Earth Girl by Janet Edwards

Published: March 5th 2013 By: Pyr

Genres: Young-Adult, Science-Fiction, Dystopia

Format: Kindle Book Source: Library My Rating: 4 Stars

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2788. Only the handicapped live on Earth. Eighteen-year-old Jarra is among the one in a thousand people born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Sent to Earth at birth to save her life, she has been abandoned by her parents. She can’t travel to other worlds, but she can watch their vids, and she knows all the jokes they make. She’s an “ape,” a “throwback,” but this is one ape girl who won’t give in.

Jarra makes up a fake military background for herself and joins a class of norms who are on Earth for a year of practical history studies excavating the dangerous ruins of the old cities. She wants to see their faces when they find out they’ve been fooled into thinking an ape girl was a norm. She isn’t expecting to make friends with the enemy, to risk her life to save norms, or to fall in love.

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REVIEW

I had never come across this book until about a month or so ago, on another blog. After browsing my library’s ebooks, I decided to go ahead and read it. So glad that I did, because it is truly a great story! I have the second book on hold, so hopefully I will be getting that soon.

 Earth Girl is not exactly unique, but it is one of the more world centered dystopias that I’ve read. I loved everything about the different sectors. What better names to give them, than the names of university social organizations? Beta, Alpha, Epsilon, etc… are just a few that captured my attention right away. Not everyone can survive on these different planets, Jarra being one of them.

Jarra is what the “normal” people refer to as an “ape”. Her immune system is not equipped to handle living off world. She has her friends and her ProParents – well, her ProMom – so why would she want to be around a bunch of exos? She longs to be a historian, and she wants to broaden her education by attending University Asgard. She devises a plan to present herself as a Military Kid, and hoping that it all works out. Once at Uni Asgard, it’s apparent that her instructor is prepared to make her out herself to the rest of the class. JMK (Jarra Military Kid) is not to be messed with. He wants to put her on blast, she’ll give him a reason to think again. She nails everything that he asks of her. In fact, my only problem is how perfect she is. While I was reading, I thought of her as being like Kanye West, all pompous and rude. But, she actually wasn’t. She was just so excited about going on digs, and she’s already trained. Not one other student was as prepared as Jarra.

She went in with plans to hate the other students, simply because they live the life that she wishes she could have. It soon dawns on her that these are some really nice people, and she should treat them as such. I love her relationship with Fian. He was so unsure of himself in the beginning, but was just as passionate as Jarra about history. It took me a while to get used to all the slang for this world. Words like “Amaz” and “Zan” are used quite often. And let’s not forget, “Oh Chaos!”. I was seriously like, what the hell? But, it grew on me.

Again, the world building here is very creative. The history of how everything came to be is very detailed, and I love how the dig sites uncover prehistoric artifacts. This is the year 2788, so prehistoric to them is how we live now and a little more into the future. I was able to visualize certain things that were described by Jarra’s thoughts, and I can totally see this world that she’s a part of. There’s no cliff hanger, but I am so curious about the next book. What happens after the ceremony? What does the future hold for Jarra now the she knows her family’s history? I have a feeling things are about to get real interesting. Definitely recommend.