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Has Humanity found their new refuge--or have they found a deadly trap? Winter on this new planet is a killer, but so is the governing body. When children with extraordinary mental powers are being put to death, someone must act. The Group is determined to rescue them, but will their Refuge allow them to live through the cold, dark winter, or will they die in the attempt?
277 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 31, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 26, 2014
On the planet Storn the earth-descendent settlers must enter 'wintersleep' to survive the planet's harsh conditions. The colonists realize that the effects of living on the planet are producing unusual effects, in particular creating children with strange powers, such as telepathy and telekinesis. The mandate is that these special children are to be terminated, but within the community, many people spirit these children away. Those who are suspected to be sympathetic never wake from their wintersleep.
The novel was a little hard to get into at first - but once you start to get used to the lingo, it starts to make sense. Several colonists have a very distinct way of speaking - and while usually this sort of thing annoys me, it's pulled off to good effect and I enjoyed it. I enjoy science-fiction novels, and the author does a very good job at describing a very alien and sterile setting we'd be unfamiliar with.
I felt rather distant from the main characters for the most part, which is odd because the novel has a very female gaze, due to the majority of the female protagonists in partnered pregnancy, seen as a sort of duty to keep the colony alive by breeding replacements. The strange sense of community is also coupled in that while women are effectively walking wombs while the technology is malfunctioning, they're not direct mothers to any of the children born to the colonies - women carry for a while, before the unborn are transferred to artificial wombs to grow stronger and be less helpless on the potentially lethal planet/and to help them endure starship sleep. Later in the novel, one woman goes to term and delivers a baby, and it was refreshing to see medics so dependent on technology be completely dumbfounded at the site of something natural, and then the dread set in as I realized they didn't know how to help the woman.
I got a good sense that the human race has had a real struggle to survive outside of the earth, which is said to be dying, and so everyone for the most part is seen as caring about the whole rather than an individual's given rights. In essence, the struggle was about the head of the colonists fearing the unknown and potential mutations, in essence changing the world to suit them, and several colonists as they're trying to let humanity adapt to the world they've adopted.
The novel was a little hard to get into at first - but once you start to get used to the lingo, it starts to make sense. Several colonists have a very distinct way of speaking - and while usually this sort of thing annoys me, it's pulled off to good effect and I enjoyed it. I enjoy science-fiction novels, and the author does a very good job at describing a very alien and sterile setting we'd be unfamiliar with.
I felt rather distant from the main characters for the most part, which is odd because the novel has a very female gaze, due to the majority of the female protagonists in partnered pregnancy, seen as a sort of duty to keep the colony alive by breeding replacements. The strange sense of community is also coupled in that while women are effectively walking wombs while the technology is malfunctioning, they're not direct mothers to any of the children born to the colonies - women carry for a while, before the unborn are transferred to artificial wombs to grow stronger and be less helpless on the potentially lethal planet/and to help them endure starship sleep. Later in the novel, one woman goes to term and delivers a baby, and it was refreshing to see medics so dependent on technology be completely dumbfounded at the site of something natural, and then the dread set in as I realized they didn't know how to help the woman.
I got a good sense that the human race has had a real struggle to survive outside of the earth, which is said to be dying, and so everyone for the most part is seen as caring about the whole rather than an individual's given rights. In essence, the struggle was about the head of the colonists fearing the unknown and potential mutations, in essence changing the world to suit them, and several colonists as they're trying to let humanity adapt to the world they've adopted.
February 17, 2020
I’m reviewing The Refuge 2nd Edition and I haven’t read the original printing of this colonial science fiction series but as the page count has changed in this update, I thought that suggested post-publication improvements and extra content. I’ve since found a note from the author at the back which says that the changes were to connect the first book to later developments in the sequels.
This story is set at a future time when humans have spent one or two hundred years colonising other planets, yet still haven’t mastered the elements on this particular one, which suffers from terrible winters on alternate years, with wind speeds and cold at such a magnitude that even the Viking sagas couldn’t keep up with them. When walls are breached by the gale, people really do get sucked out to their doom, so the colonists rely on cryogenic technology to survive the winters. (Spoiler alert for the next sentence) What doesn’t work too well at this colony is the rule of law, as someone has been selectively tampering with the life support freezers.
