Victoria Zagar

Reviewed on Hearts On Fire... http://heartsonfirereviews.com/

The year is 2243 and while mankind has space capability, the Earth is embroiled in a civil war. It is much the same war that mankind has been fighting for over a thousand years with culture and religion at its center. On one side we have the Moral League, a fairly well funded group determined to set up a theocracy as the world government and bring man's thinking back into the dark ages. The challenger is the Freedom Alliance, a loosely held together group of countries who want to move man past the conservative ideals and into a future where the world government is open minded and liberal in its thinking. Sam is a young man rejected by his family for being gay who joins the Alliance Space Force. He is stationed on the Northampton, the fleet's flag ship because of his outstanding flying ability and is soon placed on a flight team. He soon meets Major Tom, the ship's crew officer and neither man's life is ever the same again. I found this story to be a study in extremes from the Alliance and the League to the military's regulations and our two lovers to the by the book Tom and the rebellious Sam who follows his own ideals. There is quite a bit of tension and conflict throughout the story because of the my way or no way type of thinking. The only real centrist in the story is the very outspoken and wonderful character, Gracie. She has the ability to cut through the conflicts and bring everyone from the admiral to Sam out of their own set way of thinking and to finding a compromise. Unfortunately, Gracie cannot do this in her own life and becomes an abuse victim. Ms Zagar did a wonderful job of weaving so many of today's social problems through this character driven story. I liked the characters Sam, Tom and Gracie who the story really revolved around. There was a good amount of angst between Tom and Sam which held the story together when the story line got thin in some places. I found the Admiral to be very stuffy and close minded to be the leader of the Alliance forces but perhaps he had to be that stiff as a military man. The ending was resolved a little to quickly in my opinion by bringing in the Teeresi forces but there had to be a HEA. I don't normally say anything about book covers but I have to say the that the cover makes the book look like a m/f book which it definitely is not. This was another good sci-fi story built around human rights and how far we have yet to go.… (mere)

I have to applaud this concept - Hinori comes from a culture that is devoid of gender roles where everyone is encouraged to find the "balance between Mother and Father". They come to odds with a group who has come to their planet for whom gender roles are extremely ingrained in their society - so much so that they will go so far as to subject those who do not fit their narrow definitions to hormone injections. When Hinori comes across Mateo, who defies the expectations of gender in his own culture, he finds his own world turned upside down while inspiring Mateo to stand up for himself as well.

I understand the author's choice to use "they" throughout the book, but it made it incredibly confusing. The challenge of using plural pronouns for singular antecedents means that those moments where the narrator was referring to a group in one sentence and an individual in the next were very difficult to parse. Additionally, I feel like the abuse that occurs here was sort of just glossed over and I have a very hard time with stories where individuals subjected to sexual exploitation or abuse of any kind are portrayed as enjoying it or coming to enjoy it later. It made it very difficult to appreciate the concept that was put forward here.… (mere)