Book Review: Traitor

Title: Traitor

Author: Krista D. Ball

Date: 2017

Quote: "They'd want her to talk about what she'd done, how she'd turned herself in. A collaborator. A traitor."

In an alternate world, similar enough to our own to have had a President Barack Obama in 2012, humanoid aliens were found on Earth and, in 2017, aliens had started a war. In this war the appeals to philosophical ideals relate vaguely to transhumanism. The bottom line is, as usual, Us vs. Them. 

Rebecca had a vague philosophical alignment with the Us when, during a lovers' quarrel, she "betrayed" her girlfriend Katherine. Believing Kat was dead and her parents were still alive, she surrendered to the Them side and accepted a low-level position in Their military service, hoarding her money to buy her way out. Then she finds out that her parents are dead and Kat is alive. 

Rebecca's sexual identity is still evolving. At the alien spaceport where she works, women can and do rape men, and one thing that nudges Rebecca toward overt identification with the Us side is witnessing some Them threaten to torture a man with rape-by-a-woman, but Rebecca still appreciates muscular male arms and shoulders. She's been dating a man for lack of anything better to do. He's easily discarded but, before any possible future reconciliation with Kat, she's also attracted to a male prisoner of war. To find out whom she chooses readers will have to read further volumes in this series.

This is not my genre of fantasy, but some people will look forward to the movie. There's lots of alien swearing rendered by Rebecca's translation device as references to male bodies, lots of violence, and some things blowing up. The movie might even sell.