I don’t know why I only ever read Naomi Kritzer’s work when she’s nominated for a Hugo or Lodestar Award. Seriously, I always end up really enjoying her books, but they totally fly under the radar when they come out. This newest of her YA works is quite different from the CatNet novels, in that is leans more heavily into the futuristic sci-fi, dystopian area of SFF. It’s not groundbreaking, but it was quite fun to read.
LIBERTY’S DAUGHTER
by Naomi Kritzer
Published: Fairwood Press, 2023
Ebook: 267 pages
Standalone
My rating: 6.25/10
Opening line: “Show me the sandals first,” I said.
Beck Garrison lives on a seastead — an archipelago of constructed platforms and old cruise ships, assembled by libertarian separatists a generation ago. She’s grown up comfortable and sheltered, but starts doing odd jobs for pocket money.
To her surprise, she finds that she’s the only detective that a debt slave can afford to hire to track down the woman’s missing sister. When she tackles this investigation, she learns things about life on the other side of the waterline — not to mention about herself and her father — that she did not expect. And that some people will stop at nothing to keep her from talking about . . .
There is something nice and comforting about a book that gets right to the action and doesn’t waste a lot of time on setting up its characters or world. I had never heard of Liberty’s Daughter before it became a Lodestar finalist, but I did enjoy Naomi Kritzer’s previous YA novels (the CatNet ones), so I was going into this with high hopes.
We are introduced to Beck Garrison in the middle of a job. In her case, that means finding things. She finds things for people who need them, and finds people who need things other people don’t. The reason an actual human being is needed for this pretty straightforward task that any app could take care of is that Beck lives on a seasted, a collection of platforms and cruise ships and yachts, all strung together to create a kind of habitat. As one can imagine, space is very limited, so people don’t keep stuff they don’t need anymore. Thus Beck’s job.
I was immediately ingrigued by this world and especially the way the seastad functions. There are several different platforms/islands/areas, if you will, that each follow their own laws. Or in case of Lib, a lack of laws entirely. Everything is legal on Lib.
Becks lives pretty safely as the daughter of a very important and very powerful man, although it is never specified too much just what Beck’s father does or why he is so well respected (feared?). Either way, the world building is easily this book’s most interesting and strongest part, so I won’t take away from it by tell you how it works right here. Where’s the fun in that, after all.
If you’re feeling kind of slumpy, pick this up because its plot moves fast and it goes through so many different ideas and storylines and events it’s hard to keep your hat on in all the wind. You have labor disputes, something that boils down to slave labor, Reality TV shows, journalists doing their thing, Beck having a romance with someone, a whole lot of family drama, a virus outbreak, potential threats from the outside, you name it. It feels like a lot!
On the one hand that was nice because you can read a couple of chapters of this book and get a whole “problem of the day” kind of deal, but as a novel, it felt a bit too much. You don’t have to throw the entire kitchen sink in here, especially if it comes at the cost of character development.
Sadly, the characters are all pretty bland. Beck herself is almost a blank page on which we, the readers, may insert ourselves. She is smart and has a good heart, so that makes her likeable, but she also has very little personality. The same goes for her romantic interest, her father, and most other people. The bond laborers remain flat as well, although the important ones get one characteristic like “the well-respected one” or “the one who is really good at talking”. While it didn’t really detract from the story as such, probably because things move too fast for that, it also didn’t help this book stand out in any way.
There were some storylines I preferred over others. Like the Reality TV part, where someone from the US comes to the seastead to film a reality show where seastaders can win prizes if they participate in games, etc. Not only was that an idea that gave me warm and comfortable feelings, like watching an old Dawson’s Creek episode, but it also featured one of the more interesting characters, the woman who runs the show on the seastead (I have forgotten her name and am too lazy to look it up).
And don’t get me wrong, all the little side quests end up intertwined by the end and fall into place to form a cohesive narrative. But it all felt overly constructed and contrived in order to hit home a point that is so obvious it hurts. Slavery bad, we get it. Even if you sugarcoat it and call it something else.
I did have fun while reading this book, but I am certain I will have forgotten most of the trillion plot points that happened and, most of all, I will never think of these characters again. As a Lodestar finalists, it still ends up in the top half of my ballot, because this turned out to be a painfully mediocre year for me. Maybe I’m just getting too old, who knows.
I would recommend this book if you need a quick moving, page-turny kind of YA story without too much depth, but still grazing very important and dark topics. Don’t expect to fall in love with any characters, but have fun exploring this cool and interesting world.
MY RATING: 6.25/10 – Pretty good
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