Earth Girl, by Janet Edwards

My little reading heart was just zinging away as I read the first few chapters of Earth Girl, by Janet Edwards (Pyr, 2013 in the US, 2012 in the UK,  YA).  It's about a girl going to college far in the future (650 years) to study to be an archaeologist of Earth's lost past (us)!  I do love books in which people who are actually interested in an academic subject go off and study it, and it is taken seriously and is not just window dressing.  As an archaeologist myself, I tend to be wary of books with contemporary archaeology (because of being easily bothered when details are wrong), but 650 years in the future, one can make allowances, and I was not disappointed at all by how my field is being practiced on a Earth of crumbling skyscrapers in abandoned cities overrun by wolves....

I also found myself liking the main character, 18-year-old Jarra, very much.  Jarra is one of a relative small number of people who are stuck on earth--humanity had gone out into the starts, but some people's bodies just can't handle portal-ing onto alien planets.   Those who left earth look down on "handicapped" people like Jenna, thinking of them as unevolved apes.  And Jarra is pissed off by this.  So to pursue her passion for archaeology while striking an angry blow at those who think she's sub-human, Jarra decides she's not going to an Earthbound college.  She can't travel to another plant, but first year courses in archaeology run by universities from other planets have to come to Earth to get to the dig sites...and so Jenna applies for one of those.  Maybe she won't be able to graduate, but at least, after Showing Them during the first year, she'll have proven that she is just as smart and capable as any other human, even if she is an "ape." 

And so she meets her classmate, thirty or so kids her age from various sectors of the galaxy, and, since Jenna has known she's wanted to be an archaeologist her whole life, and has been going on digs since she was a kid, she starts to prove how knowledgeable and capable she is right from the beginning.  It's a very realistic portrayal of life in an archaeological field school, where one is thrust into close proximity with a group of strangers, required to work like a dog, and with Spartan living conditions.  There are interpersonal tensions, both positive and negative--and Jarra and Fian, a nice boy from the Delta system, start to experience the former.   Here's what's nice about their relationship--they laugh a lot together.  They don't just jump into bed (it's a while before they even kiss), but instead they spend quality time having fun mocking each other's favorite vid shows first, and making each other laugh, and developing a solid foundation of mutual respect for each other's work in the field.

Jarra has created a persona to disguise her true identity--Fian believes the girl he's falling in love with is the Military brat she says she is (the Military keep peace, and clear new planets for settlement).  But Jarra knows that as a "handicapped" Earth girl, she and Fian don't have a future....

But maybe she's wrong....

So, yeah, Fian is a bit too perfectly nice.  And Jarra is a bit too perfectly competent, with just a few too many skills.  And things just happen to work out too neatly and conveniently. But I cheerfully stomped those feelings down as much as possible (though it grew quite hard in the last bit of the book, when everything started coming up roses), because the descriptions of the future archaeologists at work were so cool, and the premise was so fascinating, and so different from the slew of dystopian and paranormal YA sci fi/fantasy!  Here the excitement come from the dangers of the job, and the dangers posed to technology by solar flares; the tension comes from the sociological nuances of this future society, and Jarra's personal fight against prejudice. 

In short, not perfect, but one I enjoyed very much.  The sequel, Earth Star, just came out in the UK, and will be out here in the US in the spring of 2014--I'm looking forward to it!

Here's the review that made me want to read the book, at The Book Smugglers.