their wedding, but they sneak into a desalination pool and succumb to sex the night before--and get caught. To their shock (though not readers'), Ava was actually promised to Luck's father. The Parastrata women wash Ava and lock her in a chilled room to await her punishment: Being pushed out into open space, which is, of course, fatal. A difficult, terrifying escape and a relative's sacrifice provide another chance, but where can she go? From the strained peculiarity of the Parastrata to a sunbaked community afloat on the Pacific Ocean to the bustle of Mumbai, Duncan's settings and diction are vivid. As brown-skinned people become Ava's chosen family, she learns that her own medium-dark skin--mocked aboard the Parastrata--isn't a religious stain, marking this a welcome browning of the science-fiction universe. Ava's decisions sometimes serve plot more than characterization, but readers caught up in the story will forgive this. Memorable. (Science fiction. 14-17)

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February 1, 2014

Gr 9 Up-Seventeen-year-old Ava was born and raised aboard a spaceship, the Parastrata, but when she makes an understandable, yet regrettable, mistake, she is cast out by her patriarchal family to the unfamiliar and unforgiving Earth below. With just her aptitude for "Fixes" and her spirit for survival, the teen must navigate through the Gyre, a floating wasteland of trash in the Pacific, to ultimately end up in Mumbai, where she searches for her modrie, her blood-aunt. Duncan delivers a finely paced dystopian novel that relentlessly charges through the finer plot points, which may leave readers confused as to how Earth became a technologically advanced wasteland. Another small hiccup is the strange dialogue among the Parastrata's inhabitants, including Ava, without explanation, which may be off-putting to slow and reluctant readers. However, the strength of Ava's character carries readers through the lengthy novel. Fans of Beth Revis's Across the Universe (Penguin, 2011) and Ally Condie's Matched (Dutton, 2010) will appreciate Duncan's first dive into the genre.-Amanda C. Buschmann, Atascocita Middle School, Humble, TX

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2014
Grades 9-12 In a future where merchant spaceships service other planets and an overpopulated and polluted Earth, Ava, the child of crew parents, lives on the spaceship Parastrata. She is selected to marry an AEther crew member to seal a treaty between the ship crews, but what she thinks of as a love match is in truth the beginning of a horror that sees her cast out of her home, winding up in a garbage-created Pacific Ocean continent, the Gyre. It's the beginning of a hardscrabble life on the run. The references to the Pacific dead zone, overpopulation, and societies both advanced and retro, and the special attention paid to women's rights ensure the book's title alludes to far more than a ship's cargo. Ava is rescued time and again and in turn rescues another. With complex characters, dystopian settings that smack of a neglected future brought about by global warming and far-reaching political decisions and indecision, and a galloping good adventure story, this is part science fiction, part horror story, and a less than subtle, but oh-so-effective object lesson for today's YA readers about their possible futures.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)