Greta and her friends know why they’re hostages, and they know that this system is the only successful way to keep violence minimum out in the struggling world. It’s an emotionally jarring way to dip one’s toes into a story, and sparked a slow burn of conflicted horror in me as I read on. The Scorpion Rules begins with one of Talis’s messengers – a Swan Rider – coming to execute a Child of Peace: a friend of Greta’s.

But if they live to be eighteen, they become rulers and must soon send their own children to be held as insurance. This is how Talis made war personal: anyone who wants to rule must have children, so that in case of war, that child’s life will be forfeit. It’s one of many similar Preceptures scattered around the ravaged globe, where a child of each and every global leader lives as a hostage. They learn not to repeat the mistakes of history. They learn about the ancient Stoics and sustainable development. At the Precepture, hostage children live almost monkish lives, farming and receiving a rigorous education. She lives at a Precepture somewhere in what was once Canada. She is also the Duchess of Halifax and Crown Princess of the Pan Polar Confederacy. So, as it says in the Holy Utterances of Talis, Book One, Chapter One: being a meditation on the creation of the Preceptures and the mandate of the Children of Peace : (“Because no one’s gonna miss that” – did I mention that Talis was a snide S.O.B.?)īut blowing up cities wasn’t a good long-term solution. Want to start a war or accept a declaration, even in defense of your own border? There goes Fresno. He started by blowing up cities every time a country declared war. Talis keeps relative peace across the globe. But then the UN turned control over to an Artificial Intelligence known as Talis.

There was lots of war in the beginning: fighting for space and fighting for fertile ground. And bloody devastating.įour hundred years after the ice caps melted and the fresh water became scarce, the newly shaped countries have pretty much stopped fighting. The Scorpion Rules gives me hope that sharp tongued AI and barely-sustainable futures can feel new.

Captive children under oppressive rule, world-dominating Artificial Intelligence, and post-ecological meltdown politics usually tire me out but… damn. This book came out of nowhere to knock me down. (Sorry for the overly long review, folks, but this book took up a LOT of real estate in my brain this weekend.) (Swearing, violence, mild sexuality.)īe it known that I read an advanced copy of this book and some details may change before publication in late September.

The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow