Title: Tankborn
Author: Karen Sandler
Publisher: Tu Books
Rating: worthy
I started out not liking Tankborn! It features a hellacious info-dump in first ten pages, yet despite this, too many questions remain unanswered. If it’s like this for the whole 372 pages methinks 'twill be a long day's journey into night. It immediately depressed me with all the hallmarks of a bad fantasy romance: the flawed girl (Kayla), the perfect boy (Devak) who comes to her rescue and it’s instadore! Guess where Kayla's assignment will be?!
There's far too much overly cute and unnecessary re-branding of things: 'bedroom' is, for no reason whatsoever, 'sleeproom', for example, but 'blankie' remains unaltered! Speaking of altering, the genetically engineered non-humans (GENs) are physically engineered for specific tasks, but not mentally engineered? Why? We're not invited to know.
Tankborn is set on a planet called Loka (as in Loca!) in a different solar system from ours. Apparently this is a colonized planet, but there's no explanation as to how or why humans are there (other than the obligatory Earth is polluted and globally warmed - yet people still live there). Colonizing planets light years from Earth makes little sense, given the expense and distances involved - not when Mars and Venus are right next door. The most glaring omission is an explanation as to why these colonizers breed low-caste people in tanks for menial work instead of building robots. This is a hugely hi-tech society, but there's not a single robot to be found.
Nor do we learn why the upper born overlords and all-around abusive slave drivers then trust these marginalized, ill-treated, ghetto-confined GENs (who happen to have darker skin) to raise their children! In the same way that "white" novels all-too-often exclude darker-skinned people, this novel evidently excludes light-skinned people. Again, the way to fix that errant pendulum is not to swing it all the way to the opposite side from where it offended, but to trap it firmly in the middle.
LOL sentence: "In the last week before her birthday, Kayla's monthly courses started with a vengeance." At first I thought this was some sort of training regimen to prepare her for her obligatory assignment - the lifelong task for which she was "bred"! But I very quickly realized that Sandler is talking about Kayla's menstrual cycle. Now why would GENs have periods? Did Sandler mean to say "curses' instead of "courses"?
Sandler seems not to understand genetics at all: there's talk about Kayla having elephant DNA because she's so strong. The fact is that most mammals have largely the same DNA - give or take some greater or lesser percentage. The differences that Sandler is talking about: Kayla's "frizzy hair", the variegated spotting of her skin, and even her upper body strength, do not have to come from her having been gene-spliced with DNA from other mammals.
The story begins with an encounter at the river which divides the GEN ghetto from the domain of the high-born and low-born (i.e. free people) community, some low-borns think it’s funny to throw rocks at Kayla's young tank-mate Jal, and a high-born comes to their rescue, so it’s instadore for Kayla even though it's painfully obvious (according to her thinking) that she's the worst person ever to live and who should probably just be put down like a rabid dog! Really.
I should say a word or two about the planet: there seem to be an awful lot of six-legged creatures living there, but none are really described. When Jal is down at the river, he's hunting toads, but they have six legs, so it's not clear if it's a large insect that happens to look like a toad, or something that looks like a toad and happens to have six legs! It doesn't specify what they're going to do with these "toads". I suspect it's for food, but there's no talk about how the human digestive system can even cope with these alien proteins. Rest assured, it's not as simple as most sci-fi shows make you believe.
There's also talk of several deadly viral outbreaks, but it's not clear where the viruses are supposed to have come from. They can't have come from Loka, because the viruses there would have evolved no way of infecting an alien physiology, which is what humans would have in comparison with the locals, yet this seems to be the implication.
Evidently there are no fish on Loka, only critters with six legs, and those are not very large, except for one "spider" which is several feet tall. Again, a bit of knowledge of biology here (which typical Americans sorely lack, unfortunately, and Sandler's degrees in math and physics don't help!) would have been useful. Having a three foot tall spider is not completely out of the realm of possibility: Earth had some disturbingly large insects and other such fauna many millions of years ago, but if insects and spiders on Loka have a physiology anything at all like those on Earth, they have to get oxygen to their cells somehow, and the bigger they grow, the harder this is to do, unless the atmosphere is very rich in oxygen, which would bring its own set of issues. Let's just say that the colonists probably shouldn't have so many incinerators going!
