Wednesday, November 10, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Gearbreakers by Zoe Hana Mikuta

 


Gearbreakers is a young adult dystopian sci-fi novel, featuring a world in which a despotic government controls the land through the use of giant mecha, and those they train to control them.  It's the debut novel of author Zoe Hana Mikuta, and centers its story around two young women - a freedom fighter (the "Gearbreaker") who grew up in a team of such fighters and a young woman who was orphaned by the government as a child, and became a pilot of the mecha to desperately try and destroy the country from the inside, not knowing if there was any way to fight back.  And so you have a story in a crapsack world about how it is possible to fight for freedom, what it takes, and what that does to a person, along with a F-F romance between two people who have every reason to distrust one another.  

The result is a really compelling story, one which serves as a strong first half of a duology (the second book comes out next year in 2022).  The story's take on giant mecha as a terrifying force of oppression is really well done, as its portrayal of the pilots for the government and the freedom fighters who form found families to secretly oppose it.  The action is solid and most importantly, our two main characters are really tremendous, as they attempt to navigate a course forwards for themselves and for their growing relationship.  When my largest gripe about the story is the cliffhanger ending, you know for sure you have a book worth reading.  
-----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Years ago, the nations of the world waged war over a world falling apart, utilizing giant 200 feet tall mecha called Windups to deal tremendous damage.  In the end, Godolia reigned triumphant, aided by their innovation: cybernetically enhancing and changing human bodies to make them more capable pilots of the Windups, allowing the machines to work with a devastating creativity no automaton could match.  Now, Godolia rules over the world with an iron fist, and the people of the Badlands are forced to meet Godolia's every demand...or face the might of Godolia's windups first hand.  For most of the people of the Badlands, there is no choice in the matter, and many of them believe the Windups are essentially gods.....

Eris Shindanai was born believing otherwise, born to a family of Gearbreakers, a group of rebels who have discovered that it is possible to take down the Windups by getting inside them.  Eris and her sister have made a name for themselves doing just that, with Eris known as the "Frostbringer" for the freezing cold emanating from her special gloves.  Eris and her crew are a finely tuned team at taking down the Windups...until one day a mission goes wrong and Eris finds herself captured.  

Sona Steelcrest has spent her whole life wanting revenge upon Godolia, which destroyed her town and family for nothing with its windups when she was just six.  Not knowing of the Gearbreakers, she comes up with her own plan: she will infiltrate the Windup program and use the mecha against Godolia.  But to do that she had to allow her body to be defiled by Godolia's own enhancements, and she finds herself stuck seemingly doing Godolia's bidding, and getting nowhere in her quest for vengeance....until her team comes back with Eris, captured, presenting another possibility of how to rebel and fight back that she never considered possible.

To enact her vengeance and make what she sacrificed it worth it, Sona will have to make Eris trust her enough to let her help the other gearbreakers.  But even if they can work together, what can they do to truly change things for the better? 
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Gearbreakers is a dark story, where even our good guys consider openly killing large numbers of people in support of their ends, because there simply aren't really any other options in this world.  It's also a story that doesn't shy away from that, as its two protagonists, especially Sona, realize that what they have to do is in some way not too dissimilar from the very thing they hate Godolia for, except in purpose and in scale - there is no death star here to blow up that will miraculously end the evil empire, and to the extent there is a big mission that can bring about part of that goal, it is clear from the outset that such will require a lot of blood if everything goes as intended, and the characters have to reckon with that. 

It's a world we see through the eyes of its two protagonists Eris and Sona, and they're both really strong.  For Eris, all she's known is fighting Godolia all her life, and it is her very reason for being, the cause she shares with her sister, and her team whom she's grown to care for (despite some hesitation at first because she's reckless enough to do things on her own).  So of course when her team is in danger, she stays behind to let them get away and gets herself captured.  And of course when she meets Sona, a "bot" as she calls them, she is hardpressed at first, and for a short-while thereafter, to see her as anything more than another complicit pilot, who has killed so many innocent people she could care about. 

For Sona, she survived the destruction of her family - who were targeted by Godolia basically by accident - and then the streets of Godolia itself just to get a chance at vengeance, something she reached for without realizing the potential cost: the replacement of her original body, which continuously horrifies her as she realizes what she has lost - the ability to see colors in one eye, the ability to feel pain out of a Windup, and really her own humanity to some extent.  And with the only time she feels free being when she's in a Windup, it feels like she's falling further into what Godolia wants her to be, especially as some of her fellow pilots, who don't share her innermost desires for vengeance, are actually nice people. 

And then Eris appears and presents another option, and so Sona takes a brash action, one which horrifies even her, to help Eris escape....and to allow her to escape continuing to be a tool of Godolia, even if that results in her own death at the hands of the Gearbreakers.  Sona is fatalistic because of who she is, even as she's terrified of the idea of becoming a pilot again, and finds in Eris something she can possibly live for....a purpose beyond simply revenge, that causes her to struggle even more, especially as the deaths she's now planning to cause could result in a blowback upon Eris herself.  And for Eris, Sona's willingness to give up everything, to give in to everything, causes Eris (who is bi/pan) to start feeling something in return.  It's a relationship that works really well, and forms the core of this novel as things start going in some new and bloody directions.  

Because again this is a bloody plot, where the good guys main plan in the end involves the wholesale slaughter of a lot of people at a major celebration, and where the good guys fight back by entering a giant mecha and slitting the throats of pilots inside, while they are simply helpless.  The minor characters are similarly grey, whether that be Sona's bombastic but similarly talented older sister Jenny, or Sona's crew, not all of which are willing to believe in Sona because of what she is (and one in general is biased because he was Eris' ex).  The plot takes some very solid and sometimes surprising plot turns, up to an ending that is satisfying in that it resolves a major plot arc, but is also a devastating cliffhanger that makes me want the second half of this duology now.  

So yeah, Gearbreakers lives up to all my expectations, and is well worth your time.  Recommended for sure.  

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