Local author Naomi Kritzer’s new book, Liberty’s Daughter, has arrived! She will be doing a reading and signing at DreamHaven on Wednesday, December 6th.
Naomi is a multiple award winner, including Hugo, Lodestar, Edgar and Locus Awards. Her two most recent books, Catfishing on Catnet and Chaos on Catnet, feature young adult protagonists learning very adult things about the world. Like Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, Naomi’s books give young (and older) readers new perspectives on current events.
Sixteen-year-old Beck Garrison has grown up on Min (short for New Minerva), one of a conglomerate of Pacific ocean platforms that compromise a loosely-organized and largely unrecognized group of nation states. Her childhood has been rather sheltered, since her father is a very important man. She is about to find out that things are not as utopian as they seem, and that her father, perhaps, cannot be trusted.
The politics of Min and the other attached platforms are complex and nuanced, and part of the novel is Beck’s discovery of the ways in which various forms of libertarian government, including total anarchy, might work. However Beck finds out, through her new part-time job, that many parts of her society are not actually working very well for many of the people she meets. And then the real crises hit . . .
Beck is a great character. She is a little bit snarky and a lot smart. Her naivety quickly gives way under the strength of her observations, revealing an unexpected ability to see all the parts of a problem and find ways to fix it. Like many teen protagonists, she sometimes has to overcome adults who are standing in the way. Beck’s journey to find agency, despite the adults trying to take it away, is one of the joys of the novel.
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