"Perilous Waif (Alice Long)" by E. William Brown
https://www.amazon.com/Perilous-Waif-Alice-William-Brown/dp/1520430574
Book number one of one book space opera science fiction series. I
reread the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) 2 lb (1 kg)
trade paperback that was self published by the author in 2017 that I
bought new from Amazon in 2025. The author has been threatening to
release a sequel to the book since 2019 but no sequel is available yet.
I will purchase the sequel if it is ever released.
Several hundred years in the far future is incredibly different yet
things are still the same. Upon discovery of the four hyperspace bands, humanity has spread to over a million planets, moons, space stations,
etc. But, humans being humans, conflicts are prevalent and forefront to
the trillions of humans across the Milky Way. Piracy is common along
with private armies and highly armed space fleets. Robot warriors of
all types from gnats to thousand ton battle tanks are in common usage. Androids provide the labor that makes things move along. AIs are
everywhere, running everything possible, and even grouped into several
classes of ability.
Alice Long is a 14 year old girl being raised in an orphanage on a
terraformed frontier planet of only females who are all vegetarians.
Most of the planet's human population have been genetically adapted to
be dryads. Alice's orphanage roommate is furry with tails and claws for climbing trees. Unlike most of the population, Alice looks human but underneath, she has many genetic modifications that are growing with her
and starting to come online. Her skeleton and muscles have diamonds in
them for strength and robustness. She has many sensory adaptations for
her eyes, ears, etc. And she has a full AI brain that is taking over management of her body from her human brain. She frequently sneaks out
of the orphanage to hunt and eat raw small predators to get more protein
that her body is starving for.
The Mirai, Japanese for future, are a Japanese descendant race who
totally converted their bodies and brains to artificial beings. They
were very dangerous and expansionary. The rest of humanity built huge
warship space fleets and destroyed the Mirai at great cost. People even spread rumors about how strange and destructive the Mirai were.
The book is highly technical and even explains the technology in detail
in several appendixes. Some reviewers call the girl a Mary Sue but I disagree. Alice is a fully fleshed out character with good days and bad
days. The book does feel kinda like a anime book without the drawings.
I have found the first six chapters of "Merciful Troubleshooter (Alice
Long 2)" at, which requires a free account and login,
https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/merciful-troubleshooter.15081/
My rating: 6 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (4,194 reviews)
Lynn
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