Doug Lewars's Blog - Posts Tagged "sjw"

A Daughter of No Nation by A.M. Dellamonica

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

This was the winner of an Aurora award for 2016. I'm not sure why. I did make it through the entire book but it was a struggle and I thought about giving up numerous times. Fortunately near the end of the book the author got serious about her story and stopped trying to annoy the reader by focusing on her heroine's lack of maturity.

Most people seem to like it and most comment on the impressive amount of world-building that was done. I have to concede that the world-building was first rate and by far the best part of the novel. Unfortunately it was overshadowed by the unpleasantness of the heroine. “As Beck walked away she gave Sophie a scowl that was clear enough: Stop being a histrionic princess!” If only the author had taken her own advice. But alas he did not and we are left with Sophie's angst throughout the story.

“The image of those altered goat-people in the marsh had seized her imagination again, and she was flailing in a sea of guilt.” The goat-people are slaves who have been altered by magic to combat a particularly invasive plant species. Sophie has never seen them before. She was in no way responsible for the plight; nevertheless, she immediately reacted to their situation from a position of guilt. This is the kind of individual she is and we're left to live with that for much of the novel.

She is twenty-five years old. We're told she's defended her thesis so she's either got a Master's Degree or a Doctorate. She has turned down a job interview for the Scripps Institute. The Scripps Institute is a real facility. It focuses on research and education in the biomedical field. Sophie has majored in biology but we're told she's taken courses in both physics and chemistry as well.

In short, Sophie has a solid STEM background yet she acts like someone who has graduated from a humanities program. I regard that as the chief problem with this book. She has to be intelligent in order to have acquired her academic credentials and yet she acts like an SJW. She’s warned that anything she might do to improve her birth mother’s lot is probably going to backfire. She’s new to the world in which she finds herself. She’s learning as she goes but she recognizes that she has a long way to go. So what does she do? She double’s down in her plan to effect a rescue. In fact she displays an abysmal lack of rationality at every turn.

I'm not entirely sure who the audience for this novel might be. Techies will like the world-building but find the heroine's histrionics painful in the extreme. Females who like romance novels will find the science boring. Perhaps those who are wedded to the social justice movement might like it but they might find that the story intrudes too much on the proselytizing. This is the second volume of a trilogy and I don't intend to read volumes one or three.



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