Harare Review of Books

608 pages.

First published Oct 17, 2023 (Harper Voyager)

Fiction.

Love a meaty sci-fi read, although this novel is less sci-fi than (mostly) the politics of a society set on a ship in space. For Mammay, a “generation ship”(?) is a way to explore how an isolated human society might evolve and work after 250 years. Not all of it is persuasive; 250 years of relative peace is complete utopia, by human standards, I’d argue. But there’s enough thoughtful and realistic conflict in it to satisfy.

Mostly, this is a story about the establishment vs rebels; but the rebels are (usually/) always conscious of how their actions could lead to the death of everyone on the ship—thousands of humans—including themselves, so there really isn’t much hectic action. I would have liked more from the planet itself; the beginning of the novel is wordy, with sooo much telling, and much could have been sacrificed there so that the end of the novel didn’t feel so rushed and even truncated. I won’t give away that part, because that’s the most interesting aspect of the novel; but even the resolution regarding the planet just didn’t feel completely satisfying. Perhaps there will be a companion novel in the future.

Nevertheless, like I said, love a meaty sci-fi novel, and this certainly was one, with interesting characters and a plausible-enough world on the ship. If this is your kind of thing, you’ll enjoy this one.

Thank you very much to Harper Voyager and to Edelweiss for this DRC.