Although I was initially very excited for this book, I'm sad to say it just didn't live up to my expectations. There were aspects I definitely enjoyed, but overall the books just seemed pretty bland and repetitive of a bunch of previous books. (The fact that the different ships are each called "Districts" and the farther away from the main ship that the District is, the poorer that District is... I mean, we've seen this exact thing before, haven't we?)

I thought the cyborg parts of the book were excellent, and honestly I would have loved for the author to delve deeper into that. Perhaps give us more world building around that? A bit heavier emphasis on the "science" part of science fiction would have made my curious scientist brain happy, I think. Can we know more about where the metal for Scela came from? Is it even metal, is it it's own alien life force...? None of this was ever really clear.

The main characters were okay. I loved the diverse representation, especially in terms of one of the character's religion, because I felt this truly added something to the book. However, in terms of LGBTQIA representation, I kind of felt like someone had simply checked something off a list, since this was only mentioned on one page and then really didn't even play a role in the story. And no, not everything has to play a major role in a story- but it almost felt as if the characters just spontaneously burst out their sexual orientations in order to be able to force this into the story, and not to add anything to the plot. 

Also, the two main characters themselves seemed pretty generic, and very similar to each other. To the point where I had a difficult time differentiating between them while reading. Additionally, I would have loved for there to be some additional focus/ time spent on Key's character when she undergoes a huge revelation which I won't mention here because spoilers.

Overall, I felt this book was somewhat rushed. Much more world building and character building could have been added, because the premise was excellent and I think the book had great potential. Perhaps spreading everything out into 2 books would have been a better way to build up the tension, and provide more world building and background.

This science fiction story takes place in a fleet of humans looking for a new home planet. They have been searching for 301 years. During this time the fleet has divided itself into seven castes of varying prosperity. The book is told alternately by Aisha and Key. 

Aisha is from the seventh tier which is the lowest caste. She has been working as a janitor to support her younger sister and brother since her parents' deaths. Now her young brother has caught the plague which can be treated but costs a lot of money. In order to provide treatment for him, Aisha decides to become a Scela for the higher paycheck. The Scela are the peacekeepers in the fleet and are remade with mechanical parts. It is a desperate option but Aisha doesn't have any other. She's doing it for her family. She leaves her sister with her mother's sister Yasmin. Yasmin is supposed to keep her out of the dyeworks where many in her tier work and die.

Key is from the first tier where the rulers and rich people live. She wakes to find that she is now Scela and has no idea why she made that choice. She has large gaps in her memory about her life and her past. 

The two girls and two other new Scela become a squad and go through basic training to learn to use their new bodies. They have ups and downs as they learn to integrate the machine intelligence that is now part of them. On Aisha's first leave, she and Key are allowed to go back to her home ship to check up on her family. There Aisha finds out the her sister is working in the dyeworks, her brother has been sent to the plague ship for treatment, and her aunt is part of the underground Fractionists who are rebelling against the leaders of the fleet and who believe that they would have a better chance of finding a new planet if they fleet split up. Aisha, very reluctantly, gets involved with the Fractionists because she is being coerced by her aunt in return for better treatment for her sister.

Meanwhile, both girls are seeing things that lead them to believe that the leaders are so eager to hold onto power that they are passing up planets that could be settled. Key also begin to learn some of the things that were blocked from her memory which I had already figured out. 

This was an engaging and exciting science fiction story. The characters were well drawn and the world building was intriguing.

Skrutskie, Emily. Hullmetal Girls. Delacorte, 2018.

Aisha works as a janitor to support her brother and sister, but when her brother contracts the plague, she sends her siblings to live with her aunt and volunteers herself to become a scela, a cyborg bodyguard who works for The General Body. This won't earn her enough to move her family from the seventh ward up to the first, but it may be enough to save her brother's life. After Aisha's transition, she is placed with three other scela as a training group. Each is trying to keep secrets from the others, but when they uncover a hidden agenda during their training mission, they will have work together and trust each other to survive.

If you were to take The Hunger Games and set it in space on a fleet of ships filled with humans and Borg from Star Trek, you'd have Hullmetal Girls. I love the concept as a whole. I love the setting in space, three hundred years after humanity has left Earth behind. The scela transition was intriguing to me, and I enjoyed the political intrigue as well as learning about the different levels of their society.

