Flux. Beth Goobie. Vancouver, BC: Orca, 2004. 258 pp., pbk., $19.95. ISBN 1-55143-314-1. Subject Headings: Spirits-Juvenile fiction. Identity-Juvenile fiction. Missing persons-Juvenile fiction. Mothers-Juvenile fiction. Grades 7-11 / Ages 12-16. Review by Joan Marshall. **** /4

excerpt:

"Exactly what are you laughing at?" she demanded.

"I'm not laughing," grinned Deller, flinching in spite of himself.

"You are too," insisted Nellie, jabbing an accusing finger in his face. Someone had to protect the Goddess's holy house from vermin.

"You're laughing at Ivana and the holiness of Her worship." With satisfaction, she watched the grin flee Deller's face. "Beware, heathen," she hissed, deciding some extra emphasis would do him good. "You don't know the danger you're calling down upon yourself."

Reraren. There it was again, the unspoken flashing across Deller's face. It truly was a weasely face narrow and long, with a wide mouth and muted green eyes and the rest of him carried the same weasely quality, tense and restless, always sniffing for prey. Well, he had it wrong if he thought he could go after the Goddess. He was nothing but a speck of dirt on the hem of Her heavenly blue robe.

"Beware," Nellie spat again for good measure, feeling the sky come to rest approvingly on her shoulders. "Just you beware." Several older women gave her admiring glances as they passed and Nellie nodded back stiffly, then sailed up the last few stairs. Maybe she didn't have the right kind of clothes, maybe she hadn't memorized all the words to the Goddess's ritual prayers, but at least she had the proper attitude. She wasn't a heathen.

Twelve year old Nellie and her mother have escaped from the Interior, a dystopia controlled by police where citizens are divided into castes, tattooed and chipped for identification purposes. Then her mother suddenly disappears, and Nellie is left to fend for herself in the city of Dorniver in the Outback, an anarchic, barter society where only her sharp wits and her fervent belief the goddess Ivana keep her safe from the Interior Police and the bliss of mindjoy. Caught by a local gang led by Deller, Nellie's head is shaved, but Deller and the Skulls release her, horrified at the worm like scars on her skull. Nellie has learned how to pass into different levels of existence by stepping through doors in the air that only she can see. On one of her visits to another level, she sees a boy, obviously part of an experiment, who looks a lot like Deller and turns out to be his brother, Fen. Both avoiding and using their doubles in various levels, Deller and Nellie try to figure out how to rescue Fen without attracting the attention of the Interior Police or their henchmen who are controlling the temples of the Goddess and conducting nefarious experiments on young children. Nellie's destiny is hinted at, and gradually the reader learns that she has been experimented upon and is so powerful that the authorities in the Interior are searching for her.

     Nellie is a compelling character who moves from a wary, needy, self centred child to a more open, determined young girl who sees the big picture of how evil in her society must be defeated. She goes beyond basic survival to tentative love for Deller and his mother, a sympathetic but firm woman who takes Nellie in when she's at her worst. Deller is a well drawn 14 year old boy, dabbling in sex and power, but desperate to find his younger brother, and trying to make decisions about what sort of man he will be. It's interesting that the only men in this book are evil scientists, complicit priests, absent fathers or Interior Police.

     The reader is drawn into the intoxicating setting of Flux from the first page when night is falling on the wickawoo birds and the dengleberry bushes. Tiny details like the insects, the candy, the two moons, the erva drugs, the susurra flower and the nerva fruit create a fascinating world. Nellie can enter flux, or shapeshift, when the air vibrates strangely and the molecular field seems to change. The danger of flux is that an entity from another level could slide into your body and take it over. However, Nellie uses it to travel to the next level of existence to escape capture and to steal food. Most of her doubles in the other levels ignore her, but she receives a burst of energy help from her double in the 10th level that helps her to defeat the evil scientists in her home level. Nellie is accused of being rerraran (crazy), and her mother has died because she was denerren (a traitor). The mystery of the Elfadden (the disappearance of children) weighs the Outback down with sorrow.

     Flux is a rich, well developed, speculative world in which the Jinnet, an Outback resistance group, is working to keep the Outback free from the thought police who are determined to control both the people and the environment. The style of Flux is evocative, thoughtful, complex and sophisticated, comparable to Pullman's His Dark Materials. This novel will challenge young readers and remain in their minds long after the first reading, raising moral questions about how societies control people, and scientific questions about fields of energy that may or may not be there.

     The timeless themes of how to parent, how to lead, how to grow up productive and happy, and the necessity of freedom over control arise in this novel and will be continued in its sequel, which is to be published soon.

Highly Recommended.

Joan Marshall is the teacher librarian at Fort Richmond Collegiate in Winnipeg, MB.

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

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