Burndive

I loved Warchild, the previous book in this series, and I'd heard that Burndive focuses on a different, less likeable character. But Karin Lowachee does not disappoint! Burndive is an outstanding follow-up, focusing on Ryan, the son of Captain Cairo Azarcon whom we met in the previous book. Ryan is a difficult character to like but Lowachee writes him with a lot of sympathy and he grew on me as the story progressed. It was also interesting to see old characters from Warchild, particularly Jos, through Ryan's eyes, particularly Jos, who was the main character of that book. There's some hilarious banter between the characters as well.

While Burndive lacks a lot of the action of Warchild, it was still an engrossing read. I was drawn in by show more the emotional journey that Ryan takes in navigating and ultimately mending his relationship with his father. The author is extremely skilled at writing emotionally true stories, and her careful, controlled prose is dripping with raw emotions. The characters face many difficult situations, and Lowachee never makes it easy for them, but it's through this that her characters truly shine.

An outstanding book overall, and highly recommended! show less

Burndive is a story of a traumatized boy growing up, and a hope that a long war is coming to an end. I read this without reading Warchild first, so I might be missing some context, but it seemed to make sense. There's a lot going on in this book, and it's fun and fast moving, but has some major structural flaws which I'm going to gripe about.

The first is the protagonist, Ryan Azarcon, child of privilege, child of a broken home, and traumatized survivor of bombings and assassination attacks. Ryan starts out in a bad place: depressed, angry, using drugs and trying to destroy everything around him. Generally, we know that the story is going to be about Ryan growing up and finding himself. that's what stories about 19 year old boys are show more about. And towards the end, there's some great stuff about old wounds healing and breaking preconceptions, but I'm not sure Ryan earns it. He's too smart and perceptive to be an unreliable narrator, and too mean for me to like.

Second is the FTL and the war. I'm a bit of a nut about the relationship between transit and governance, but I'm not sure that I buy that the ships, stations, and drives implied in the setting would give the plentiful pirates the setting entails. Basically, space is big, pirates need to intercept and board their targets, and FTL ships should just be able to leap away. It probably makes sense somewhere, and most people won't care, but I wasn't able to link up the politics, economics, and technology of the setting in my head.

Third is the Send, the omnipresent news network that invades Ryan's life again and again. His mother is a PR officer, and he has a tempestuous relationship with the news and it's combination of warmongering and celebrity gossip. Since this novel came out in 2003, I think this is a commentary about cable news and the War on Terror, but it could be a lot more pointed, or a lot darker. The divide between the Earth centered Send community, and the personal ties that define the ship-bound pirate culture could have been brought forward more.

There is some other stuff which readers may like or dislike according to their whims. Minor minus was the neologisms. For example, computer hacking is called 'Burndiving' for no apparent reason. Interestingly, this book is also super bi. Ryan has seems to prefer females, but has no problem hitting on men and being hit on in return. Again, I can't tell if it's deliberate or yaoi, but it's a neat point.

So if I griped so much, why four stars? Well, I had a lot of fun reading it, and if the pieces didn't quite come together the way I wanted them to, the individual sentences were really good, enough so to convince me to check out the first book. show less

Warchild, Burndive, Cagebird

Interesting series. I got these because I'd seen them highly reviewed somewhere; of course, now I don't remember where.
In many ways, they're basic military SF - I'd recommend them, with some reservations, to fans of Lois McMaster Bujold, maybe CJ Cherryh.
Each one has a different young man as the protagonist, but they follow one timeline, and link to each other, with many shared characters.All of them are very homosensual. All the young men are super-cute, and there is much tousling of hair. (Is the author's hair an erogenous zone? It's really non-stop.) At times I was like, "Um, am I reading yaoi here?" At other times... well, it gets disturbing. That's where my reservations arise. I wouldn't normally 'warn' show more any reader off a book for content, but if you are sensitive about child abuse, I would not recommend the second two in this series, and especially not the third, due to explicit scenes of rape and abuse. It doesn't just discuss it, but while condemning the perpetrators, it's still oddly mixed with the eroticism.
The first one is the best of the bunch. Not necessarily BECAUSE, but it is much more restrained and understated. You know bad things happened to the protagonist, but he is in denial, and refuses to talk about them. This actually makes the trauma very real and believable. With the second and third, I almost felt like the author was just trying to see how far she could push it...
The first book, Warchild, sets up the world: Humanity has become spacefaring, and discovered a moon full of valuable resources. Unfortunately, it was already colonized by an alien scientific mission. Humans try to take over, and a war starts. Some humans sympathize with the alien cause, and go over to their side. Meanwhile, vicious starfaring pirates take advantage of the social instability, and prey on whoever and whatever they can get their hands on. One of the worst of the pirates is Falcone, a former space Marine captain with an obsession with raising young boys to be his proteges... and treating them in ways that leave them horribly damaged, in the process. The main character here, the adorable Jos Musey, is orphaned by an attack by Falcone on his family's merchant ship, and taken by Falcone, who has plans for him. However, Jos takes advantage of the chaos of an alien attack to escape... and finds himself in the hands of sympathizers, who train him in alien martial arts. Next, he's sent undercover to infiltrate the marines...
These are are kind of 'familiar' scenarios, but the book does a great job of portraying emotional manipulation and conflicting loyalties.
Burndive is the second book. (And kind of oddly titled - a 'Burndive' is virtual reality hacking, and there is very little of it in the book... less than in the first book.) The protagonist here is, of course, cute. He's the son of the most famous Marine captain, and a bit of a celebrity. He's also a spoiled brat, and not really nearly as compelling a character as that of Jos. Ryan (the spoiled celeb), has a bit of a drug problem, but his bigger problem is assassination attempts... his father's attempts to make peace with the aliens haven't gone over well in some circles, and some people are more than willing to kill him to get to his dad. The dad takes him abouard his ship - both for safety, and as a bit of a boot camp program to whip him into shape and get him to grow up a bit. Space action ensues... and we learn more about Falcone, the captain, Azarcon, and why he hates pirates more than aliens.
In the third, Cagebird, we get to see thing from the point of view of the 'bad guys.' The protagonist here is Yuri - yet another of Falcone's proteges. This one hasn't run away or escaped... he's become a captain under Falcone's command. However, he's far from not-messed-up - he's full of emotional conflict, and has a tendency to cut himself. Of course, he's also a bad-ass that will just as soon kill you as... The narrative switches from showing how Yuri got to where he is, with training (mostly to be a prostitute) under Falcone, to the present, where military and political negotiations involving pirates, symps, aliens, marines, and the human HubCentral government are ongoing.
These three books are all there are to the series; but it doesn't really feel quite done. The second two concentrate on Falcone's story arc - and really neglect the part of the story that has to do with Niko (the Warboy) and the alien/human conflict. There's definitely room for another book here. show less

