Lois Bujold's The Warrior's Apprentice is available as a free e-book. There's violence, and there's mention of rape as a war crime*, and probably swearing and alcohol use and such. Basically it's about a character from a very militaristic world who is born with physical disabilities (but is frighteningly smart and determined). After flunking his military exams, his parents arrange for a trip to visit his grandmother off-planet in hopes that it will cheer him up. He ends up trying to make some money by sponsoring a down-on-his-luck pilot and runs into some mercenaries... which he manages to fast-talk into taking them over to save his own butt. So, now he has to win a war AND convince his home planet that this totally isn't a treason plot. It's not my favorite of the books in the series, but it's chronologically first of the books using this character and Miles and Elena are at the right age to resonate with high schoolers.
(The Bujold story for free is a short story, 'The Mountains of Mourning', which is a murder mystery that Bujold wrote with the idea to show that having a truth drug doesn't eliminate the needs of a murder investigation. It's also got some good stuff about class and education and disability: basically the main character is the rich son of nobility and ready to serve his planet by Having Adventures in the Military, but his father asks him to ride up to the poor, technologically-undeveloped hills to act as judge because a hill woman came down and complained that the local government was refusing to investigate the death of her infant daughter. The town suspects it was infanticide since the baby was born with a clef palate, and the fact the woman's husband is missing is Very Suspicious.)
Octavia Butler is another classic, but I've only read a few of her books and your English teacher friend might not want to deal with sexual themes (and Parable of the Talents features a Christian-based theocracy in the USA and a lot of sexual violence, which could go over like a sack of hammers).
I know I loved The Moon is a Harsh Mistress at that age. Sex is mentioned a lot, but never shown. The narrator is also part of a polygamous marriage, which I found interesting in the sense that Heinlein points out in text that family structures change depending on society's needs (that lunar polygamy was an adaptation to create stability in a society that had neither governmental institutions nor biological extended families, so people created kinship networks by groups of adults). Which was an Important Idea to me as a wee one. The main plot -- three people and an AI plot an independence movement -- was interesting. The book is pretty heavy-handedly libertarian, but at least it got me thinking about the role of government. (I didn't always agree with Robert Heinlein, but I could argue with his books and felt coherent.)
* One of the main characters was born as a result of rape. She doesn't know this for most of the book and is looking for her mother.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2013-08-17 02:50 pm (UTC)(The Bujold story for free is a short story, 'The Mountains of Mourning', which is a murder mystery that Bujold wrote with the idea to show that having a truth drug doesn't eliminate the needs of a murder investigation. It's also got some good stuff about class and education and disability: basically the main character is the rich son of nobility and ready to serve his planet by Having Adventures in the Military, but his father asks him to ride up to the poor, technologically-undeveloped hills to act as judge because a hill woman came down and complained that the local government was refusing to investigate the death of her infant daughter. The town suspects it was infanticide since the baby was born with a clef palate, and the fact the woman's husband is missing is Very Suspicious.)
Octavia Butler is another classic, but I've only read a few of her books and your English teacher friend might not want to deal with sexual themes (and Parable of the Talents features a Christian-based theocracy in the USA and a lot of sexual violence, which could go over like a sack of hammers).
I know I loved The Moon is a Harsh Mistress at that age. Sex is mentioned a lot, but never shown. The narrator is also part of a polygamous marriage, which I found interesting in the sense that Heinlein points out in text that family structures change depending on society's needs (that lunar polygamy was an adaptation to create stability in a society that had neither governmental institutions nor biological extended families, so people created kinship networks by groups of adults). Which was an Important Idea to me as a wee one. The main plot -- three people and an AI plot an independence movement -- was interesting. The book is pretty heavy-handedly libertarian, but at least it got me thinking about the role of government. (I didn't always agree with Robert Heinlein, but I could argue with his books and felt coherent.)
* One of the main characters was born as a result of rape. She doesn't know this for most of the book and is looking for her mother.