Read June 2024
Recommended for fans of exploration sci-fi
★ ★ ★ ★
"My name is Cassandra Eloise Devlin. Cass for short. Never Cassie.
I was walking home from school. I turned a corner, and I was here. No flashing lights, no warning, no zoomy wormhole: nothing but me one minute in Sydney and the next here.
Here is... here is the problem. It's definitely not Sydney. I don't think it's Australia, either, unless it's Tasmania. But I'm sure they'd have gum trees in Tasmania, and that's the thing. The trees are all wrong... The birds sound wrong too."
And so begins the diary of Cassandra--not Cass--as she adapts to a new world, the day she finished her high school final exams. I read the blurb, and for once the blurb is pretty accurate, so I knew the general premise when I started it. What I didn't expect is how much I enjoyed it. This is a me-issue: diary format is generally my least favorite, and teenagers my least favorite group, but the general style echoes Robin McKinley and Anne McCaffery, so it didn't take long to get in touch with my inner teen. Interestingly, it probably isn't current teen; the cultural references are a bit dated, skewing more toward 1990-2000 than current, but that only works in its favor.
"Of course, having been raised on a diet of Doctor Who, Buffy and Stargate, I've no need to stop at New Zealand. I could be in an alternate Australia, any part of the planet at any time, or a different world entirely. Another planet. Or in a mental asylum, strapped in a straight jacket, giggling."
Like a lot of teens, she tends toward sarcastic, but really, on the whole, she's an interesting, sensible person. The diary format works well for flashbacks as well as orienting herself and working out how to survive. She misses her Mum, reflects on her besties Alyssa and Nick and struggles how to protect her feet as she follows a river, hopefully to a larger water body and civilization. But when she finds structures, they appear to be abandoned.
"Today I made another, better broom to sweep out the rest of Fort Cass. It's so stupidly hard to make tools without other tools."
Point taken, and one of the things I really enjoyed about this book. While Cass works to create shelter and warmth, it acknowledges how our ideas have been crafted by easy camping adventures or watching survival shows on the tele. Eventually, though, things change when the people that monitor the planet discover her. This was fascinating as well; as Cass adapts to her rescuers, she eventually learns that these people are not unused to creatures from other worlds showing up. They travel back to their home planet, giving Cass an entirely new set of struggles as she adapts to being a 'Stray' in a densely populated city.
"Strays count as a kind of refugee, and other than representing a slight curiosity for being from a 'new' world, I'm not particularly unusual."
The refugee is an interesting analogy, and in some ways, everything Cass confronts would be much like moving across the world and adapting to a new country. Cass is not unaware of this, which is one of the great things about her voice: "Fortunately, it doesn't seem like Tare has a refugee policy like Australia's, since I wouldn't enjoy mandatory detention."
Cass, of course, does turn out to be unusual, much to her dismay. While not unexpected, I was a little disappointed. But what's a writer gonna do? We love our Exceptionally Abled main characters.
When it comes to writing, Host does a nice job with flow. Cass' emotion seems congruent with age and the challenge to adapt to a new world. The world-building is interesting, with hints of deeper layers to be discovered. It kept my attention as Cass went from challenge to challenge. I read quickly and think it will stand up to a second read.
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