However, the team Aisha is part of is a four-member team, and we really only learn about two of those people. Aisha and Key narrate this book, so we hear their perspectives on things and learn about the two of them, but it feels like the other two team members weren't really there. The book is even called Hullmetal Girls, yet there is also a male member of their team whom we barely get to know. 

There is plenty of intersectional diversity in this book, although I am guessing that race isn't as much of an issue after three hundred years in space. One of the team members describes himself as pansexual, another member is transgender, and Aisha describes herself as aro/ace (we don't learn what Key's sexuality is, although it is mentioned that she had a boyfriend at one point). This isn't a coming out story, though; rather, the teens are fighting against the corrupt society and attempting to take down an evil leader, while also trying to save as many of their friends and family as possible. 

The premise of this book is intriguing; however, the plot is fairly predictable, and the latter half of the book was so similar to every teen dystopia I've ever read that I found my mind wandering. That being said, this will be a popular book with teens who are science fiction fans.

Recommended for: teens
Red Flags: violence, some language
Overall Rating: 4/5 stars

Read-Alikes: Ender's Game, Old Man's War, The Hunger Games, Red Rising

 

I received a complimentary copy of this book through Netgalley for the purpose of review.

I was super ready to love this: angry cyborg girls, space, queer characters?! Sign me up!

Alas. I have basically read this book before. It’s pretty much Hunger Games, without the literal games, in space. See also: An Unkindness of Ghosts.

The thing about space books is I love them so much, but my standards are also v v v v high as a result.  I liked the initial premise of this book a whole lot - but felt really let down in the delivery unfortunately.

First up, if you were here for queer characters, well, I hope you like your queer content kept to exactly 1 page, because that’s what’s up. Someone literally says, “I’m aroace” and someone else says, “I’m pansexual” and fin.  Ok, there is also a trans character, but this is also v v v background. I mean, I don’t need my queer characters to be queer on every page, but this was...very check-boxy. Queer content? Check.

Second, it almost felt like the author couldn’t decide whose POV we should really have, so she just included both. And the bummer about that is that the characters are so similar (or are at least now in their lives are having such similar experiences) that they were seriously indistinguishable sometimes. I had to literally check the chapter name to remember whose POV we were in this time. It shouldn’t be that hard with 2 characters, and yet.

Third, I guess I’m just suuuuuuuper bored of the Evil Empire storyline. I want something new! Is it so hard to have an antagonist that isn’t the shady, conspiracy-loving government? Y’all, THAT IS LITERALLY OUR REALITY RN, AND I’M READING TO ESCAPE IT!!! 

And the thing is, the two antagonists were so...boring. Like, I guess the banality of evil, etc etc etc but zzzzzzz. Also extremely President Snow and Alma Coin, like down to the wire. Even some of the plot points of their evil, just. So much.

Did I mention that the spaceships they are on function like districts from HG? Cuz that’s also a thing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

The cyborg parts of the book were kind of horrifying at first but then interesting - I just wish they had been more interesting. There were so many events of convenience that just felt lazy. 

Again, wanted to love it, I really did. Sorry it wasn’t for me.

<i>Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Children’s for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review. This did not influence my review in any way. </i>

Hullmetal Girls turned out to much differently than I expect. The thought put into the Scela design, how the tech interacts with a person’s mind and how it influences them, this was huge. You could see the amount of thought that the author put into that integration. 

If you need an angst fix, along with sci-fi, this will do it for you. Both Aisha and Key faced tragedy in their lives, before and after becoming Scela. As they learned their new roles, it became clearer that there was more to why they were still flying through space trying to find an inhabitable planet to house them. 

The one thing that was disappointing was how much was spent on developing Aisha and Key but that amount of care wasn’t given to the end of the plot. Overall it was decent but I wish it had a little bit more.

Emily Skrutskie's Hullmetal Girls is what I've been wanting to see from YA science fiction for what feels like forever! A lot of the "science fiction" YA books I've read in the last several years have been more science fantasy, or they've been shelved in the adult science fiction/fantasy section, which can keep titles out of view of their targeted audiences. And I'm happy to say that I absolutely LOVED Hullmetal Girls.

Emily calls it her "standalone sci-fi Battlestar/Pacific Rim/Sens8/Snowpiercer frolic affectionately known as Cyborg Space Jam" and in addition to loving the premise of it before, seeing her own blurb of it made me want to read it even more. It definitely lives up to that tagline, and I also can't tell you how much I love that it's a standalone. I sometimes feel a little burnt out on series, so knowing that this is it for these characters made me get that much more invested in the story.

