Neither thumbs up nor thumbs down for Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin. Science fiction.
Not bad. Not great either. The cover copy sells it as a survival story (fourteen-year-old dropped on a random planet to prove herself and earn the right of adulthood) but that’s really only the last section of the book, and it’s a bit of a let-down once we get there. Mostly, it’s a buildungsroman of a girl who grows up on a generation ship. The narrator, Mia, is a well-drawn character – a very human combination of shyness and boldness – but not so memorable that I could remember her name off the top of my head. Might be a good way to kill some hours but you can probably do better.
It left me there, the Compleat Young Girl, hell on wheels. I could build one-fifteenth of a log cabin, kill one thirty-first of a tiger, kiss, do needlepoint, pass through an obstacle course, and come pretty close (in theory) to killing somebody with my bare hands. What did I have to worry about?
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