Inventive sci-fi with a big heart
It’s the year 3430, an age where interstellar travel is routine and rebuilding a severed limb is as ordinary as resetting a bone. Humanity believes it has mastered its future, yet on the fringes, there lurks a psychological, nearly invisible enemy intent on consuming everything we’ve built.
At sixteen years old, the world feels like it is full of possibilities: careers, relationships, figuring out the world as it quickly changes. For some children, however, that future is stripped away all based on one single thing: their Aptitude score test.
The term test, though, fails to capture the reality. It’s an institutional sorting mechanism that determines your fate with absolute finality. If a child happens to have high Aptitude, which is the ability to perceive MeTron in the alternate dimension where they operate.
MeTron are not your stereotypical aliens, not tall, stalking, and green. Instead, they’re more of a psychological parasite, influencing behavior, causing terror and hallucinations. The children, due to their ability to hunt these beings down, are then taken by the Corps militia and turned into Protectors, usually never to be seen again.
That is, until the publishing of The Thousand Years War, a novel that narrates not just what happened to these children but that followed one exceptional child in particular: Bao Singh, a Protector’s Guard who lands on the planet Prime to begin an undercover assignment.
He’s initially weak, unhappy, and unengaged with the work. His task, to mingle in the planet’s high society to sniff out any enemy influence, is a challenge for the otherwise introverted, serious Bao. He meets Jeremy, the son of a popular socialite and boyfriend to a controversial, arrogant playwright. They hit it off, and when Jeremy’s relationship goes awry, they begin dating.
As their love tenderly blossoms, the MeTron begin wilting away human life. Through a series of terrifying assignments to hunt down the enemy, Bao realizes that he must utilize his high Aptitude and become the Protector of not just his family but the planet.
Sacrifices is ambitious and fearless, speeding past other sci-fi novels with grand, original ideas. The meta-narrative—the book about a book—presents a fascinating vision of the history of the world, and the MeTron come with unique psychological powers I haven’t really encountered before.
Characters span a wide range of races, religions, genders, and sexualities, coexisting without friction or tokenism. The main set of characters don’t always get along, such as Bao’s coworkers and boss, but their differences are seen as a bonding agent instead of a separator. Bao’s sexuality is still controversial in some corners of the galaxy, but the people who matter to him respond with acceptance and warmth. These moments of representation feel genuine and thoughtfully woven into the world.
Sacrifices strives for for something big—a story about unity, courage, and the power of chosen family—and follows through on it. It’s a neoteric take on the sci-fi worlds you already know and a book worth celebrating for its heart as much as its imagination.
What did you think?