Hullmetal Girls by Emily Skrutskie (review)

For three centuries a fleet of starships from Earth has cruised the galaxy in search of a habitable planet to replace their homeland. What started as a democratic undertaking has, over the years, ossified into a classist society, its hierarchy determined by each ship’s function and location among the fleet’s seven tiers. Policing daily activity, and on call as a military force should intergalactic need eventually arise, are the Scela, citizens who have volunteered or been coerced into surgical transformation into cyborgs with hyperpowered bodies and linked thought processes, all under the ultimate control of the fleet commander. Among the new Scela recruits are a foursome of trainees, three of whom were pressured to accept this altered life and one of whom can’t remember how she got there. Their backstories become pertinent when a routine assessment exercise discloses the existence of a planet whose habitability has been suspected by top leadership, who have kept it secret to preserve their own power. There’s a rebellion afoot, though, and the Scela are up to their bionic necks in subterfuge as each side uses the other to advance a cause. The star turn here belongs to the Scela exorig, the fictional hardware that Skrutskie has honed to near perfection. With human will working in concert with the enhancements, character matters as much as technology, slight mechanical flaws advance team cohesion or threaten doom, and physical prowess forces the teen Scela—particularly rivals Aisha and Key, the nexus of the drama—to decide what their roles will be in the inevitable new social order.