Trigger warnings: Severe illness, death, child death, medical and surgical scenes
Synopsis: Aisha Un-Haad would do anything for her family. When her brother contracts a plague, she knows her janitor's salary isn't enough to fund his treatment. So she volunteers to become a Scela, a mechanically enhanced soldier sworn to protect and serve the governing body of the Fleet, the collective of starships they call home. If Aisha can survive the harrowing modifications and earn an elite place in the Scela ranks, she may be able to save her brother.
Key Tanaka awakens in a Scela body with only hazy memories of her life before. She knows she's from the privileged end of the Fleet, but she has no recollection of why she chose to give up a life of luxury to become a hulking cyborg soldier. If she can make it through the training, she might have a shot at recovering her missing past.
In a unit of new recruits vying for top placement, Aisha's and Key's paths collide, and the two must learn to work together--a tall order for girls from opposite ends of the Fleet. But a rebellion is stirring, pitting those who yearn for independence from the Fleet against a government struggling to maintain unity.
With violence brewing and dark secrets surfacing, Aisha and Key find themselves questioning their loyalties. They will have to put aside their differences, though, if they want to keep humanity from tearing itself apart.
Review: Hullmetal Girls was an interesting book. It started off with a bang and never really slowed down. We follow two perspectives, Aisha who becomes a Scela for her family and Key who doesn't even remember signing up to become a Scela. Both women were interesting to read. I loved Aisha's motivation for joining the Scela and I liked that there were major conflicts with that. Key's story is much more of a mystery and I enjoyed seeing her work towards discovering her past. These two are in a squad of four, and I wish we were given a chance to know the other two people better. I normally don't like many perspectives, but adding Woojin and Praava's points of view would have made the crew feel more rounded. I've seen some people mention that they weren't happy with the LGBT+ representation in this book. There is one scene where the characters mention their sexual and romantic preferences. That's it. This didn't bother me too much because I was reading this book as more of an action story. Not a romance where people needed to kiss in every few chapters to prove their sexuality. I would just keep that in mind if anyone is wanting this book to have more discussion on attraction and sexuality.
The story was enjoyable. It normally takes me some time to get into science fiction books, but I had no problem falling into this world. I do wish the technological aspects were explained a little better. I could imagine Aisha, Key, Woojin, and Praava all having a sort of telekinetic connection because they're in the same crew, but I had a hard time understanding why commanders were able to force their way into the minds of these characters. More than anything, I think Hullmetal Girls just needed to be longer. A little more explanation of the world and the technology would have been helpful. I appreciated that it felt complete at the end of the book. As far as I know, this is a standalone and it felt fairly well wrapped up.
Entertaining story and characters, but could have used more world building.
3 howls
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