The Children of Peace are the children of world leaders, given up as hostages to live at the Precepture school as a war deterrent. Countries are free to go to war, but if they do, their hostage child dies. "Make it personal," Talis, the AI that designed the Precepture, says. Thus relative peace has been kept for 400 years. At the school, the children receive a world class education, grow their own food and tend to the herd of goats, and learn to have dignity when it's their time to die. Greta knows her death is coming as her country slips closer and closer to war and must deal with her fear and her role in the greater good.
Although this book is high-concept, its focus is on the emotional reactions to that concept. The set up is used as a way to explore bravery, fear, and dignity, which--in the best tradition of science fiction--can all be translated (with much lower stakes) into the real world. Greta's challenges felt real, her responses human. She tried to stay strong for others, to keep it together to keep her sanity, and at times she broke despite how much she tried.
There's an intense scene midway through about anticipation leading up to torture. It uses the repetitive beat of a machine to give it a rhythm, and it's really wonderfully done. Greta panics, then surrenders, then panics again, all the while trying to slow her breathing and trying to stay strong like she was taught.
The antagonists are complex, and who counts as an antagonist changes throughout the book depending on who is the most immediate threat. People who do horrible things in the first half of the book, protect Greta and her friends in the later half. And I cheered for them. Everyone wants to kill Greta eventually, it's all just a matter of when and how. So that makes everyone a bad guy, and when everyone's a bad guy, sometimes you have to side with them. When you're surrounded by bad guys, you have to trust and mourn and build meaningful relationships with bad guys. When you think about it, even Greta's mother is in the wrong.
"I wondered if Elián realized that he'd been chosen--and not just by Talis. Her was here because Wilma Armenteros loved him. But apparently not enough to avoid nominating a hostage. Not enough to turn her position down."There's some weirdness in tone where Talis is an order of magnitude more snarky and flippant than everyone else. He's a 400-year-old AI, so no one understands the constant movie references he makes. It's especially strange because his word is treated like scripture and is frequently quoted.
"What wars occur--perhaps two or three a year--are symbolic, short, and small-scale. Global military casualties per annum are normally in the low thousands, civilian casualties almost nil. This is the treasure and crown of our age: the world is as peaceful as it has ever been. The world is at peace, said the Utterances. And really, if the odd princess has a hard day, is that too much to ask?"
"Who was he that did not know that resisting Talis and his Swan Riders is futile? (That was in fact exactly how Talis put it, in the Utterances. Resistance is futile.)"The romance is sweet and developed, and I appreciated it. It's especially refreshing in its misdirection. It seems pretty obvious where it's going considering the tropiness of "a new boy, who doesn't play by the rules, comes to school and opens Greta's eyes," but the trope doesn't play out like usual.
There's also a bunch of little things that I appreciated to the point where I want to mention them in my gushing. The goats are disgusting and amused me. The war that acts as the central conflict of the story is over Lake Ontario. And the author refers to the color of several technologies as "Cherenkov blue." (Apparently she used to be a physicist before she was a novelist. Awesome.)
***
Next Week: Among Others, fantasy (maybe???) by Jo Walton.
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