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Overview
Mars is controlled by the Chinese, who call their civilization the Celestial Empire. But for teenagers Gamine and Huang, it is anything but heavenly. Gamine was taken off the street by an aristocrat, schooled as a fine young lady—then abandoned at her patron’s whim and forced to make her living as a grifter. Huang’s army career is cut short by a bandit ambush. When the two meet, Gamine —“Iron Jaw”—is the leader of a sham religious movement, and Huang, or “Hummingbird,” is the bandits’ chief tactician. They join forces to bring down the corrupt government that has determined their lives. Iron Jaw and Hummingbird offers a planet’s worth of adventure!Editorials
School Library Journal
Gr 8 Up
Like Roberson's adult sci-fi novels, this book is set on 26th-century Mars, which has been colonized by China, Earth's dominant cultural and political force. Rescued from homelessness eight years earlier and educated by a wealthy socialite, Gamine is stunned when, at age 13, she's thrown back onto the streets to fend for herself. The same day, Huang, an 18-year-old underachiever, is commissioned as an army officer and sent to a far-off outpost. As the years pass, each one travels a different path. Gamine reluctantly falls in with a con man and they make their precarious living as grifters. When they eventually form a sham religious movement, she is renamed Iron Jaw for her playacted ability to withstand any blow. Huang's convoy is attacked by a bandit airship and he's taken prisoner; he eventually sides with his captors and becomes Hummingbird, their chief tactician. When the groups join forces to overthrow the corrupt government, the main characters form a spiritual (and sexual) bond. Hummingbird's growth from spoiled playboy to wise leader is well realized, as is Iron Jaw's guilt about scamming people. More thoughtful readers will understand the reasons for the somewhat anticlimactic, philosophical ending. With a well-realized setting, this novel will appeal to teens who like martial arts, adventure, and stories with tactical battles.-Sharon Rawlins, New Jersey State Library, Trenton
Kirkus Reviews
Taken from the streets and educated by a wealthy aristocrat for years as part of a cruel game, orphan Gamine finds herself back on her own at 13. She falls in with a conman and, later, an itinerant preacher. Meanwhile, an 18-year-old reluctant soldier named Huang becomes an even more reluctant bandit when his division is bested by renegades. The two are thrown together, and the movement they lead reshapes the political landscape of a China-controlled 26th-century Mars. Roberson's detached and contemplative narrative spends far too much time setting up only to lead readers to a disappointingly anticlimactic denouement. The milieu is nicely constructed, which stands to reason, as Roberson has written adult novels and stories in this alternate-history future. Patterned on, but not paralleling, the Boxer Rebellion, this would probably work best for lovers of historical fiction who wish to take a small step toward more fantastic material, but SF and martial-arts fans should look elsewhere. An attempted rape and intimations of a sexual relationship between the leads push the age-range up. (Fiction. YA)