I have to wonder how they colonists got there - not the physical means (although that, too, is a problem), but if it was a privately sponsored expedition for the very rich, how come there are so many low-borns? If they have GENs to be slaves, why do they need any lowlifes? Er... low-borns? Why - if they have left Earth because of pollution and such, do they not religiously recycle?! If it wasn't a privately funded expedition, then why is there this shameful caste system in place? Again, no answers.
But the novel picks up a bit with the upcoming Day of Assignment: the evening before, Kayla gets a special delivery of a secret package which she's expected to smuggle over to the 'born community. Why? I have no idea. It would be the easiest thing in the world to simply throw or catapult the thing over the river (or maybe ask Jason born to take it?!). But totally out of the blue, Kayla is selected to transport this tiny package, and she unaccountably decides she'll do it despite the massive risk of her being brain-wiped if she's caught - and she's searched often enough that the risk of being caught is very high.
So, a few problems with this so far, but enough interest in where it's going to keep me going despite all these irritating issues! Besides, I love the name "Karen Sandler" - it will make a great character name in some novel or other! Hey! I saw it first!
She's taken across the river over the one bridge and left to find her own way to her new owners, where her assignment is to babysit some old fogy. She's treated like crap until she actually gets to the place where she is to work - taking care of an old man, who welcomes her warmly, and treats her with great respect, and he doesn't even ask her to wear gloves before she touches him. And guess who his great grandson is? Yep - Devak!! Surprise! Not.
Devak - who went out of his way to help her at the river - is a rather more bigoted and thoughtless guy here. There's no explanation for this - just as there's no explanation for why a specially bred tank-born with really strong arms is sent to play nursemaid to an old guy. It's possible, given what we learn about this guy, that he engineered this whole thing, so that helps. Devak, under the tutelage of his grandfather, is at least trying to be nice to the jiks. He finds her secret chip when it falls out of her mattress, but he assumes it belonged to the previous resident of the shack in which she is to stay, and he gives it to his great grandfather Zul, the guy Kayla is taking care of but Zul gives it right back to Kayla when Devak isn't looking!
Kayla happens to meet another GEN on the streets who asks her for the chip she has, but before she can decide if he should give it to him (what's to decide? Get rid of it! She's so worried about it being in her possession, and now she's hesitating?!). But then the moron who threw rocks at her at the start of the story gets into an accident right in front of her; she saves his life and he bitches at her for touching his car! I sincerely hope he isn't going to be the third leg in some pain in the ass triangle.
But we learn that not only is Kayla mysteriously being recruited as a messenger, her friend from the ghetto, Mishalla is also recruited. She gets a brain upload, and she learns by accident that children are being kidnapped and routed through her crèche in some bizarre plan to steal land from the low-borns. So the story remains acceptably interesting so far, although it has issues and seems to be moving a bit slowly.
I've finished this one now, and I have to say I'm a bit disappointed but I'm still willing to rate it worthy. The story becomes a bit muddied and weak at the end. The weakness comes from the revelation that the original DNA brought from Earth is running out so they can't make any more GENs? What? DNA is running out on a planet where every GEN, lowborn, and trueborn is stuffed with it? This makes no sense at all, but it's used as the pretext for the plot which is that lowborns are being abducted from their families and "converted" to GENs. This is the biggest weakness in the story because I can't buy this at all. I can't buy that they don't have robots, and even setting that aside, I can't buy that they're running out of DNA.
Props to Sandler for not giving a trite ending, but shame on her for not bringing more justice to her finale! The ending was unsatisfying not because it didn't have a happily ever after ending (which it didn't), but because justice wasn't served. The ending unfortunately screams sequel, but I can't rally myself to want to read it. Who knows, maybe I'll one day find myself enmeshed in a book crisis and be desperately searching for something to read, and be forced to give it a chance, but other than that, I'm done with this series. The book was acceptable, but not edge-of-seat tell-me-what-happens-next-or-the-adorable-darling-puppy-gets-it gripping!
