Listened to this as an audiobook. I would listen to a super cut of the reader (who has a British accent) just saying “body” over and over again.

The book was… okay. I debated 3 or 4 stars. It’s good, heartbreaking at times. Well written, for sure, but something about it left me annoyed. I guess I just wanted more ideas and less character idiocy. (Although the character flaws were all interesting and mostly explainable because… CHILDREN IN SPACE.)

Anyway, definitely worth reading.

Unfortunately, this book turned out to be not for me.

I gave up at about 10%, after reading three chapters. Those chapters told the backstory of three different characters, and the fourth chapter was going to be about yet another character. As far as I understood from other reviews, there are six main characters and six points of view explored in the book.

I think it is really hard to make a book with that many POV characters work, especially if you start with their background. Even if you start with them doing something exciting, it's still tricky, as the reader doesn't have an emotional connection to any of them yet and doesn't have time to form it before switching to other characters.

As it was, the book was going into mundane and mildly interesting details about each character's life, but the plot wasn't moving along and nothing was happening. Because I didn't know those characters yet, I didn't really care about their previous lives or how they got into the program or what they were worried about. It could have worked for me (and that's just a personal preference) if I saw them in some action first, liked them and got attached to them, and those details were filled later on when I was already interested in them or wanted to understand them better.

Please take all of that with a grain of salt as I read only a small part of the book, and this is just my subjective perception that can be completely different from yours. There are lots of great reviews, so the book definitely works for some readers. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me, but it might for you.

Check out my blog about sci-fi by women and non-binary authors for book reviews, lists, interviews, short stories and more.

Definitely more literary than sci fi IMO. Pretty entertaining. Quite well written though could do with chopping about 50% of the similes for being totally unnecessary, not adding anything, and at times being downright distracting. I felt like this just didn't quite land... Like it didn't have enough of a point of view. Or perhaps just a point? I expect it won't be very memorable but it was a decent enough read!

Sci fi, with a wealth of fascinating space science... but pleasantly, this story is all about the people. About the people, and possibility, and devotion to something so far off and away that it may as well be a dream. Looking forward to Oh’s next novel.

Sometimes I read a book or watch a movie where the story involves space and I wonder if I am being too harsh. For example, a scene in a show I was watching, has a character in space take off their visor, wipe off their face, and then put the visor back on. Did I mentione that this person was in outer space, not inside of a vessel of any kind? This might be a minor detail to some, but for me it simply pulls me out of the story.
Temi Oh is a new to me author, and my reading goal/mission/desire is to read books by Africans, and Oh qualifies. Also, science fiction is one of my genres. I'm conflicted by this book, and I think I know why. The U.K. Space program that was sending these people to Terra-Two, were, in my opinion, negligent. Many, if not all of the characters, had some sort of psychological issue, many of which I would want to imagine would exclude them from the program.
But, in the same way that these characters had their issues, these same issues and flaws kept me coming back and thinking about them until I was done. Could there please be a follow-up to this book, I'd like to follow these characters into the next phase, hoping that there's some growth!
As I read and finished this book, I was reminded of the Becky Chambers book, "To Be Taught, If Fortunate".