Cagebird

By Karin Lowachee

     Karin Lowachee returns with a third volume in her series that began with Warchild. She began telling the story to show what happens to children during wartime. Cagebird continues that story from the viewpoint of yet another victim of Marcus Falcone.

     Yuri Terisov was only four when the aliens attacked his home. He got separated from his mother and younger brother, but with the help of a teenager, he found his father and little sister. The world that they had lived on had been destroyed, so the three of them were sent to a refugee camp called Colonial Grace. At the camp, there was very little for the refugees. There was scarcely enough food or water on a world that had not been completely terraformed. The lake that lay near the camp was poisonous. They were completely dependent on shipments from Hub Central for survival.

     For Yuri, there was little to keep him busy. He began to skip school. It was there that he met Bo-Sheng, a young boy a little older than Yuri. He and Yuri would play around the lake, skipping stones across the water and talking or smoking the cigarettes that Bo-Sheng gave him. It was also Bl-Sheng who came and got Yuri when the shuttle landed. Yuri was ten years old at the time, and Bo-Sheng was twelve. At that time, leaving the camp with Marcus Falcone was a grand adventure. Being chosen as Falcone's protégé meant a lot to Yuri. But, until he was thirteen, Yuri did not know all of what that meant.

     Cagebird is another fantastic look into the hazards of being a child in wartime. It is also the story of how a life can be destroyed by one man's ambition. Too, it is the story of how warped people can become when they want a war to continue no matter the cost.