Debris Dreams

Drusilla Xao, a girl raised on a space station, lives in a in a time where the crowded Earth must mine resources from asteroids and the moon. When the Moon secedes from Earth with an act of violent terrorism to an elevator rising into the stratosphere, Drusilla loses her parents and is conscripted into the oncoming war. Originally hailed as a hero for standing up to injustice, she finds herself accused of treason instead after refusing her general's criminal order. Carefully lulling readers into false complacency, Colby devotes much of the book to Drusilla's life and training as she bonds with her fellow recruits - normal adolescents obsessed with sex and personal squabbles. Drusilla herself, meanwhile, pines for her long distance girlfriend Sarah on far away Earth, who she may never see again. This makes it all the more shocking when they're ordered to commit a war crime using vicious illegal weapons, and some of her friends agree. Appealingly reminiscent of an updated Heinlein juvenile, it's a story of wartime bravery, principles and self-sacrifice. (November)