A space colonization story about seeking independence and home rule in the face of corporate greed. Tribal women bind together in a war zone where they are discounted as not important enough to save or keep safe.
Atrium (Seven Beyond) offers another thoughtful, accomplished science-fiction story in the spirit of the genre’s great humanists, this time centered on a doctor who runs an adobe-and-thatch clinic in a remote savannah on the divine planet Dolvia, tending the local tribes and refugees. Eventually, Dr. Greensboro’s choice to stand up to a local authority brandishing a laser pistol at girls results in her being summoned before a magistrate—just one of many incidents feeding her political awakening. Among the others: an abusive doctor, the mistreatment of women in Dolvia’s tribes; a colonizing company run amok; and her bond with Brianna, a mixed-race orphan from a society that won’t allow such a woman to refuse a man’s attentions.Two statements from the novel’s succession of narrators suggest the protagonists’ gripping arcs, as these medical pros move from simply reacting to daring to achieve more sweeping change: “Out here one must select one’s danger,” Dr. Greensboro declares in an early chapter, justifying her decision to arm a wounded boy with a karkar. Much later, facing health crises and systemic abuses, another doctor is bolder still: “Whatever is needed,” Dr. Beecham declares. Dr. Greensboro’s development is affecting and multi-faceted, as she forms bonds with lizard-like gualareps (one of many delightful creations) and fields a marriage proposal.
Atrium pens the hard choices, tense confrontations, and moments of suspense that keep this epic series opener’s pages turning. But what’s most striking is her rich, convincing worldbuilding, as she reveals—with a storyteller’s concision but an anthropologist’s depth—a host of cultures, species, locales, rituals, and beliefs. Feasts and ceremonies are as thrilling as the accounts of deprivation and colonial cruelty are harrowing. A common thread throughout is the tendency of men with power to rob women of their autonomy, giving an urgent edge to Dr. Greensboro’s discovery of her own cause and power.
Takeaway: This knockout series starter finds a rural clinic doctor discovering her cause.
Great for fans of: Ursula K. Le Guin; The Future Is Female: More Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women.
Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: NA
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
