Burn Out by Kristi Helvig (review)

Seventeen-year-old Tora knows that it is time to abandon Earth, as most of the remaining population has done, but knowing and actually having the means to do so are not the same thing. Along comes Markus, who suggests that all she has to do is give up her father’s incredibly powerful gun stash and he’ll fly her to a new planet, but Tora knows that her dad didn’t want the weapons used for harmful ends. After being refused, Markus returns with a crew of mercenaries who are interrupted in their attack on Tora by even more powerful folks who would be happy to see them all dead if it means they get the weapons. The “enemies working together to defeat other enemies” plot is well developed, and the twists are engaging and pleasingly demanding of readerly attention. The conversations about motivations and moral compasses are often awkward and forced, though, and the future setting is disappointingly similar to the present, with little exploration of possibilities of character or even technology. Even so, it’s hard not to care about this scrappy group of characters who all just want to get the heck off Earth without being burned by the superheating sun or destroyed by the seemingly endless number of people who want to profit from that tragedy.