Kingdom of Cages by Sarah Zettel
Aspect/Warner Books - August 2001
ISBN: 0-446-52491-3 - Hardcover
Adult Science Fiction
Violence

Reviewed by Jo Rogers, MyShelf.com
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Pandora was a perfect world for human colonization, as near to Earth as had been found. Her colonists, twenty-four families, decided to keep her safe from the things that had destroyed Earth, so they built domed cities, one per family, and left the rest of Pandora in its natural state. They implanted computer chip "Consciences" in their brains to bond them to their families and the city-mind, the Artificial Intelligence that ran the city and helped them study their world.

Elsewhere, on the worlds that didn't match Earth as well, the colonists faced crop failures, diseases they could not combat, and birth defects from food and water and air their bodies couldn't assimilate. They sent a delegation to Earth for help, and inadvertently brought a plague that almost wiped out the ones from which they needed help. They couldn't go home either.

Desperate, they forced Pandora to accept some refugees which lived in fenced villages outside the dome and restricted their access to the wilderness. Pandora sought a genetic cure for the "Diversity Crisis," and for that, they sought the perfect genetic specimen. They found three in Helice Trust and her daughters, but couldn't force them to participate in the experiments... Or could they? And would the cure be the death of all but the hothousers?

KINGDOM OF CAGES is an all-too-realistic look at the dangers we will face when we do move into space, and the lengths some will go to keep others from intruding on "their" space. We will also see that what is right or wrong may depend on the degree of insanity of your computer programmer! Pick up this well-written tale of the future and enjoy!