For darkness shows the stars

Review

Move Jane Austen's Persuasion to a dystopian setting and you have For Darkness Shows the Stars.  Elliot and Kai grow up together on a farm after the Reduction, a genetic experiment gone terribly wrong.  While Elliot is the privileged daughter of the landowner, Kai is the son of a servant.  Despite their circumstances, both share a love for machinery and progressive thought, until a misunderstanding forces them apart and Kai leaves the farm, and Elliot, behind for good.

Then years later, Elliot hears that a famed exploratory fleet will soon be at the harbor near her farm, and discovers that the desirable fleet Captain Wentworth is actually her Kai.  But Kai is aloof and detached when he returns, and as Elliot begins to chip away at his coldness toward her, she realizes that the changes he has undergone since leaving may have forced them apart forever.