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The Abyss Surrounds Us
by Emily Skrutskie
In the world of the NeoPacific, governments broken into smaller groups and a large population living on floating platform-cities, sea trade is more important than ever. Piracy is also rife, and shipping companies use giant, terrifying genetically-engineered beasts called Reckoners to defend their ships from pirates.
Cas Leung is a trainer of Reckoners on her first mission at sea when she is captured by a pirate crew. The pirate captain Santa Elena forces her to raise and train a Reckoner for the pirates to use to fight back with. During the months that follow Cas develops a relationship with Swift, the pirate tasked with supervising her and is forced to confront her own assumptions regarding piracy and pirates.
There are several layers of this book. At one level you could see this as straight Stockholm Syndrome on Cas's part as she begins to sympathize and identify with her captors. But at other levels she's forced to confront the blood on her own hands as a trainer of monsters that will go on to utterly destroy entire pirate ships. And then there's the parts where she sees the pirates as doing what is necessary to survive for themselves and the people who depend on them. It's an unfolding of world-view from black and white to some really murky reality.
Plus giant monsters fighting each other and humans armed with hight-tech boats and rocket launchers ...
Cas Leung is a trainer of Reckoners on her first mission at sea when she is captured by a pirate crew. The pirate captain Santa Elena forces her to raise and train a Reckoner for the pirates to use to fight back with. During the months that follow Cas develops a relationship with Swift, the pirate tasked with supervising her and is forced to confront her own assumptions regarding piracy and pirates.
There are several layers of this book. At one level you could see this as straight Stockholm Syndrome on Cas's part as she begins to sympathize and identify with her captors. But at other levels she's forced to confront the blood on her own hands as a trainer of monsters that will go on to utterly destroy entire pirate ships. And then there's the parts where she sees the pirates as doing what is necessary to survive for themselves and the people who depend on them. It's an unfolding of world-view from black and white to some really murky reality.
Plus giant monsters fighting each other and humans armed with hight-tech boats and rocket launchers ...