Today is my top in the blog tour for Janet Edwards book Earth Girl and Janet has provided a wonderful insight into the main character Jarra!!
Jarra – Earth Girl.
In the year 2788, people live on hundreds
of worlds and travel between them by interstellar portals. At least,
they do if they’re born a norm, but Jarra is one of the Handicapped.
They are the one in a thousand born with a flawed immune system. There’s
only one planet where they can survive, and that’s the abandoned planet
Earth.
Jarra was portalled to Earth at birth to save her life,
rejected by her parents, and raised as a ward of Hospital Earth in a
series of impersonal residences. She’s spent her life watching the
entertainment vids from other worlds. As a small child, she learned that
the children in the vids had families, while she and her friends
didn’t. When she was five years old, she found out she’d been cheated
out of the stars as well. She was one of the Handicapped, one of the
people the norms joked about in their vids and casually called ugly apes
and stupid throwbacks. She still remembers the hurt disbelief she felt
back then.
She’s been angry ever since, refusing to join in the
fantasy games of the other kids, when they dreamed that one day the
unknown parents who abandoned them would want them back. Refusing to
study science or mathematics, because if she can’t be top of the class
then she’s proving all the jokes are right and throwbacks are stupid.
Refusing to be a good little ape and do what Hospital Earth told her.
Now
she’s eighteen, and she’s got a plan to fight back. The norms dump
people like her on Earth so they can forget about them, but she’s going
to make them notice her. She’s going to gatecrash a class of norms, on
Earth to study history and the ruins of the great ancient cities.
Despite all the jokes about smelly, ugly apes, the only difference
between her and a norm is her flawed immune system. All she needs to do
is lie convincingly enough, and her classmates will believe she’s a real
human like them.
Jarra’s spent endless hours scanning books and
vids about the days before interstellar portals, when humanity only
lived on Earth and someone like her would have been normal. She’s spent
every holiday helping excavate old ruins. She’s confident she can be top
of the class and prove to the norms that an Earth girl isn’t just as
good as them but better. She’s certain she’ll enjoy telling them the
truth and yelling her anger at her enemies. She’s sure of everything
until she actually meets the norms.
**NOTE: Sorry I am very late at posting this up!! I thought I had it all sorted but I didn't! My Bad!!
Great post! This book looks really interesting and so does this Jarra character. Also, I'm totally loving the book cover!
ReplyDeleteI'm currently reading it and its quite good. ;)
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