Genre: Sci-Fi
LGBTQ+ Category: Transgender, Poly, Non-Binary, Pansexual, Lesbian
Reviewer: KA
Universal Buy Link
About The Book
The year is 2293 and the Truth no longer exists. In the future there are many truths, giving rise to many worlds, but each must be kept separate.
Born to protect these truths, Axton Bryce patrols the New Worlds Star System—to observe, participate, and gather information. But as she learns the ways of each world, she must also hunt for those who defy their world’s truth: the Outliers.
While stationed on a nearby planet, Axton meets the charming Ambassador Bray Wilde. As the two become close, Axton reveals a painful secret—the loss of her first love, exiled as an Outlier.
Longing to see beyond their own world, the ambassador proposes a rescue mission—one that will bring both friends and foes, and ultimately a fight for freedom. But first, Axton must make a choice: between a life-long allegiance… and the chance to claim a truth of her own.
Warnings: indoctrination, brainwashing, threatening with a weapon (guns & a bomb)
The Review
At first, Axton performs like any other average protagonist in a dystopian novel, working hard, not questioning her society or its rules. Time and again, she performs her duty efficiently and without question, even handing over her first lover to be arrested for being an Outlier. But a chance encounter with an intriguing soul, full of light and love, while on duty on a pleasure planet leads Axton to question her life, and shreds her belief system and the cocoon of normalcy she’s spent a lifetime perfecting around her.
Suddenly, Axton is casting off her assumptions about the dystopian society she works for, and the bulk of the novel is spent on a time-travel mission, as Axton is single-mindedly bent on spending every second of her mission trying to stop the birth of the New Worlds Star System. She curses as the found family she’s built around her on the mission slowly “loses focus” on the task, as they build new meaningful connections to the world of the past and grow apart from her.
Her frustration with those around her is echoed by the reader’s frustration for her stubborn single-mindedness. Finally, she realizes that a time machine can’t fix her own problems, and belonging to a dystopian society doesn’t absolve her of her own actions on behalf of the oppressive system she’d spent a lifetime serving. It is at this moment that Axton begins to deconstruct from the trauma of her oppressive upbringing, and just at the moment when you, the reader, are shouting at her for her stubbornness, Axton is reborn with new insight into her actions and a change of heart.
I don’t usually enjoy dystopian fiction, but holy mackerel, this book was intense! The author did a superb job at exploring how difficult and arduous a process it is for a member of a dystopian society to deprogram themselves from their toxic upbringing and begin to heal. I greatly enjoyed reading it, and can’t wait to see how Axton grows in the next book.
5 stars.
The Reviewer
KA Masters [she/her] is an ace author who writes queer fairy tales and historical fantasy. Although she believes that every good story needs elves and / or explosions in them, her most recent publication, “Sappho in Violet and Gray,” sadly does not include either. You can read more about her on her Goodreads Author Profile K_A_Masters.