Sometimes trashy sci-fi can be the best kind of fun. Helm is a fun, cool, fast-paced adventure story. Here's the book's description (snagged from the back cover): "After global devastation, the last remnants of Earth sent a handful of colonists of a distant terraformed world to give humanity one last, desperate chance. Unable to provide the technology required for an advanced civilization, the founders instilled in the colonists a strict code of conduct and gave them a few precious imprinting devices: glass helmets that contain all of Earth's scientific knowledge.Once in a generation, the heir to the province of Laal begins the arduous training required to survive the imprinting of the Glass Helm and acquire the knowledge of the lost Earth. But Leland de Laal, the youngest son of one of Agatsu's greatest leaders, has climbed the forbidden rock spire where the Helm is kept and donned it, unaware that its knowledge has a terrible price. To an unprepared mind, it brings madness, agony, and even death."One of the coolest consequences of Leland's premature imprinting is that he's picked up knowledge of aikido. With further training he hones his martial arts skill and the fighting in the story is filled with slick descriptions of it. This story is filled with chases, battles, double-crossing, betrayal, dark dealings, and many fights with sword, staff, and arrow. Although set in the far-future, Agatsu's society is medieval. Makes for a very fun tale. ( )

This book was a gift from a friend and I liked it a lot. It is technically science fiction - space travel, colonizing another planet, some advanced technology - but after the prologue, about the first 10 pages, it reads more like a fantasy. I thought the quirk of the Helm was done pretty well, and I liked that several seemingly-unimportant events that happened at various points in the story had much farther reaching, and occasionally much more dramatic, consequences than were obvious at the time. ( )

I would love to read another book set in this world! ( )

What fascinates me about this book is the concept of technological decay. The inhabitants of this world are descendants of space colonists, but have lost most of their technology. What always gets me about this is that in books like these, there's always hidden remnants of technology that are waiting to be found.

I'm still "early" on my thinking around this, but it seems like a lot of the interesting parts of the book is the discovery of hidden things. I.e., the "underworld". It seems like everywhere you look (and not just in fantasy or sci-fi), there's always an "underworld." The very definition of the werewolf/vampire genre is a specific type of underworld. In fantasy books often the characters are descending into a literal "abyss." In other genres you'll see "gang underworlds" or "crime underworlds" or even "Fast and the Furious underground neon street racing" underworld.

Again, this is just "early thoughts" on the subject.

I’d call this a YA novel, though it does have enough sex in it to make you notice (I hear that’s a thing with YA books generally these days, as it is with sf). The invention of the imprinter, which can convey information instantly or convert people into true believers in anything, triggers a religious war that destroys Earth, leaving only a few survivors in search of a new home for humanity. Reluctantly, the folks in charge send imprinters with the spaceship they send out, trying to preserve knowledge and promote ethics that will enable the small colony to survive. Hundreds of years later, things haven’t gone entirely as planned, with only one imprinter left and its function largely not understood: It is the Helm. A teenage boy, the son of the enlightened ruler of his province, recklessly tries it on and gets a dose of martial arts (and other) knowledge from a long-ago source. His father wanted to use the Helm, which charges slowly, for an older son, but he works with what he’s got, training young Leland to use his new memories. Leland is soon swept up in various battles, political and sword-clashing, and struggles to use his powers for good. His Mary-Suelike super-competence was a little too much for me even with the imprinting, but that’s a pretty standard YA trope. Another weakness was that Gould pulled a lot of punches, with coincidences coming to save people who probably should have died. Nonetheless, the setting was provocative, especially the hints of different philosophical stances towards the use of the imprinter. I’d definitely read the story of how the imprinter destroyed the world. ( )