Mission Child

'With her third SF novel, Maureen F. McHugh continues the dense plausibility and warmly human characterisation that she achieved in China Mountain Zhang and Half the Day is Night. Human settlements on the colony planet Koziko are carefully restricted to appropriate technology for their region. Thus tough heroine Janna grows up in a "Mission" village in frozen northern territory, whose most high-tech product is whisky to be traded with clans of wild, gun-toting herders. When tragedy strikes and the Mission is wiped out, a village elder gives Janna some advanced biotech implants which are both blessing and curse--summoning airborne help that thanks to the non-interference policy is no help, keeping her alive when she wants to die, and doing something worse that emerges only years after. Janna finds uneasy security in posing as male while wandering the world as refugee, translator, factory worker, fugitive, security guard, gardener and paramedic, forever torn between the mystic, shamanic tradition of her upbringing and the double-edged benefits of off-world technology. Each port of call has the lived-in feel of a real, working community. Janna isn't out to save the world, just to find a home and come to terms with herself; McHugh skilfully makes this modest quest seem as important as any galactic war. Fine, understated SF.' - David Langford