Hullmetal Girls will make you think about bodies, about the role of bodies and physical forms in society versus what's going on in your mind or someone else's (or, daresay, a collective), and about challenges and consequences do to the spirit before, during, and after action or inaction. I loved that the cyborg aspect had a little bit of alien/artificial intelligence thrown in and that the body modifications ended up being more of a symbiosis kind of meld rather than the body merely being a host for the implants and modifications.

If you liked Kameron Hurley's The Stars Are Legion (which, SPOILER ALERT, that's one of my favorite science fiction books ever), Hullmetal Girls is something you need to add to your TBRs immediately because the styles and themes are very much riding on the same wavelengths. RIGHT NOW! Go preorder it! I'm buying myself a physical copy too!

"Hullmetal Girls" eBook was published in 2018 (July) and was written by Emily Skrutskie (http://skrutskie.com). Ms. Skrutskie has published three books. 

I categorize this novel as ‘R’ because it contains scenes of Violence and Mature Language. The story is set in the far future. All that is left of the Human race is aboard a fleet of ships that have been looking for a new home for centuries. The primary characters are young Aisha Un-Haad and Key Tanaka. un-Haad is willing to do anything to save her family. Tanaka doesn't remember how or why she is a Scela. 

Un-Haad is willing to do anything to save her family. Tanaka doesn't remember how or why she is a Scela. Un-Haad, on the other hand, volunteered to become a Scela. The Scela are the fleet's enhanced and mechanized soldiers, no longer merely human. Un-Haad sacrificed herself to try and save her little sister and brother. Being new Scela means that they must work hard to get a good assignment. That is the only way that Un-Haad will be able to help her family survive in the rigidly structured fleet society.

She and Tanaka soon find that there is much that has been hidden from them. Much that is hidden from the general population. Their loyalties to the Fleet government begin to waver. Will those in charge ever let a new homeworld be found?

I thought that this was an interesting read of 8.5 hours for this 320 page science fiction novel. All of the primary characters are young women in this story. I would say that it would be something appropriate for Young Adults. The author put together an unusual universe for the story to play out in. I liked the cover art. I give this novel a 3.8 (rounded up to a 4) out of 5.  

Further book reviews I have written can be accessed at https://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/. 

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).

<blockquote><i>”Humanity will die in the stars.”</i></blockquote> Hoooo boy. So I have this thing that I do where I hype up a book so much in my mind before reading, and then when I read it and it’s not <b>exactly what I pictured</b> I end up hating it and giving it two stars. This book was nothing like what I expected – and yet I still loved it. I loved it so much. And that is a feat in and of itself. <i>Hullmetal Girls</i> is a unique, chilling narrative with so many subliminal messages that, together, conduct a deep and gritty examination of <b>consent</b>, tyranny, and <b>what it means to be human.</b> 

First things first – <b>nothing is black and white in this story</b>. The organizations, the dueling sides of this story, and the people who are a part of them are full of some messed-up people who will do what they need to do to get what they want, and that makes it so awesome to read. The characters at the forefront of this novel – Aisha, Key, Praava, and Woojin – are all flawed and human, despite not being entirely human physically. 

What really stood out in this novel was <b>character strengths</b>, especially in Aisha and Key. Though I don’t think the dual narratives were handled in the best way, I was intrigued by Key’s background and felt for Aisha and the struggles life has put her through. The two are two sides of the same coin, one coming from nothing and the other coming from everything, and their friendship??? BINCH I CRY EVERYTIME. I LIVE FOR THIS. HATE TO FRIENDSHIP IS MY LIFE. 

Though Praava, Woojin, and the other main characters weren’t as developed as Aisha and Key, I still enjoyed reading about them. Another fave of mine was Marshal Jesuit, who is just a full-grade badass. I respect her and I love her. 

Also, catch me assigning Hogwarts houses to all the main characters in my head (Praava, the Marshal and Aisha are Slytherins. Woojin is a Hufflepuff. Key is a Gryffindor. I will fight anyone on this). 

