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Summary
Summary
Ava, a teenage girl living aboard the male-dominated deep space merchant ship Parastrata, faces betrayal, banishment, and death. Taking her fate into her own hands, she flees to the Gyre, a floating continent of garbage and scrap in the Pacific Ocean, in this thrilling, surprising, and thought-provoking debut novel that will appeal to fans of Across the Universe, by Beth Revis, and The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood. Internationally bestselling author Stephanie Perkins called it "brilliant, feminist science fiction."
Ava is the captain's daughter. This allows her limited freedom and a certain status in the Parastrata's rigid society--but it doesn't mean she can read or write or even withstand the forces of gravity. When Ava learns she is to be traded in marriage to another merchant ship, she hopes for the best. After all, she is the captain's daughter. But instead, betrayal, banishment, and a brush with love and death are her destiny, and Ava stows away on a mail sloop bound for Earth in order to escape both her past and her future. The gravity almost kills her. Gradually recuperating in a stranger's floating cabin on the Gyre, a huge mass of scrap and garbage in the Pacific Ocean, Ava begins to learn the true meaning of family and home and trust--and she begins to nourish her own strength and soul. This sweeping and harrowing novel explores themes of choice, agency, rebellion, and family, and after a tidal wave destroys the Gyre and all those who live there, ultimately sends its main character on a thrilling journey to Mumbai, the beating heart of Alexandra Duncan's post-climate change Earth. An Andre Norton Award nominee.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Duncan makes an excellent debut with a novel that's part feminist polemic and part coming-of-age adventure. In a space-faring future, supply ship "crewes" have developed into patriarchal tribes, with strict gender roles and a mythology to justify them: "Women of the air, stay aloft," the girls of the vessel Parastrata are warned. Ava is considered to be deviant for several reasons: she is of suspect Earthly descent, and she has a knack for both math and mechanical engineering, disciplines that are forbidden to women on her ship. After further transgressing Parastrata's laws through a romantic encounter, she is cast out into the Void. With a fierce desire to survive and with the help of a female spaceship captain named Perpetue, Ava escapes space for the deadly gravity of Earth, where she eventually discovers emotional, sexual, and intellectual liberation. Duncan's thoroughly realized setting and subtle control of Ava's voice result in a powerfully immersive story that uses its far-future SF premise to thoughtfully explore gender politics. Ages 13-up. Agent: Kate Testerman, KT Literary. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
About to be executed for losing her virginity, Ava flees her home, a patriarchal space ship, and ends up on Earth, rescued by a tough mail sloop captain and her precocious daughter, Miyole. But when the captain is killed in a hurricane, Ava and Miyole must go on alone. A subtheme about sexuality is insufficiently developed in this otherwise engaging coming-of-age adventure. (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
In a future where merchant spaceships service other planets and an overpopulated and polluted Earth, Ava, the child of crew parents, lives on the spaceship Parastrata. She is selected to marry an AEther crew member to seal a treaty between the ship crews, but what she thinks of as a love match is in truth the beginning of a horror that sees her cast out of her home, winding up in a garbage-created Pacific Ocean continent, the Gyre. It's the beginning of a hardscrabble life on the run. The references to the Pacific dead zone, overpopulation, and societies both advanced and retro, and the special attention paid to women's rights ensure the book's title alludes to far more than a ship's cargo. Ava is rescued time and again and in turn rescues another. With complex characters, dystopian settings that smack of a neglected future brought about by global warming and far-reaching political decisions and indecision, and a galloping good adventure story, this is part science fiction, part horror story, and a less than subtle, but oh-so-effective object lesson for today's YA readers about their possible futures.--Bradburn, Frances Copyright 2014 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Seventeen-year-old Ava was born and raised aboard a spaceship, the Parastrata, but when she makes an understandable, yet regrettable, mistake, she is cast out by her patriarchal family to the unfamiliar and unforgiving Earth below. With just her aptitude for "Fixes" and her spirit for survival, the teen must navigate through the Gyre, a floating wasteland of trash in the Pacific, to ultimately end up in Mumbai, where she searches for her modrie, her blood-aunt. Duncan delivers a finely paced dystopian novel that relentlessly charges through the finer plot points, which may leave readers confused as to how Earth became a technologically advanced wasteland. Another small hiccup is the strange dialogue among the Parastrata's inhabitants, including Ava, without explanation, which may be off-putting to slow and reluctant readers. However, the strength of Ava's character carries readers through the lengthy novel. Fans of Beth Revis's Across the Universe (Penguin, 2011) and Ally Condie's Matched (Dutton, 2010) will appreciate Duncan's first dive into the genre.-Amanda C. Buschmann, Atascocita Middle School, Humble, TX (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Haunting, colorful environments distinguish this debut novel about a girl fighting for survival in the far future. Ava lives on the Parastrata. She knows nothing beyond her polygamous, fundamentalist religion, whose followers began living in spaceships some 1,000 years ago and which holds women as property since they harbor an interest in Earth "like a soft, rotten spot in [their] souls." Informed that she's marrying a man on another ship, Ava's thrilled to see Luck, a boy she met years ago, in the greeting party. They know they should wait until after their wedding, but they sneak into a desalination pool and succumb to sex the night beforeand get caught. To their shock (though not readers'), Ava was actually promised to Luck's father. The Parastrata women wash Ava and lock her in a chilled room to await her punishment: Being pushed out into open space, which is, of course, fatal. A difficult, terrifying escape and a relative's sacrifice provide another chance, but where can she go? From the strained peculiarity of the Parastrata to a sunbaked community afloat on the Pacific Ocean to the bustle of Mumbai, Duncan's settings and diction are vivid. As brown-skinned people become Ava's chosen family, she learns that her own medium-dark skinmocked aboard the Parastrataisn't a religious stain, marking this a welcome browning of the science-fiction universe. Ava's decisions sometimes serve plot more than characterization, but readers caught up in the story will forgive this. Memorable. (Science fiction. 14-17)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