Judy Griffith Gill has presented us with soft sci-fi of the children and families type, then spiced up the plot with psychic awakenings, murderous deeds and officials who don’t have their hearts in the right places. Survival is another strong theme, combined with parenting and protection. The pace is not fast but that’s good sometimes as you need time to soak in the atmosphere and believe it, slowly compiled drama, lengthy and solid like the early sagas, which the structure and open system setting that already suggests this installment will fit into a longer form.
The original name for Star Trek was going to be ‘Wagon Train to the Stars’ and this story feels like that sort of journey, with men, women and children (not necessarily family) homesteaders exploring a new and untrusted territory and trying to work out how they can naturalise into it, to survive and not be rejected by the land, the sky and carnivorous beasties. It’s a voyage into ‘the Wide’, as the characters call it, the blue yonder of old, so paint yer wagon and herd the critters. Can they do it? Can they survive when even their own kind are resistant to change. In another sense, can these technological folk return to nature when their technological support fails and rusts, as it has to eventually? Taking a step backwards in tech is hard, particularly for those who have lost the knowledge because they never thought it would be useful to anyone again – the same reasoning behind me never bothering to learn how to knap flint.
I would normally classify this as a 3 star story, well told and plodmanlike, imaginative enough to avoid negative comments and so on, but what elevates it with a jolt is the inventive vocabulary. Just as many writers have done before her, Judy has assumed that language will have morphed and twisted in a few hundred years from now as it is a living tool that adapts to the people that use it. Quite correct. The grammar in this story has stayed the same but it would be a step too far to alter that too because it would harm the book’s readability, so another good bit of reckoning. Other writers have tried this method, adding language, particularly with elements of youth gang-slang (Anthony Burgess) but usually the invented words are not credible, just cop-out swear words like ‘frak’ or a string of nonsensical pants like Tolkien’s poems in Elvish. Judy’s dialect words are really good and very credible. Really good. I can imagine feeling comfortable (not ludicrous) saying I shouldn’t vetch (currently: “a widely distributed scrambling herbaceous plant of the pea family, which is cultivated as a silage or fodder crop”) as it’s a better use for the word than our time’s definition. I might start using it now. Vetch vetch, I love that crunchy sound, like slippers in the snow. Apolz is an obvious contraction, as it pute and lavo, all representing the end of an existing trend of shortening words in our hurried lifestyles (this process has already started in text language), which will presumably become more hurried and words will keep transforming. Then there’s the new plant, animal and object names, the glasses of sillyberry juice (yes please) and children chasing the dragonflitter (sounds fun), running in your gummies and a string of useful alien farm animals (the Earth species all failed to adapt). If the author can keep it realistic, I suggest she should keep going with this language invention because she’s done better than not only Star Trek and A Clockwork Orange (which was good for exploring crime and punishment, not for “blood running red and kroovy”. The more celebrated devotchka, chai and droog don’t even count as invented because they are loan-words) but has also matched the credibility of some of the stuff Lucas Films and Jim Henson invented.
If you don’t mind me going all decimal on you, this is my internal dialogue typing, towards the end I was forming an opinion and thinking a 3.6 value doesn’t deserve to be put down to 3 stars when it’s a more professional piece than that but raising it to 4 stars would need at least another layer, like a twist in the tail. Fortunately, this was provided in the nick of time by a sudden change of direction with a whole bunch of new input, like new characters, spaceships, FTL travel, nanobots, arrested ageing and reconnection with space travel heritage which hinted that the colony had been established on the wrong planet by mistake, which is a splendid way to start but only revealed at the end, all of which had the welcome feel of a fresh rain and oxygen into what was feeling like a fully explored and overly circled pool. The slider in my mind moved up to 3.9 as the new material gave a starting point to the next book. New is healthy and these were the first green shoots of a new phase. Every colony needs to plan for the future.
All in all, a fluid read with a rich diet of invented words and some creatures that I quite like. It’s set up like a part of a greater story, as one person’s life is just a part of their family story, which is a part of the history of their land, which we will find out about in greater detail through sequels. It isn’t at the intense and imagination-exploding level of inventiveness that it would need to be to get a top rating from me but it’s better and much more realistic than a whole swathe of colonial soldier yarns and the weather closing in did make my fingers go cold and stick to the Kindle. Still, mustn’t vetch.