Also can we talk about the rep in this book???? bc we so should??? In this novel we have: 
<blockquote> - an aroace mc
-	a pan mc
-	a trans girl mc
-	literally no one is white
-	three of the four main crew are women, and most of the secondary characters are women as well</blockquote> 
<b>HELL yeah.</b> Also God is established as using she/her pronouns. <i>God</i>.

I super enjoyed the world-building in this one as well – I never tire of shit in space. Literally give me a book in space and I’ll cry and definitely read it. And this concept was so cool!! Humanity destroyed Earth and has been roaming the galaxy for centuries looking for a new planet…. AND THERE’S CYBORG SUPER SOLDIERS…. And an informal caste system…. If you’re not interested yet why not?? 

The writing was stunning, and I had a plethora of quotes to choose from. However, the plot was still easy to follow. The plot itself was okay. The concept behind it, as said before, was amazing, but I feel like it could have been better executed.  

Every time there was a void jump – I immediately lost interest. It took me, like, three days to get through the first void jump scene and I think it’s because the rest of the book was easy to picture in my mind, but jumping through outer space? I just couldn’t see it. And that made me not want to keep reading. 

I also thought the climax of the story was a bit cheap – if it was supposed to be the climax?? <spoiler> For those who’ve read it – I’m referencing the part where the Chancellor orders the scela to kill the rebels and the bracelet doesn’t work.</spoiler> I thought it was so bland and so boring. The middle of the book was so intense and then the last time the tension went up was just, like, so much less intense than the middle of the story, and that soured the ending a bit for me.

However, though the plot itself had its faults, the writing and the characters in this novel <b>fully make up for it</b>. The overarching themes of consent, the tyranny-liberty cycle, and the inevitable corruptness of those in charge are done beautifully. I would recommend this novel to any scifi fans, as well as those who love reading about corrupt governments and interesting, diverse characters. 

<b><u>Book trigger warnings: body horror. So much body horror</u></b>

<i>I was provided an eARC through NetGalley in exchange for a complete and honest review.</i>

I really enjoyed this book. Emily Skrutskie is now a favorite author of mine and I loved how original this story was. I highly recommend it.

Unfortunately, Hullmetal Girls just didn’t live up to my hopes.

I loved the mecha aspect of everything.  The author put such thought into her cyborgs – the way the mecha merged with the human, and some of the ways in which it really didn’t.

But our Girls were kind of…bland.   They were so…so…angsty/introspective most of the time.  (And, BTW, I hated our Hullmetal Boy.)

The worldbuilding was a little slow for my taste.  It took forever for me to really even understand the main point of the plot.  And, unfortunately, we kind of get into trite YA territory rage against get evil government oh thank god our girl(s) is the ONE (or in this case the TWO).

I just wanted a little more.

So, the mecha kicks butt.  But it needed a little more of everything else.

Hullmetal Girls is a bit hard to read especially at the beginning, but it is totally worth it to push through and keep reading. There are not a lot of sff books out there with aromantic asexual characters, and that this science-fiction book has one and she uses the words on the page is great. There was a lot of on the page sexuality, and I loved that. This book was great, and I really liked all the diversity among the main four.

Emily Skrutskie’s Hullmetal Girls is an excellent science fiction novel about two young women, Aisha and Key, who have been made into technology-enhanced soldiers (Scela). Their mission as Scela is to protect the interests of the General Body, the leaders of a group of ships that have been looking for a hospitable planet since the destruction of Earth 300 years ago. Factions in opposition of the General Body believe there may be better ways to find a new homeland. A rebellion is brewing, which may or may not be linked to the Scela in Key and Aisha’s four-person team. Class conflicts, family history, and secrets, many secrets, pit all factions against each other and make friends out of enemies. 

I will go on record to say that Hullmetal Girls contains the best descriptions of cyborg integration I have ever read. From the initial surgery to the conflict of wills between the General Body’s orders and the interests of the individual characters, the descriptions are written with great clarity and humanity. The first several chapters are near perfect in setting the tone and establishing the tenor of the novel. In addition to tech enhancements, Skrutskie has written two main characters who are complex, driven, and great role models. 

Overall, Hullmetal Girls is excellent YA fiction. Skrutskie expertly combines three science fictions premises: the military sign-up, the fleet looking for a new home, and the making of a cyborg. The author adds complex characters, twisted conspiracies, and fun action sequences. I wish there was writing like this when I was young. 

Many thanks to NetGalley, Random House Children’s, and Emily Skrutskie for an advanced copy for review.