Jemma 7729 takes place in a future America, where there has been a catastrophic event that has left people living in domed cities because of the "bad air", men are in charge because women are the cause of all kinds of dangerous things, and people are tightly controlled by the government. There are classes of people - the caucasion elite have the best life, and it goes down hill from there. From an early age, people's lives are mapped out for them, and they have a choice of what they will become when they grow...of course, this choice is within the confines of your family's class and standing. There are in fact, not many choices for each class. It's pretty intense and if you don't do your part you are either deleted or sent to rehab.

Most people go on their blissfully ignorant way, believing all they're told, and doing what they're supposed to be doing...after all, if you don't you get taken away and most likely deleted. Except that from an early age, Jemma7729 has asked too many questions and is just a bit too assertive, defending herself against a boy's punches instead of apologising for making him upset enough to punch (OMG I would be SO deleted).

This is the story of the life of Jemma7729 from the time she is five years old. As you can tell from the cover (she's standing there with a GUN! this is NOT allowed) Jemma ends up rebelling against her fate. She narrowly escapes being deleted after finding out that the air outside the dome really is NOT dangerous for women. She escapes and spends many years fighting the status quo.

If you are looking for a HEA ending, you're not going to get here - but you are getting a good read that will make you think. It will make you glad if you're a woman that you live in the present, where you have choices in what you do, and you're not oppressed because you're a woman. I enjoyed reading about how Jemma goes from being a five year old with too many questions to living and fighting outside the dome.

The voice of Jemma is fascinating. The dialogue between characters was interesting. I found myself rooting for Jemma and wanting things to go her way...

The novel kept me engaged for a good 24 hours. I started it one night, read most of the next day, stayed up that night to finish it. I finished it and wanted to find out what happens next. Luckily Phoebe Wray has written a sequel - J2, which will be out soon. I plan to get it as soon as I can.

If you are into alternate realities, futuristic fiction, or Science Fiction, then you'll like this book. There are hovercrafts, chips, rebels, domes that encase a complete city. I found the whole concept to be interesting and I'm glad that I found this book ( )

One role of reviewers is to get the consumer past first impressions. That often means debunking trailers that portray name actors in the three good moments in an otherwise hopeless big budget film; or, as now, reassuring readers that there is a decent book behind that weak cover. The cover for Jemma7729 has two strikes against it: cover art that is an amateurishly executed adolescent wetdream, completely wrong for the feminist text within; and a title that is one of the great clichés of bad SF -- using numbers for names is such an obvious expression of dehumanization, that it is second only to giant ants as the ultimate bureaucratic metaphor.

But once past the cover, things get a lot better. The opening paragraph is adequate, if not immediately engaging, and if the reader sticks with the story until the second paragraph, they can get a good sense of the tone and direction of the story. Of course, one has to get past the paragraph on page 3 where the author officially introduces the nearly insurmountable numbers-as-name cliché, but I think it safe to assume that the reader -- having already necessarily set that aside to get even this far -- can make it to page four, and it's pretty much clear sailing from then on.

The story presents the first-person narrative of a feminist revolutionary in a dystopian future, as she recalls her life from age 5 until she concludes her career as the 'face' of the revolution. One major strength of the book is the balance struck between keeping the plot moving, and providing enough detail for each of the crucial incidents in her life to adequately illustrate both character development and the evils of the society she ultimately works to over-throw. Wray does an excellent job of knowing exactly when to say, "and so it went for the next six months", and when to slow down for the nitty-gritty details.

And some of the scenes are pretty gritty. Again, Wray does an excellent job of allowing the reader to experience the routine injustice, corruption and incompetence of this Orwellian future America, without ever getting too preachy that -- hello! -- she's really writing about current injustice and patriarchy. One has to be cautious labeling a work as feminist, lest the average SF fan push the book back on the shelf in a panic (or more radical feminist critics complain that the novel's discourse is still too conservative), but I don’t think that there is anything in here that would overly challenge, say, Honor Harrington fans. In the end, Jemma7729 is a good solid action adventure novel, well worth the $16 price of admission.

And speaking of endings: One of the things that always intrigues me about books from Edge, is why foreign writers -- in this case an American -- would seek out a Canadian publisher. And once again, I'm reassured to find that it is not that Jemma7729 was not good enough for the big American SF houses -- in fact it beats the crap out of 75% of the stuff currently on the shelves -- but that it shares with Canadian SF some of those characteristics that make mass-market publishers nervous. In this case, I'm guessing that it was the ambivalent "does this count as winning or losing?" ending of the sort that typically drives American critics crazy, but which Canadians seem to take in stride, that did it.

I have to confess that I was a bit ambivalent about the ending at first myself, but the more I've thought about it, the more I've come to accept that it was the only possible conclusion given the implicit themes of the novel. And it is not just the ending that has grown on me: I was initially going to complain about a couple of the shootouts where our heroine seems to escape too easily, but as the book progresses and the reader comes to realize just how incompetent the administration is, Jemma's early successes make much more sense. So another excellent title from Edge books, well worth picking up -- just carry it with the back cover facing up. ( )

Around the year 2200, everyone in North America lives in domes. They have been told by AGNA (Administrative Government of North America), who controls North America with an iron fist, that the atmosphere is toxic and deadly. Women have had all rights taken away from them, under the guise of protecting them.

Jemma7729 (everyone’s name is a group of letters and numbers) is someone who does not act "appropriately." When she is five years old, Jemma gets into a fight with a boy at school. Jemma is the one who must publicly apologize to the whole school. Females are not allowed to show aggression, or express an opinion. While her mother is away for a few days, Jemma’s father takes her Outside (there is nothing wrong with the air) and shows her the stars on a clear night. For Jemma, there is no going back.

At ten years old, everyone must go through Choosing Day, where they must choose what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Jemma has few available options, the least awful of which is Woman Who Marries. She is very uninterested in spending the rest of her life pleasing her husband, arranging flowers and being an AGNA spy (like her mother). Jemma refuses to choose, and is immediately hauled to "rehab" (prison), where, after a year of harsh techniques to break her spirit, bordering on torture, she escapes to the outside world. Jemma is eleven years old.

Jemma quickly learns to live on her own and spends her time sabotaging the factories that make the chemicals to keep women "altered" (docile and compliant). After a couple of years, the "underground" catches up to Jemma, and convinces her to join them. She spends the next several years traveling to this small town or that isolated hamlet, letting the people know that they are not alone. Meantime, AGNA has described Jemma as some sort of horrible terrorist who likes killing innocent people, which is totally untrue.

This near future, one person against the system, story, might seem a little basic, but the author does a fine job with it. It’s interesting, plausible and it’s well worth reading. ( )