Karin Lowachee's debut novel is the engrossing story of a young boy's coming of age amid interstellar war a riveting saga in the tradition of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. The merchant ship Mukudori encompasses the whole of eight-year-old Jos's world until a notorious pirate destroys the ship slaughters the adults and enslaves the children. Thus begins a desperate odyssey of terror and escape that takes Jos beyond known space to the home of the strits Earth's alien enemies. To survive the boy must become a living weapon and a master spy. But no training will protect Jos in a war where every hope might be a deadly lie and every friendship might hide a lethal betrayal. And all the while he will face the most grueling trial of his life... becoming his own man.
