Riven might seem like your average high-school girl who bounces around schools as her parents travel, but that isn’t quite the case. She has been traveling so often because she has been attempting to find lost heir of the world from whence she came – a world parallel to our own. Riven is a trained soldier, one of the most feared on her world. Her mission is to bring Caden, brother of Prince Cale and heir to the throne back to her world. When she accidentally stumbles on to him after crashing her motorcycle, the plot kicks in to high gear and does not relent.
Amalie Howard’s The Almost Girl is the first of a duology* and the story is a fast-paced gender-swapped twist on the ‘Save the Princess’ storyline with a strong dash of the Hidden Heir told from Riven’s first person perspective. Her world was devastated by an android war, her father is a mad scientist, her mother a freedom-fighter and her half-sister a deadly soldier soldier like Riven. When Riven gets to know Caden, two things come as a surprise to her. The first is her burgeoning feelings for the young prince (who is unaware of his true destiny). For all of her 17 years, our young soldier never had time for feelings, emotions or any romantic entanglements. She always believed they were signs of weakness. When Riven discovers her sister Shae had been watching over and training Caden for many months, her second surprise hits her heartstrings. The two siblings did not depart on the best of terms and Riven is very hesitant to trust her sister; she soon discovers much of what she assumed about her world, and her world’s connection to ours (called the Otherworld) is not quite what it seems.
In The Almost Girl, Howard never lets the plot or her characters settle into a rut. Something is always pulling the narrative forward with urgency, whether an action scene when Riven is battling the zombie-cyborg Vectors, or if she examining her feelings about Caden. The parallel worlds, zombie-soldiers, genetic manipulation gave a great science fictional feel to the world of Neopses. It isn’t clear just how similar our world is to Neopses, but it seems like either a future version of our world or perhaps a world like ours with a divergent point in its past. Regardless, the two worlds contrast each other effectively.
Howard’s characterization of Riven as a hardened soldier came across well, and even more so, the emotions she struggled with about her sister Shae. As the novel deals with two parallel worlds, Howard cleanly divides the novel between the two, with the first half taking place on Earth and the second half taking place mostly on Neopses. In some ways, the locales of Neopses where the action takes places had the feel of a mash-up between The Cursed Earth (of Judge Dredd fame) and Coruscant (of Star Wars) that may have lost some of its lustre. Neopses seems to be a world, as we learn through some of its inhabitants, that is trying to cling to any of its lost greatness.
Although I haven’t read Ian McDonald’s Planesrunner novels, based on reviews I’ve read of those novels, The Almost Girl seems to touch on similar themes and is aimed at a similar audience. Often, when an author tries to shuffle the deck on the characters (and readers for that matter) throughout the narrative, it can seem a cheap shock tactic. Quite the opposite with The Almost Girl and Howard’s deft plotting. She has allowed the characters, specifically Riven, to settle just long enough with what she thought she knew in the narrative before she reshuffled the cards, allowing for a good balance of surprise and comfort.
*It wasn’t immediately clear to me that The Almost Girl wasn’t the full story, that it was the first part in a larger story. As the novel progressed, I got the sense that not all was going to be resolved and that some things Riven and the other characters were experiencing were merely the hints of things to be paid off in the second volume. This isn’t to say I don’t recommend the novel, because I do. Just be prepared to have to wait for some of the payoffs hinted at in the novel.
Strange Chemistry continues to produce excellent novels that, while aimed at the young adult market, work extremely well for this adult reader. The cover of this novel is a powerful eye-grabber by Steven Wood, it really sets a good tone for the story Howard tells and captures the spirit of Riven perfectly.
© 2014 Rob H. Bedford
Recommended
Strange Chemistry http://strangechemistrybooks.com
Amalie Howard: http://www.amaliehoward.com/
January 2014 416 pages
ISBN: 9781908844804 Trade Paperback
I am looking forward to starting this one soon. It is waiting patiently for me on the Kindle as I type this. I’ve been impressed by early reviews and hope to enjoy this one as much as you did.