Perilous Waif – E. William Brown

Alice Long is a girl whose biomodifications are extraordinary, even by 25th-century standards. Growing up in an orphanage on a back-to-nature world, she is malnourished. That is, her growth has been stunted because her diet didn’t contain the heavy metals, cybernetic-precursor compounds, and other nutrients needed for her modifications. The modifications she does have make the orphanage too hot for her, and she bargains her way onto a space ship. With access to proper (for the 25th century) resources and education, her modifications go from extraordinary to downright-scary.

The low-tech starting point is a useful plot device, which allows the reader to encounter Alice when she appears to be base-human, and to discover her differences as she does, and to learn about the milieu without making the exposition obvious.

The book is tagged as “Alice Long #1”. Alice Long #1 is worth reading. It has an engaging character who is coming of age and coming into her powers. It has an interesting milieu, which has attained technologies that are foreseeable today, but is still grappling with their social implications. (Should artificial intelligences have rights? What biomodifications count as going too far?) It has a “who is Alice Long?” plot that works. (The reader figures it out in the first half of the book, but story satisfies.) It may be hard to make an Alice Long #2 work, because the character is too powerful at the end of the book: She will either breeze through obstacles or encounter obstacles that are basically plot devices. Or - and this is a hope - a sequel may take place on a larger stage, in which her abilities are just the ante for being able to make a difference to a galaxy at risk.

postscript: I edited the rating from 4 to 5 because, since I wrote the review, I have reread the book more than once.