This is a short story with a kick. Where to start? Wow.
The scene setting and adventures come thick and fast.
Angela Russell is a young offender who gets the chance to
leave detention and work on a submarine facility. Pacific
Ocean coasts are being occasionally ravaged by huge beasts
called kaiju, the biggest of all nicknamed TAIJIKU. Angela
doesn't expect to get to see any, though, given she's on a
research and observation facility.
Wearing an implanted computer chip that marks her out as a
convict, young Angela is the lowest in the food chain
aboard the station. She's got a girlfriend though, Stella,
which makes up for a lot. She's also good at coping with
the offworld Irriganthians who have been living among
Earth
people for a few decades. Angela knows if she keeps her
nose clean, she can get her record restored and find a
better life. But that all gets forgotten when the vast
TAIJIKU swims by the station.
There's strong language, alternative sexuality and prison
life in this tightly-packed short tale, so I would say
it's
for readers seventeen and upwards, though everyone will
make up their own minds as to whether it is their kind of
story. The courage, impact and lessons conveyed in TAIJIKU
make me sincerely hope that Elizabeth Andre will be
writing
more SF in the very near future.
Angela's past is more than a little rocky, and that rocky
path has led her to finish up her juvenile detention
sentence on the Yemaya, an alien underwater ship devoted
to observation and research. Part of its maintenance crew,
at the bottom rung of the status ladder, Angela doesn't
see much excitement forthcoming.
But that was before encountering the fearsome Taijiku or
meeting her crew mate Stella, leaving Angela with a
completely different problem and unable to say which is
the greater challenge: giant sea monsters or falling in
love.
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