The second installment in this trilogy is not what I expected: instead of carrying forward with the previous novel’s main character, the author chose to explore the same universe from another point of view, one that still is tied to people and events in book one, Warchild.

This choice was something of a disappointment, but luckily not for long.

Young Ryan Azarcon is not a sympathetic character: yes, he had a difficult childhood, marked by a lack of adequate parental attention, and his later years have been equally scarred by an episode of terrorism that still plagues his memories and drives him to drug abuse. Yet he seems too self-centered at first, which does hardly gain him a reader’s sympathies.

Like Jos, the previous book’s main show more character, he needs to embark on a difficult journey of growth, and as it happened with Jos nothing will be easy or predictable in that journey, nor is its end perfect. And that’s what I most appreciate in this story, together with the reappearance of some previously encountered characters, though seen from a different perspective.

The universe in which these stories play gains depth and scope, moving from the fringes of known space toward the inhabited worlds, from military action to the games of politics and media.
A fascinating and totally engrossing read. show less

Tried, couldn’t finish this sf novel about a disaffected teen whose mother is an important political figure on a space station and whose father is a military genius conducting negotiations that might end humanity’s long war with aliens. Everyone is very angsty and has a tragic backstory, but the teen is so believably mopy and overwrought—and also traumatized because of various violent experiences—that filtering the story through his viewpoint made it too painful for me. However, it does seem to have good space opera bones, if you like that.

Burndive is the sequel to Warchild. Although the two books have different protagonists, Burndive starts almost immediately after the events of the first book and continues the plot arc of the human versus alien conflict. I would recommend reading them in order, especially since I thought Warchild was the better of the two.

Ryan Azarcon is the son of Captain Cairo Azarcon and Songlian Lau, a famous public relations spokeswoman. Ryan has met his father only four times in his life, which has been spent under the scrutiny of the media. Prior to the start of Burndive, Ryan’s on earth when he sees an embassy in Hong Kong get bombed. He’s desperately trying to escape his memories of the attack when the news of his father’s attempts at a show more peace treaty erupt and Ryan suddenly becomes a target.

Ryan is an incredibly privileged, spoiled rich kid. It’s amazing that I didn’t hate him, and the fact that I actually grew attached to him speaks to the wonders of Lowachee’s characterization. Ryan’s problems are no where near as huge as Jos’s, but they’re still understandable. He feels lonely and isloated, and there’s a sense that he feels abandoned by his parents. In particular, the book spends a lot of time on his relationship with his father, who he grows to know over the course of the book.

The plot continues from where Warchild left off in the human and alien war, but it takes a back seat. This book is extremely character focused, and there’s not a whole lot of action. This series has also been very male focused, with few major female characters. Songlian Lau is the most important female character, and I think she got the short end of the stick, particularly with the ending.

When I heard that this second book would be following a new protagonist, I didn’t expect to see much of the characters from the first book. However, the two were less independent than I thought, and I did end up seeing a significant amount of Jos. It’s interesting to see his character from another character’s perspective.

While Burndive didn’t have the impact on me that Warchild had, I’m still glad I read it and ended up getting a lot more out of it than I initially thought.

Originally poste don The Illustrated Page. show less

This book wasn’t quite as powerful or visceral as Warchild, but that’s hardly a flaw. It’s an excellent book, and one I heartily recommend to science fiction readers ONLY after they read Warchild. It’s not necessary, because Lowachee does well with feeding you info on a need-to-know basis, but trust me, this world she’s created only gets richer as you read, so do yourself the favor of reading the books in order. I plan on reading the next book, Cagebird, right away, even though I was going to save it. I’m too wrapped up in what’s going on, and I want to see how this plays out. I know it’ll be satisfying, and I also know it just might break my heart into a million pieces. And I can’t wait.

For a full review, which may or show more may not include spoilers, please click here: http://calico-reaction.livejournal.com/23677.html show less