This story is set at a future time when humans have spent one or two hundred years colonising other planets, yet still haven’t mastered the elements on this particular one, which suffers from terrible winters on alternate years, with wind speeds and cold at such a magnitude that even the Viking sagas couldn’t keep up with them. When walls are breached by the gale, people really do get sucked out to their doom, so the colonists rely on cryogenic technology to survive the winters. (Spoiler alert for the next sentence) What doesn’t work too well at this colony is the rule of law, as someone has been selectively tampering with the life support freezers.
Judy Griffith Gill has presented us with soft sci-fi of the children and families type, then spiced up the plot with psychic awakenings, murderous deeds and officials who don’t have their hearts in the right places. Survival is another strong theme, combined with parenting and protection. The pace is not fast but that’s good sometimes as you need time to soak in the atmosphere and believe it, slowly compiled drama, lengthy and solid like the early sagas, which the structure and open system setting that already suggests this installment will fit into a longer form.
The original name for Star Trek was going to be ‘Wagon Train to the Stars’ and this story feels like that sort of journey, with men, women and children (not necessarily family) homesteaders exploring a new and untrusted territory and trying to work out how they can naturalise into it, to survive and not be rejected by the land, the sky and carnivorous beasties. It’s a voyage into ‘the Wide’, as the characters call it, the blue yonder of old, so paint yer wagon and herd the critters. Can they do it? Can they survive when even their own kind are resistant to change. In another sense, can these technological folk return to nature when their technological support fails and rusts, as it has to eventually? Taking a step backwards in tech is hard, particularly for those who have lost the knowledge because they never thought it would be useful to anyone again – the same reasoning behind me never bothering to learn how to knap flint.
I would normally classify this as a 3 star story, well told and plodmanlike, imaginative enough to avoid negative comments and so on, but what elevates it with a jolt is the inventive vocabulary. Just as many writers have done before her, Judy has assumed that language will have morphed and twisted in a few hundred years from now as it is a living tool that adapts to the people that use it. Quite correct. The grammar in this story has stayed the same but it would be a step too far to alter that too because it would harm the book’s readability, so another good bit of reckoning. Other writers have tried this method, adding language, particularly with elements of youth gang-slang (Anthony Burgess) but usually the invented words are not credible, just cop-out swear words like ‘frak’ or a string of nonsensical pants like Tolkien’s poems in Elvish. Judy’s dialect words are really good and very credible. Really good. I can imagine feeling comfortable (not ludicrous) saying I shouldn’t vetch (currently: “a widely distributed scrambling herbaceous plant of the pea family, which is cultivated as a silage or fodder crop”) as it’s a better use for the word than our time’s definition. I might start using it now. Vetch vetch, I love that crunchy sound, like slippers in the snow. Apolz is an obvious contraction, as it pute and lavo, all representing the end of an existing trend of shortening words in our hurried lifestyles (this process has already started in text language), which will presumably become more hurried and words will keep transforming. Then there’s the new plant, animal and object names, the glasses of sillyberry juice (yes please) and children chasing the dragonflitter (sounds fun), running in your gummies and a string of useful alien farm animals (the Earth species all failed to adapt). If the author can keep it realistic, I suggest she should keep going with this language invention because she’s done better than not only Star Trek and A Clockwork Orange (which was good for exploring crime and punishment, not for “blood running red and kroovy”. The more celebrated devotchka, chai and droog don’t even count as invented because they are loan-words) but has also matched the credibility of some of the stuff Lucas Films and Jim Henson invented.
If you don’t mind me going all decimal on you, this is my internal dialogue typing, towards the end I was forming an opinion and thinking a 3.6 value doesn’t deserve to be put down to 3 stars when it’s a more professional piece than that but raising it to 4 stars would need at least another layer, like a twist in the tail. Fortunately, this was provided in the nick of time by a sudden change of direction with a whole bunch of new input, like new characters, spaceships, FTL travel, nanobots, arrested ageing and reconnection with space travel heritage which hinted that the colony had been established on the wrong planet by mistake, which is a splendid way to start but only revealed at the end, all of which had the welcome feel of a fresh rain and oxygen into what was feeling like a fully explored and overly circled pool. The slider in my mind moved up to 3.9 as the new material gave a starting point to the next book. New is healthy and these were the first green shoots of a new phase. Every colony needs to plan for the future.
All in all, a fluid read with a rich diet of invented words and some creatures that I quite like. It’s set up like a part of a greater story, as one person’s life is just a part of their family story, which is a part of the history of their land, which we will find out about in greater detail through sequels. It isn’t at the intense and imagination-exploding level of inventiveness that it would need to be to get a top rating from me but it’s better and much more realistic than a whole swathe of colonial soldier yarns and the weather closing in did make my fingers go cold and stick to the Kindle. Still, mustn’t vetch.
May 10, 2014
“That child,” she declared, “is not Earthly. Terminate it.”
Refuge is a book that catches your attention and doesn't let go until you reach the end. Right from the offset I was hooked. I love futuristic books with a definite dystopic slant. Call it sadistic, but I find it fascinating to read about humans surviving bleak, harsh worlds and cruel, stern societies and Refuge has both.
Set on the planet Storn, sometime in the far future, Refuge drops the reader into a world where humanity has been forced to survive by “Wintersleep”, essentially a comatose state, in stasis chambers for 370 days every so many years. The story opens with Ansel preparing to rescue “talented” children—those born with supernatural abilities—from death simply because they have unearthly traits such as flying or telekinesis. Though she is not the lone narrator of the story, I feel she is the main, driving force behind the plot and a very strong, endearing character. Through Ansel, and the rest of the cast of Refuge, we experience the very basic human reaction to change and how drastically different human reactions—and actions—are. Refuge shows two shades of humanity that stem from the unknown; regarding it with complete disgust and fear, and embracing it with open, eager arms.
The writing is beautiful and heartbreaking, just as the landscape is both cruel and wondrous. I hope everyone and anyone with an interest in science fiction and dystopia will check this one out because it’s certainly worth the read. I'm now waiting eagerly for the next instalment of this series.
Refuge is a book that catches your attention and doesn't let go until you reach the end. Right from the offset I was hooked. I love futuristic books with a definite dystopic slant. Call it sadistic, but I find it fascinating to read about humans surviving bleak, harsh worlds and cruel, stern societies and Refuge has both.
Set on the planet Storn, sometime in the far future, Refuge drops the reader into a world where humanity has been forced to survive by “Wintersleep”, essentially a comatose state, in stasis chambers for 370 days every so many years. The story opens with Ansel preparing to rescue “talented” children—those born with supernatural abilities—from death simply because they have unearthly traits such as flying or telekinesis. Though she is not the lone narrator of the story, I feel she is the main, driving force behind the plot and a very strong, endearing character. Through Ansel, and the rest of the cast of Refuge, we experience the very basic human reaction to change and how drastically different human reactions—and actions—are. Refuge shows two shades of humanity that stem from the unknown; regarding it with complete disgust and fear, and embracing it with open, eager arms.
The writing is beautiful and heartbreaking, just as the landscape is both cruel and wondrous. I hope everyone and anyone with an interest in science fiction and dystopia will check this one out because it’s certainly worth the read. I'm now waiting eagerly for the next instalment of this series.
May 20, 2014
This science fiction story takes place on Planet Storn, which has deadly winters so cold that humans cannot survive. People came to this planet generations earlier to escape from a dying Earth, and they must go into the freeze chambers in the sleep-ships on which they arrived. They call that period “Wintersleep” and it is mandatory for all, even though some don't even survive that.
A group of dissidents, led by Ansel, Trinto, and Doncer, realize that someone or something is terminating some of the children before they awake from Wintersleep, so they band together to try to save themselves and the children. Children that are considered "not earthly" are marked for termination and all records of their existence are expunged. When Ansel figures out what is going on, she enlists the others on this mission to save the extraordinary children.
This is one of the first sci-fi books I have read in a long time, and I had forgotten how much detail a reader needs to retain from chapter to chapter. A new world is filled with strange animals and plants, and then there's all the technical stuff to remember. I think keeping that all straight would have been easier for me had I been able to read the book over a weekend of just reading. In fact, sci-fi fans just might want to do that.
One can easily get caught up in the suspense of whether this band of people will reach Refuge safely and will they be safe once they get there. The central characters are interesting and the descriptions put the reader so far into the story you can feel the chill of the wind and see the strange animals. I thought the "camorses" were most interesting; a cross between a camel and a horse.
A group of dissidents, led by Ansel, Trinto, and Doncer, realize that someone or something is terminating some of the children before they awake from Wintersleep, so they band together to try to save themselves and the children. Children that are considered "not earthly" are marked for termination and all records of their existence are expunged. When Ansel figures out what is going on, she enlists the others on this mission to save the extraordinary children.
This is one of the first sci-fi books I have read in a long time, and I had forgotten how much detail a reader needs to retain from chapter to chapter. A new world is filled with strange animals and plants, and then there's all the technical stuff to remember. I think keeping that all straight would have been easier for me had I been able to read the book over a weekend of just reading. In fact, sci-fi fans just might want to do that.
One can easily get caught up in the suspense of whether this band of people will reach Refuge safely and will they be safe once they get there. The central characters are interesting and the descriptions put the reader so far into the story you can feel the chill of the wind and see the strange animals. I thought the "camorses" were most interesting; a cross between a camel and a horse.
November 3, 2019
From a literary standpoint this book has a number of flaws but offers an interesting story line. The editing is dismal and almost makes the book unreadable. I can accept that in anything offered as Kindle Unlimited but a purchased book should have more attention paid to simple things like pagination, spacing and repeated or missing words.
The characters were fairly well developed and the plot plausible. There was less action and considerably more philosophical discussion than I would like to have seen.
From the standpoint of social commentary, it becomes more and more evident as I read that Ms. Gill espouses a staunch feminist stand in her works - to the point of becoming overpowering. Not satisfied to present the reader with strong, powerful, intelligent women heroes; Ms. Gill paints the men as the exact opposite. All women are heroes and the men are villains or impetuous fools. At one point in her second book she states, "Despite many social advances, there are still too many who think all important decisions can only be made by men." Apparently, Ms. Gill is one of them.
The characters were fairly well developed and the plot plausible. There was less action and considerably more philosophical discussion than I would like to have seen.
From the standpoint of social commentary, it becomes more and more evident as I read that Ms. Gill espouses a staunch feminist stand in her works - to the point of becoming overpowering. Not satisfied to present the reader with strong, powerful, intelligent women heroes; Ms. Gill paints the men as the exact opposite. All women are heroes and the men are villains or impetuous fools. At one point in her second book she states, "Despite many social advances, there are still too many who think all important decisions can only be made by men." Apparently, Ms. Gill is one of them.
May 15, 2016
"Chief, one of the children can fly." The Chief of Committeeviews a zip of a little boy, levitating and says, "That child is Unearthly. Terminate it." On the planet Storn, humanity's last hope, nearly everything that's been termed "Unearthly" has been eradicated. But children with special talents? A few desperate people think "No!" They want to save those kids, aged from 3 to 15, but the only time they can do it is at the beginning of a vicious, 53 week long winter season. At that time, everyone's supposed to return and enter crystasis, cared for by servos until being revived in the spring. By hacking into the main computer, the Group makes it look like everyone's accounted for. Only, everyone's not. The Group dares not go into the cryotanks because mysterious deaths have occurred over the past few winters, blamed on equipment failure. They know different. Too many of those who failed to awaken were involved in the secret plot to escape. As winter sweeps in freezing the whole world the Group must risk spiriting the special children to the Refuge they've built, a place they can only hope will let them live through the year of dark and cold.
Ms Griffith Gill's clever plotting, entertaining characters, and descriptive writing make this novel a real pleasure to read. I can't wait for the sequel she hints at when an unexpected newcomer enters the picture at the end and says, "Have I got a story for you!" That's definitely a story I want to hear.
Ms Griffith Gill's clever plotting, entertaining characters, and descriptive writing make this novel a real pleasure to read. I can't wait for the sequel she hints at when an unexpected newcomer enters the picture at the end and says, "Have I got a story for you!" That's definitely a story I want to hear.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews